@Sabian: Over the course of half a century, copper wire moved from delivering 300 bits per second to 24 million — a speed increase of 80,000x. similarly, optical fibre can today handle 100Mbit/sec, but through multiplexing and other techniques will similarly provide much greater speeds. Perhaps not 80,000x, but fibre is durable and the basic infrastructure will last for ages if properly maintained.

Wireless, on the other hand, is limited by a simple fact: a specific wireless set-up operates at specific frequencies, and thanks to the Shannon–Hartley theorem, it has a fixed data capacity. Physics. You can’t avoid it.

Are we certain that fibre-to-home is as future-proof as is being suggested — you sounded a little too enthusiastic to be objective…

Not that it matters for me. Perth is considered regional… Telstra has been splitting the dual copper wires here, so we can’t even get crappy ADSL in lots of places.

Apparently there’s nothing in their terms of service that says they have to provide you a paired line.

End result, we get forced on to capped and shaped wireless, but at least we get to choose an alternate provider.

But bandwidth is an increasingly serious issue as more and more people are forced on to it as a ‘reasonable’ solution.

*sigh*

The Internets — I hear it’s big in Japan, big in Japan…