I was listening to Radio National this morning and there was a piece on banking and the changes in the use of cash and cards and phones and electronic banking. Apparently it is looking like the Asian countries are likely to skip straight from cash to phone electronic money without bothering with the infrastructure of land lines and all that stuff. I thought this was interesting.

However, the thing that always sits around like the elephant in the room for me is the heavy reliance on electricity that all forms of electronic money has. You only have to lose your power and no-one can buy, no-one can sell……this happens if someone whacks into a power pole – in our town half the town goes down for the duration. How much more disruptive would this be if the power stations were knocked out by whatever means.

And just as a matter of interest…..we’ve noticed an increase in people paying us with cash in the last couple of months. Not quite sure why that is.

Does higher tech banking allow for higher risks to security? Not only fraud, but a “computer glitch” resulting in money being shifted to other people? Sounds expensive for the banks to fix these sorts of things.

Yes, they were talking about this too DA. The Techs vow and declare that it is Quite Safe. Others are more cautious.

But there is danger with cash too, in terms of theft and stuff.

buffy said:

Yes, they were talking about this too DA. The Techs vow and declare that it is Quite Safe. Others are more cautious.

But there is danger with cash too, in terms of theft and stuff.

Of course. However people don’t often carry thousands of dollars in cash whereas they could have that in the bank.

Thanks for posting, it’s an interesting topic that promises to be more and more commonplace.

If they are using mobile phone technology for electronic transactions it is probably going to be more reliable than using fixed landlines. Mobile phone towers are less likely to be knocked down by a stray car, and they probably could be fitted with backup generators if the mains supply is dodgy.

EFTPOS machines at work are battery powered and use the mobile network to connect to the bank. The power goes out, they last ~ 36 hours. Although, I was give a slider thing that I don’t know how to use, just in case.

Can you interfere with the phone towers from satellites?

Two words: solar storm.

When I’ve got my redoubt my money will not be anywhere that the Gnomes of Zuric or the Chaps of London can get there greedy little cabbage smelling hands on it, it will be in tins burried around the redoubt, I’ll only need it to buy fuel and ammunition anyway.

I hope they gave you the relevent forms too! I know how to use them, because I still use them at the visiting practice where electronic infrastructure is nothing like cost effective. Around here many, many people still write cheques (including me). I do not need instantaneousness.

buffy said:

Can you interfere with the phone towers from satellites?

Me personally? No.

>and they probably could be fitted with backup generators if the mains supply is dodgy.

The standard is that an exchange is fitted with 8 hours of battery backup if there is no installed emergency power plant (EPP = generator). For sites that have a single generator the battery backup is rated for three hours. For sites with multiple generators where the failure of one generator does not effect the site (N+1 redundancy) the battery backup will be sized for one hour.

Divine Angel said:

Two words: solar storm.

How ‘big’ would it have to be to case issues?

buffy said:

I was listening to Radio National this morning and there was a piece on banking and the changes in the use of cash and cards and phones and electronic banking. Apparently it is looking like the Asian countries are likely to skip straight from cash to phone electronic money without bothering with the infrastructure of land lines and all that stuff. I thought this was interesting.

However, the thing that always sits around like the elephant in the room for me is the heavy reliance on electricity that all forms of electronic money has. You only have to lose your power and no-one can buy, no-one can sell……this happens if someone whacks into a power pole – in our town half the town goes down for the duration. How much more disruptive would this be if the power stations were knocked out by whatever means.

if you bank using your phone you can still do some banking; the telephone system has its own power.

i think that physical notes / coins will be around for a while.

money can be shifted without being taxed or seen by notes/coins.

with the recent storm damage in wa the mobiles went out for 30 hours down in the sw. landlines were out for 4 days. no power and as sibeen says the batteries only last x hours. not enough gennys for all the towers. when the power did come back all the control software was corrupted and had tio be reconfigured. also the way the system is set up bringing one part of the network up didn’t achieve much. eg boyup brook had to be fixed so donnybrook would work.

i had a telstra guy here the other day checking my place for mobile broadband reception.

How did the folk with satellite phones get on Boris?

they’ll probably get rid of physical lines in the end

too much upkeep involved with copper wire

you can use the mobile network to provide internet access, for example you can use your iphone as a connection to the internet for your laptop/desktop – you don’t need copper wire, people are slowly dumping their landlines as taxes start biting.

we still have the landline connected but for much longer i don’t know – its just another expense when we could be paying taxes

you’d probably be better off using fibre optic to send data between cities rather than trying to connect whole suburbs with it

wookiemeister said:

you’d probably be better off using fibre optic to send data between cities rather than trying to connect whole suburbs with it

wow.. what an excellent idea.. Why havn’t the telecommunications companies ever thought of that?

:-/

How did the folk with satellite phones get on Boris?

no idea. i would imagine that if the receiving earth station had power then ok but if they were out then they would have the same probs as mobiles.

apparently there are a lot of “questions being asked” in the corridors of power about the debacle that we experienced here in wa. i was without power for 81 hours. it was like going camping for 4 days. no eftpos because no phones or power so cash only. lucky the shopkeeper know me so i could have got credit if i had needed it.

the problem is that the people running the gov are useless

the power companies suffer from the same management.

they should have put all power underground years ago

they were trialling using the powerlines to transfer data a few years ago and then it was shelved because it would put the telcos out of business. you can still buy LAN set ups that use the power cables in your house to talk between each other.

in the meantime things will get worse.

wookiemeister said:

they were trialling using the powerlines to transfer data a few years ago and then it was shelved because it would put the telcos out of business. you can still buy LAN set ups that use the power cables in your house to talk between each other.

It was shelved because it was radiating all over the spectrum, and wiping out reception of quite a number of services.

Look up BPL – Broadband over Power Lines. The argument is still going on