insider trading ???, page-41

Kbee it sounds like your old professor worked for Telecom and or OTC. The government owned and run Telecom and OTC had plenty of critics and many appearances on current affair programs. These programs extolled the virtues of private telecommunication companies around the world and grieved at the lack of progress made in Australia. Now it appears that we all want to be locked into a government owned NBN.

Mr Tanner explains that none of us can predict what telecommunication technology will look like in ten years while stating that we all need to use a $43b fibre optic NBN. Can you imagine how far mobile phones would have come in Australia if the government still owned and operated Telstra? Private enterprise is best placed to raise capital and invest in new risky technologies. The old adage “if you build it they will come” is best tested by private capital not taxpayer funds.

Less than two years ago a CEO of a large fibre optic company admitted that as fast as his company increased the traffic through Fibre optic cable copper manufacturers/users found a way to increase traffic through copper. Can anyone say that Fibre optic cable will sit in the ground and be as reliable as the old copper cables? Can anyone state with surety that a new wireless technology will not make all cable networks obsolete?

When you look at Europe and Japan are you looking at the area that they cover and the populations that they serve i.e. they cover less area and in the case of Japan have cities with populations comparable to Australia. I am sure that if the populations of Sydney and Melbourne were double or tripled internet charges would come down at least 30%. Even more importantly are you looking at the take-up rate in those locations?

Why should the Australian government dictate the technology we use and the price we should pay particularly given its long history of letting Australian technology go overseas because it did not want to invest in local innovation?