http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/pity-the-pm-didnt-hold-broadband-to-the-light-then-oppose-it-20100801-111c5.html ------------------------------------------------------- Rudd Government not up to speed on NBN
* Terry McCrann * From: Herald Sun * June 22, 2010 12:00AM
THE surge in the Telstra share price and a caller to Melbourne Talkback Radio yesterday neatly captured the reality of the Government's continuing National Broadband Network multi-billion dollar disaster.
The caller made the point that we had managed to increase the speed at which we accessed the internet by something like 400 times - from the old 56 kbps dial-up to 20 mbps available on ADSL down the old Telstra copper network, at very little cost.
Now we - or rather Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy and the man who used to be the last competent minister in this government, Lindsay Tanner - are embarked on spending upwards of $40 billion, to increase our access speed all of five times. From that 20 mbps to 100 mbps.
Indeed, spending upwards of $40 billion to perhaps not even increase the speed at all, in much of Melbourne! Because Telstra can already deliver speeds up to 100 mbps to much of Melbourne down its HFC (Foxtel) cable.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. Related Coverage
* Mobile towers to sprout Australian IT, 7 days ago * Business leaders slam Abbott broadband plan Australian IT, 12 Aug 2010 * NBN download boost ups ante Australian IT, 11 Aug 2010 * Making a virtue of patchwork approach Australian IT, 10 Aug 2010 * Coalition unveils $6.3bn broadband plan Australian IT, 10 Aug 2010
End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar.
Even more bizarrely, the Government demanded that Telstra shut down this cable as part of Sunday's deal.
Go figure. Telstra can already deliver 100 mbps in Melbourne. It could extend that to much of Sydney and Melbourne at very little cost. The Government says: no way.
You have to close it down so we can spend $40 billion of taxpayer money to get back to delivering that 100 mbps in maybe eight years rather than next year via Telstra.
Perhaps it's because the responsible (sic) minister Conroy doesn't quite understand his megabits and his gigabytes.
Spruiking what will be available on the NBN in Tasmania - when it actually of course starts - Conroy said yesterday one provider was offering a cheap deal on "25 megs", another on "100 megs".
Whether he meant to say megabits or megabytes, either way he was, well, wrong. He should have said "gigs", as in: gigabytes. That's 20/100 GBs.
Megabits - mbps - is the measure of the speed of the download. Gigabytes - GBs - is the measure of the volume of what you download.
As another caller to MTR pointed out, with super-fast download speeds, you could use up your monthly allocation of volume in all of 30 minutes.
Then you either get slowed to prehistoric dial-up speeds - so the slick super-fast speed becomes irrelevant - or you start paying very, very high prices for 'excess' downloads.
Which is precisely the point of the NBN for all the telcos. They see it as the way to make the internet the new poker machines. A licence to print money, by once again separating the sucker from his money.
That process of 'separation' started Sunday. Although Rudd, Conroy and Tanner weren't suckers. Merely politicians doing stupid things.
In the case of Rudd especially, utterly cynical things. He drove negotiations to an early - expensive - deal to try to offset or even influence the next - bad - Newspoll.
Telstra took full advantage of the pressure Rudd was under and that was reflected in its share price yesterday.
On one level the deal, even though it still has to go through complicated fine-tuning to finality - just simply removed the uncertainty overhanging the Telstra share price.
On another it increased a separate uncertainty: when and what would the Future Fund do with its big holding of Telstra shares?
The first worked to push the share price higher, the second to both limit that rise and release other stock into the market.
Underpinning everything though was a realisation that Telstra had well and truly eaten Rudd and Conroy's lunch. Albeit, paid by us.
First as taxpayers footing the $40 billion bill. And then as future consumers of a Rolls-Royce network (we hope) charging Rolls-Royce prices that most of us neither want nor need.
There are two issues in all this. The actual infrastructure and competition.
Despite the negative comments, the old copper network provides a perfectly acceptable broadband base. Crucially, with Telstra's upgradeable HFC cable in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
That could be upgraded and built out at a fraction of the cost of the NBN, which despite the 'saving' of paying Telstra $11 billion, is still going to cost $40 billion or more, take years, and won't deliver as claimed.
This would also give us 100 mbps - that's, Steve, a speed of '100 megs' - to perhaps three million customers and perhaps half that to most everyone else, with the usual advances in technology.
Instead, the Government is going to dump all that existing infrastructure, and start again; mandatorily clamping a junction box on every home and business.
Sound familiar? Anyone who's experienced the waste and cost of so-called smart meters they didn't want or need, will be getting the product of another clever idea.
All in the name of competition. To have the basic network owned and separated from Telstra. Although the Government - and competition czar Graeme Samuel? - insist, Newspeak style, on killing competition in the name of promoting competition.
Telstra is forbidden to have infrastructure which can compete with the NBN. It's got to be a government-owned monopoly. In a back-to-the-1950s-future, including stringing 'telephone wires' (fibre cables) from poles.
All the competition has to take place among retail re-sellers on the NBN - and between that fixed broadband and wireless mobile.
Assuming you trust the Government; that the NBN will never develop into providing retail services as well, or more than just a few.
Have Kevin and Steven and Lindsay, and indeed Graeme, noticed what's happened over the past 20 years in the competition between the fixed home phone and mobiles?
Yet they're committing to spending $40 billion and almost certainly more - of our, not their money - betting that fixed broadband will easily fend off mobile broadband.
On the obviously very astute assumption that mobile broadband technology can't possibly develop over - I dunno, the next 10, going on 50 years - to deliver faster speeds.
Or that people really don't want mobile things like iPhones and iPads. After all it didn't happen with mobile phones. They were just a passing fad.
Of course none of this really matters. Sunday's deal might develop into a real deal. But it was intended to have a half-life of a couple of months.
Not even to get the Government to the election; but simply to get the prime minister through the next couple of Newspolls.
