[AusNOG] News: Minister Conroy contemplating Government-Fundedundersea cable?

Tim McCullagh technical at halenet.com.au
Sun Sep 30 10:15:19 EST 2012


Mark with all due respect I would suggest you stop believing the government 
spin

Your debt is a figure which you know,  no one knows how much the NBN will 
cost, there has been no cost benefit analysis and you talk about the level 
of debate.  The debate needs to be around what wealth is and how is it 
created.  The NBN is unlikely to create any wealth whereas the Barco and 
diamondtina shires do..   Lets have the discussion on wealth, not all 
industries or sectors of the economy are wealth generating.  Water assets = 
wealth generating    health = wealth distribution unless export income is 
being generated from it ie: royalties on patents  services.....    So what 
is the fed government doing? buying water licences in regional areas and 
cloing down wealth generating farming activities and increasing spending on 
health.  And we are asked to trust them with our comms infrastructure.  You 
must be bloody kidding.  Lets have the disciussion

I don't take Turnbull seriously since he allowed conroy to raid the 2.5 
Billion rural comms fund to redirect it into he city based NBN.  Now there 
are 2 local government areas asking for some help to improve there 
communications and there is no money......... <sarc> who care it is only a 
few country hicks </sarc> that create food and fibre and export income...... 
yes we need to learn where money comes from.   Everyone  needs to understand 
that wealth must be generated before it is spent and that is what the 
country hicks do and we begrudge them decent communications.  Shame on us.

The NBN will never be built (in its current form) for $37.5 billion and it 
will never deliver the returns the government claims.  Also it will not be 
built on time. For  start the ceo has little or  no network build out 
experience he was a sales engineer.  Some of the staff selections that I 
have come across while welll qualified on paper have no build experince. 
Does a picture start to come to mind.   The NBN was going to be built on 
power poles until the deal was done with Telstra which suggests the ground 
keeps moving under the business plan, suggesting that it was never properly 
thought out.

Then comes the catcha.  Already we are seeing cost increases in DSL tail 
charges forced by the ACCC so that the spin masters can say the NBN  is no 
dearer than the current solutions.  Then lets see what has happened with 
water and power prices (government controlled utilities) over the last 5 
years or so.  THe priced have been rising in double digit increases while 
the rest of the economy has been flat.  What do you think will happen with 
then NBN.   Of cource at some stage a government is going to say no more 
money (because all government local state and fed are broke)   so o   .... 
NBN increase your prices to meet your needs.

Does this really need to happen ?
Does all of the population really need more than ADSL2 of fibre to the node?
Is this the best use of scarce resources?

What really pisses me off is that the areas that currently do not have adsl 
or equivilent will still end up with what they have now "satellite"  and we 
are trying to justify the NBN under a nation building program.  What 
rubbish.

Another issue with the NBN is that the current government is requiring union 
membership.  Talk about going backwards.   No that there is anything wrong 
with unions, but we should be free to choose.

The NBN is nothing more than a tech welfare program which the other 95+% 
willl have to pay for.  I would suggest that the end result will be that the 
NBN will increase prices for comms which will put a handbreak on other 
industry sectors.  Far from being this productivity booster it will be a 
handbreak.  Faster movies gaming etc does not increase productivity.

Also anyone in the industry that thinks that the NBN will be easier to deal 
with than Telstra is seriously misguided.  There will be no other network 
provider to goto so lets see how authoritarian and infexible the NBNco 
become.  They may well be worse then the PMG because today we rely on comms 
more than we did back then.  Talk about history repeating itself and we 
think we are cleaverer now.  We are dreaming

Personally I am sick to death of the misinformation regarding the NBN, by 
those that have no bloody idea or sit there with blinkers on.   This may 
come as  shock to some but governments are very bad at picking winners. 
This will make pink bats  and BER look like prudent spending, unless it is 
changed to be based on need.  That is what we do with our home budgets we 
purchase services and product based on our NEEDs.  We should not be forced 
to pay for someone elses wants

Finally the fed government is the regulator and legistlature, so it should 
not be the operator or network owner otherwise there is a conflict of 
interest in prosecuting the best solutions for the nation.   NBN = Not 
Bloody Needed

Regards

Tim

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mark Newton" <newton at atdot.dotat.org>
To: "Kai" <vk6ksj at westnet.com.au>
Cc: <ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
Sent: Sunday, September 30, 2012 6:41 AM
Subject: Re: [AusNOG] News: Minister Conroy contemplating 
Government-Fundedundersea cable?


>
> On 30/09/2012, at 1:13 AM, Kai <vk6ksj at westnet.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Outback Qld goes it alone for high-speed internet
>> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-29/outback-qld-goes-it-alone-for-high-speed-internet/4287308
>
> For the last four years, one of the prongs of the coalition's attack on 
> the NBN
> has been on spending grounds: "$50b of spending when we're already in 
> debt!" they
> say.
>
> Then earlier this year even Malcolm Turnbull acknowledged that that isn't 
> actually
> going to happen, because the NBN is a capital investment (which will earn 
> a
> commercial return) rather than expenditure.  The Government isn't spending 
> money on
> building a network, they're buying shares in a company and expecting a 
> return
> above the bond rate, until 5 years after the network is built, at which 
> point they'll
> get their capital back.
>
> I'm in debt:  I have a house to pay off.  The fact that I owe money to 
> someone doesn't
> mean I can't choose to invest elsewhere while the debt is being paid off. 
> Same goes
> for the government.
>
> Anyway, now that the coalition has finally acknowledged that the NBN is an 
> investment
> rather than a debt, these councils want a $16m handout from the government 
> (expenditure,
> not debt)
>
> Sometimes I truly believe that the quality of our national debates would 
> be better
> if schoolchildren were taught what money is and where it comes from.
>
>  - mark
>
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