[AusNOG] Aust Govt will build National Broadband Network, no company will be awarded the tender.

[Bevan Slattery]

MMC, 

> You seem to be advocating doing nothing and hoping it all 
> works out in the end?

That's a rather sad indictment of your employer and like minded
competitive carriers.  It's certainly not what I outlined.  Your just
clutching at throw away lines to refute my position and conveniently
forget to address the many issues I put forward countering your claims
in your emails.  Frankly unlike you, I actually (personally) commit
serious money in telco infrastructure on the basis of financial return.
I am told by the Government that I have 'failed' the market.  I am
offended by that statement.  I have to restrict my investments in the
backhaul business due to the massive industry uncertainty mostly caused
by Government (let alone previous Governments failure to separate
Telstra) that started with Telstra's FttN plan in 2005/6/7 which was
being discussed behind closed doors with Government, Opel/BBC in 2007/8,
FttN in 2008/9 and now FttP in 2009-2010 and beyond.

I push the envelope (and nearly paid incredibly dearly) to advance this
country's telecommunication infrastructure with the assistance of
forward thinking and like minded people such as your employer, the guys
at iiNet, TPG, and Primus.  I know what it takes to do this stuff.  I'm
not some geek lurking on the list with his moralistic or high-brow
perspective of what should be done.

I have the support of 2,200 shareholders who want to change the market.
We built fibre to 200+ exchanges which at last estimate service over
5,000,000 people on the east coast.  I am building a submarine cable at
a cost of $200M to reduce the cost/bottleneck of international capacity.
Not bad for a company that started with an $80,000 datacentre and a
Cisco switch and router bought from Ebay back in 2002.  Not bad for a
company that is trying to invest in building a better backbone in
Australia against a backdrop of successively failed government policy
and interference.

I don't appreciate spending time and countering your views so you can
glibly disregard what I say (when it pulls apart your argument) merely
for you to create a new front of general accusations.  However, I'm sure
if you keep it up long enough you might actually hit something
worthwhile.

> Yay.  Sign me up now so I can kill myself.

Huh.  That is an amazing statement Matthew.  You are saying that what
the competitive industry including your employer is doing is so painful
and dreadful that you are thinking of killing yourself.  Perhaps you
should consider resigning and telling Simon to go shove it because for
all their protestations about investment in competitive infrastructure,
they are wasting their time (and yours).  Tell him and others it's time
to stop investing in DSLAM's, time to stop releasing FttP broadband
solutions (that was 2 weeks ago right?), time to stop pushing us to
build to new exchanges, to stop helping out getting backhaul to fibred
estates, particularly against this horrendous investment backdrop.  It's
time to stop trying to solve the international cable problems, time to
stop promoting competition in backhaul - well I suppose tell him to
ultimately stop competing.  It would appear that what we are doing is
useless and for you personally unfulfilling.

For all your posts in this forum you've essentially said you want to
sign up to a press release by the Federal Government even though they
haven't had the courtesy of even working out what it will cost or what
it will return.  Truly a 'build it and they will come'.  It doesn't
matter what it costs and I don't know whether there is any revenue to be
gained by this, but after x years we should 'float it'.  My god this
thing is the biggest dot-com business plan ever.  It makes the Liberty
One prospectus look like a business plan from Harvard.

Let's not dress this up into something it's not.  It is proposed to
being sold to mums and dads as an economically responsible and solid
investment in which there will be a financial return.  This is a
completely government controlled entity that has no experience, no
systems, no IP, no provisioning systems, no wholesale systems, no
business plan, no idea of market sensitivity, no research on what the
best coverage to return mix is, but what they do have is the backing of
the taxpayer whether they like it or not, the ability to implement
legislative changes to further promote their cause.

As I have said previously, I could possibly support it, but unlike you I
would require the case to be strenuously tested by experts in the
various areas and with public scrutiny.  I guess I'm just old fashioned.
You know, do the business plan before the business and investment type
thing.

Cheers

[b]