[AusNOG] Long live the NBN. The NBN is dead?! [personal]

[David Connors]

On 11 August 2010 07:41, Stephen Carter <Stephen.Carter at workingtech.com>wrote:

>  I just can help myself... Bringing a political view to this forum with no
> real technical value is very disappointing.
>
>
>
> It is obvious that the NBN substitute proposed yesterday is a badly
> presented incomplete policy.
>

The opposition policy is more about spending $6bln and not $43bln++, so a
like for like comparison on the technical merits isn't really sensible if
their goal is to be fiscally conservative.

Don't get me wrong, I would be the first person in my street with my hand up
for 100mbps fibre - but it is not clear to me that there will be any decent
return on the $43bln though. As others have said (Tim McCullagh's post in
particular) on this thread, there are significant other infrastructural
projects that might be able to be undertaken with that money and may provide
a better return to the tax payer ... or debt reduction. That is the Lib's
point.

The current government has a solid track record of running projects that are
neither on time nor budget, nor provide value for money. I am deeply nervous
that our $43bln NBN might be a $90bln NBN.

It is still not really clear to me what the benefits are of someone having
say, 10 meg down and 2 meg up on Annex M vs 25 meg down and 2 meg up on
fibre for about the same monthly fee (notwithstanding the $43bln). Even if I
could get a 100/100 link for fifty smackers a month on NBN, I don't think
I'll be that much more productive than the 22/2.5 that Internode already
give me.

Another thing lost on the one-eyed-NBN-at-any-cost nerds arguing in this
debate is that there are entire sectors of the population who don't give a
toss about quality of service on the Internet- loading a web page is FINE
for a lot of people who just want to tool around on Facebook or whatever.
You'd have to pry my NextG SIM from my cold dead hand - but there are plenty
of people out there who are happy as larry on 3 or Voda's congestionfest
networks.

Not to mention that $50-100 a month is actually a pantload of money to a
family with two kids on or below the average wage.

-- 
*David Connors* | david at codify.com | www.codify.com
Software Engineer
Codify Pty Ltd
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