[AusNOG] background radiation was: "i want a pony!"(wasRe:Longlive the NBN. The NBN is dead?! [personal])

[Matthew Moyle-Croft]

On 12/08/2010, at 8:09 PM, Tim McCullagh wrote:

Then it was sold because the community said it was to inflexible expensive
and those in power said  that we needed competition to fix it.

That's not the reason it was sold ...

Competition reduced prices which was considered good

Ok.


Then Optus rolled out a cable network and Telstra rolled out the same
network.  None of them made money.  Optus made a deal with Telstra to reduce
its exposure to some costs.  Everyone then said don't invest we will resell
Telstras network.  Telstra said fine but the wholesale price will be similar
to telstras retail price.  The industry complained to the government and the
ACCC.  Governments on both sides with the ACCC tried to level the pricing,
some services were declared and the ACCC stuck its nose into the market
which resulted in less competitive infrastructure

I think that's a bit of a wierd take.

Telstra, being fully vertically/horizontally integrated and having, well, ALL the customers and profit and infrastructure is a hard beast to start out competing against when you start at the beginning.    It's a monopoly and it is happy to use it's market power to squish.

Optus, in the above example, experienced this.  Telstra didn't need a cable network, but did it just to stop Optus.  It was quite effective as a strategy for Telstra.

.......
......
then
we ended up where we are today.  Noone investing in fixed line
infrastructure other than Telstra other than greenfield estates.   I still
fail to see why Telstra should have to spend the capital to get small
returns on investment in what is a risky business, especially with
governments forever sticking their nose in without understanding the
consequences.

How is Telstra's business "risky"?   Seriously?   Look at their annual report, the profitability and tell me where the risk is?



I often wonder what a difference we would be seeing today if the conduit
network was open access at inexpensive rates, yes something as simple as
that may have revoltionised fixed line networks.  It would have resulted in
multiple networks ................perhaps

Conduit is indeed available.   But, that's only part of the story.


I will be as brave as to state that the reason we are in the situation we
are today is because of governement interference in the market without
addressing the structural ramifications of such interference.  Eg    the
megapop dial deal done with Telstra before one election and labors NBN which
has basically put all development on hold for 3 years to give 2 of many
examples

FTTN started WELL before Labor - remember back in 2005 when Sol came to town?   That was the problem.   Blaming Labor for that is, well, a bit wrong.


Going down the NBN path will take competition back 30 years.   As for those
that say that the new model will be about service, yeh right.  If there is a
fault we will all have to report it to NBN (monopoly tell someone who cares
network) and wait for them to test and fix as opposed to logging into our
own systems and determining what the problem is and just fixing it.  I can
see vividly the case of storm damage and massive delays, unless NBN has
staff sitting around, not likely

I think you're just trying to see failure.


The more I think about this the more I see it as a back to the future dumb
idea.  I am not into the wank factor of having fibre like some.  I just want
something that works and that I can afford and this is what my customers
tell me as well

I want something that works and doesn't break every year (as my phone line at home does because of no maintenance of the CAN).   I'd also like something which scales in the future.

Again, tell me -> how would, if we didn't do NBN, fix the regulatory environment and how would your suggestions be valid for the next 40-50 years?

Otherwise maybe you don't actually have a plan other than to do nothing and wait for failure?


regards

Tim


MMC
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