[AusNOG] AAB Statement

[James Spenceley]

> 
> 
> I suspect this is one of those aspects that needs to be fine-tuned in further debate/design :-)

Its great what comes to light when you start debating a topic and not just having it dictated to you by someone who has never costed or designed a network  :-) 

> 
> Most commentary has seen this as being similar to the Coalition proposal, due to the use of wireless - which is odd, because much of the coalition policy was about spending money removing pairgains an dpresumably augmenting filled RIMs - and there isn't enough proposed to do that.
> 
> In reality, this is a wholesale only open access network, just like the original NBN plan - its just a lower performance NBN, for a lower price.
> Same long term structural fix to the marketplace encouraging non-discriminatory behaviour, which the coalition plan to fund vertically integrated operators doesn't address.
> 
>> What I have come to understand in the last few days, is that I am incredibly scared of a government controlled monopoly on every service (phone, internet, paytv etc) to every house in the country. Couple that with NO visible business plan, NO end user pricing, NO treasure costing , NO industry consultation on the plan itself but with a plan to rip out any form of competitive network, I'm starting to think we missed something here and just focused on how 'cool' it'll be to have Gbps to every house.
> To be fair, I'm not convinced the bit about ripping out all forms of competing infrastructure is real. Certainly its been floated in the implementation study, but thats just a bunch of accountants floating ideas to bolster the business case, with no requirement to be lawful - and a lot of those recommendations, includign the one about extra taxes for cherry-pickers, seem to violate all sorts of ACCC anticompetitive laws. Just because the implementation study says someting, doesn't mean the government will, or even legally can adopt the recommendation even if it wanted to.


I guess part of me expects that these are the types of details that are actually important and should be included in the business case. 

> Telstra being paid to migrate customers from the copper network to the fibre is a strange one,

That deal is still closed, which kind of blows me away. Shouldn't it be offered to everyone openly on equal terms ? 

The other aspect, if I was a retail ISP (and I am certainly am not) I'd also be very scared that Telstra is going to have an $11b war chest to attack the market with. That is going to be a very scary gorilla looking to increase market share.