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

[Mark Newton]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 02:48:15PM +0800, Damian Guppy wrote:

 > Hate to burst your bubble but federal politics are based on 3 year
 > terms with senators getting an automatic 2 terms when elected. Conroy
 > is a senator and got re-elected last election so he has a 6 year
 > term :(

Doesn't matter if he isn't a minister.

 > the only reprieve is if labor loses but in that case we will
 > probably lose the nbn as well. 

We'll lose *this* NBN.  We'll still have some other NBN.

One thing the ALP -has- been successful at is convincing Australians
that broadband is a national entitlement of citizenship, turning it
from a dry technical issue (pre-2007) into an election-turning 
political issue (2010, when two of the independents claimed that
the NBN was a key point considered when they decided to support
the Gillard government)

So the coalition can't ignore it.  Regardless of who wins the 
next election, there'll be some kind of massive capital investment
into broadband networks in Australia.

So the question is, "Will that capital investment occur in the way
that the current government has stipulated?"

I think the answer is, "No," for two reasons.

Firstly:  Regardless of who wins, we all know that it won't happen in
the way they've stipulated.  There'll be blowouts to both the cost
and the schedule, in the manner of virtually every government project,
not to mention technological change risk, so that what's being predicted
now is almost certainly different to what'll actually happen.  So
it's a bit foolish to get emotional about what the politicians are
saying in 2012 because it has so little long-term credibility.

Secondly: It's foolish to think that the Labor version of the NBN
has so much natural momentum that it's impossible to derail later.
That's what political parties do:  they take ideas and concepts 
which were previously unthinkable (for good or bad) and make them
happen.  The current NBN project is every bit as susceptible to 
modification/cancellation now and in the future as the NBN's Mk I 
and II were in 2008 and 2009.

The only way we'll keep Conroy's NBN is if Labor aces 6 elections
in a row (because of the timeframe involved, and the fact that we
have elections ever 3 years, and the fact that Labor has already
used two of them up).  No party in the entire history of Federation
has enjoyed a winning streak like that, and I'm pretty sure this
one won't either.

So we're not going to end up with what the ALP says we'll end up
with.  We'll get some kind of hybrid, where the bits built during
ALP terms in government will be built to Conroy's plan, and the
bits built during Coalition terms of government won't, with the
proportions determined largely by when the government changes.
Service providers will have to square the circle by providing 
some kind of abstraction layer that hides implementation details 
from end users (I prefer TCP/IP myself).  

More generally:  If you're in the business running an ISP with
your wagon hitched to the Labor NBN right now, what you really
need to be thinking as we get closer to the election is, "What's
my plan B?"

(shrivelling up into a little ball of sadness and bankruptcy 
is always an option, by the way)

  - mark