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

[Mark Delany]

> 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).

Yep. A 21st century version of the railway gauge fiasco.

The hodge-podge of connecting to a plethora of different last-mile
providers - some of who will be competing against you - could make the
previous decade of ADSL seem like child's play by comparison.

It's not so much a question of which technology - as we all know, the
NBN uses three already - it's a question of where the demarc will be,
how many different demarcs there will be and who will have to smooth
over the differences.

If the last-mile is forceably opened up and returned to commercial
providers with the necessary govt. incentives to deploy - as some
would have it - an RSP could end up having to deal with 2-4 DSL
providers, a couple of HFC providers, at least two fibre providers and
maybe some new regional entrants such as power companies and impatient
local councils. They will all have their own provisioning systems and
interconnects, natch.


> "What's my plan B?"

I'm thinking of the railway business. It's only taken them a century
to undo most of the politically-driven decision-making. Or maybe
trucking. Amazingly every state agrees on which side of the road to
drive on... for now.


Mark.