Former NBN Boss Claims Turnbull Has Added 15 Billion to Cost and Helped Telstra (Yes, Again)

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• • 

    nocure on 03/11/2015 - 09:06

    Turnoff

• 

  DeafMutePretender on 03/11/2015 - 02:15

  From the political party that prides themselves on being stupendous "economic managers" no less.

  Nice to see that Turncoat's honeymoon didn't last very long because I believe that still far too many people are drunk on Turdbull koolaid. So to celebrate this occasion, how about some more brainstorming of derogatory insults based on Turnbullstard's name? It's neither very mature nor politically constructive, but hey, it's fun.

• 

  RobMel on 03/11/2015 - 03:46

  -1

  Thank good the ABC informs us as always impartially about all things going on, except anything against the left of course.

  • 

    ESEMCE on 03/11/2015 - 09:18

    Yeah, the role of the ABC is not to do investigative journalism, reporting on the facts, it's to re-release media releases.

    Funnily enough I was just reading a rant from a lefty whining about the unbalance of the Scott Morrisson Kitchen Cabinet!
    When both left and right zealots are complaining about balance, you know there's probably no issue whatsoever.

    How about getting pissed off about the government pouring money down the drain of this pointless network sidegrade? Do it right, or don't do it at all and let someone else do it right is what I say. I cannot for the life of me understand any conservative supporting any government in this ridiculous waste, let alone a supposedly conservative one. (ditto for "Direct Action", what a crock!)

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  Charity on 03/11/2015 - 09:01

  He knows he is only in for a short while, so he thinks he may as well make as much money as possible. Of course at the public's expense, now and in the future. The public is so apathetic and/or powerless, he knows he can get away with it.

  what can anyone do? We didn't even vote him in.

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  Cheeper on 03/11/2015 - 09:51

  -4

  Labor had no idea of the cost of implementing their plan. They had admitted this several times. Independent estimates were returning insane figures.
  Added to that was the time to actually complete the task… they started by targeting the cheapest & easiest areas to connect as a smokescreen to make it appear that all was well, when it was far from that.
  At least with the new plan connections are being made at a faster rate and without a doubt will be far less expensive than the shallow thought out ALP plan.

  • 

    ESEMCE on 03/11/2015 - 10:06

    +2

    He's not using Labor's figures, he's using the actual NBNCo figures from recent reports or the figures from Strategic Review/Corporate Plans that eventuated after the Liberals came to power. He compares these figures to those assumed when Labor was in control and the assumptions have been proved to be accurate or conservative.

    The time taken to build FttP has continued to improve even under the MTM NBN. Current cost/time to complete each premises is still below the assumed cost/time in the Strategic Review despite the fact that there are fewer crews doing the work cause they're winding down the Brownfields rollout.

    No idea where you get the " targeting the cheapest & easiest areas to connect" statement from.
    Here in SA, they fibred up the CBD-fringing suburb of Prospect (one of the oldest suburbs in the city), the semi-rural town of Willunga, some parts of the inner-suburban areas within St Mary's exchange area and a few newish estates. Only the newish estates and maybe the new areas of Willunga could be considered "easy" with conduit pre-laid. The other areas would have been using Telstra ducts and pits laid near or before the middle of last century.
    Prospect is quite a leafy suburb too, so I imagine tree roots would have played absolute havoc with a lot of the PMG ducts.

    I think you should have a read of the document instead of blindly trotting out how much cheaper MTM is.. The facts highlighted by Quigley using MTM NBN data point out that it's going to be far more expensive than has been reported to date and the reports to date do not even consider running costs (power to nodes) or maintenance costs (namely maintenance to copper), because a) they're going to be enormous (even if you halve some of the estimates calculated by third parties) and b) cause it's politically expedient to ignore these costs.
    If you're against FttP for reasons of cost, you should be doubly against FttN!

  • 

    Sparassid on 03/11/2015 - 10:45

    "At least with the new plan connections are being made at a faster rate and without a doubt will be far less expensive than the shallow thought out ALP plan."

    Hilariously incorrect, just a mindless partisan talking point.

    1.) The new connections being made are all FTTP (the remnants of Labor's model), the deployment of which was ramping up under Labor anyway. FTTN remains undeployed.

    2.) FTTN is still untested on our ancient, crumbling and too-thin copper infrastructure, and by several independent estimates will be unserviceable in many areas without huge and continual cost blowouts which will put the long-term cost of the plan equal to or above Labor's…. for a fraction of the performance. Plus then there's the massive multi-billion dollar gift to Telstra for the junk copper network in the first place - thanks Malcolm.

    The NBN was rushed, but it was an excellent idea that was beginning to see fruition - and has now been turned into a white elephant by the Liberal Party.

    • 

      ESEMCE on 03/11/2015 - 11:02

      I'm lucky/unlucky enough to be living in an area undergoing FttN rollout as we speak.
      My (likely) Node was built 2 weeks ago with a brand new 30cm square concrete block positioned immediately next to it presumably so NBN can add a pillar (I can't find any in our area, I presume the RIM cabinet acts as our Pillar?). NBN plan says It'll go active in June 2016.

      We're ~400m from it, currently connected to a Telstra RIM with Tophat located about 5m away from the Node. So we'll be perfect test bunnies to see what benefits FttN truly brings, albeit with half decent copper cause we don't have issues with rain (yet).
      Copper is roughly 50 years old assuming the copper was rolled out at the same time as the houses were built in the area. (which I think is a fair assumption)

      We currently sync at 23000/800ish (max upload is restricted by Telstra), with about 7dB SNR so our copper must be in reasonable condition. I'll be very interested to see what benefit we see when the node goes active.

      • 

        Mergatroid on 03/11/2015 - 12:59

        +1

        Fingers crossed, you might get the full 25Mbit/sec!!

      • 

        ESEMCE on 03/11/2015 - 13:04

        +1

        @Mergatroid:
        :P

        and 1mbit upload? I won't know what to do with all my spare time!

      • 

        [Deactivated] on 05/11/2015 - 22:05

        @scubacoles: Just think of all the video-conferencing you could do in 120p.

  • 

    Mergatroid on 03/11/2015 - 12:55

    I don't have the time nor crayons to explain to you all that is wrong with what you said!
    So I will just ask did you take into account the cost of rolling out an already obsolete technology?
    The only real 'upgrade' from copper is to fiber, anything else is a huge waste of time and money!
    Meanwhile in South Korea they are upgrading their gigabit network to 10Gb! But we don't deserve a GOLD plated network we only deserve copper!

    • 

      [Deactivated] on 05/11/2015 - 22:07

      +1

      Don't compare us to South Korea, that's just not realistic. Think closer to home like NZ who are upgrading their FTTN network to FTTP right now while Liberals are just putting FTTN in :S

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  Diji1 on 22/12/2015 - 13:59

  Merged from Telstra Sells NBN Co Copper Wire Infrastructure and Then Scores The Maintenance Contract To Look After It

  Now that Malcom Turnbull**** has moved from being Telstra's preferred man in the position of Telecommunications Minister to being Telstra's preferred unelected Leader to Lead Us All Primie Minister it's like being a kid in a candy store for them. The candy store was bought using your taxes BTW.

  Some time ago NBN Co made the apparently foolhardy decision to buy some copper infrastructure from Telstra - Telstra having "aquired" it by using tax payer dollars to start with when they built the bloody thing back when the gummints owned and made money with … whatever it was called. Telecom? This was back in the stone ages of the last century but I'm sure wikipedia knows.

  OK so NBN Co appears to be behaving as though it exists to enrich Telstra by buying infrastructure that delivers 12Mbit FTTN over copper - that's bad enough right.

  Well nope: guess who scored the maintenance contract to look after the copper that no one wants because it delivers 12Mbit FTTN :D I'll give you a clue - they love our Prime Minister.

  There was some ridiculous quote where NBN chief claims they gave it to Telstra because they have no idea what to do with copper infrastructrue :D

  sauce; http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/20/telstra_wins_copper_…

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  Diji1 on 17/02/2016 - 19:04

  Merged from NBN to be privatised for the usual idiotic reasons (transfer taxpayers money to private hands while delivering terrible service)

  After privatising water, electricity, telecommunications and gas Australians have been putting up with paying the highest rates in the world for all these things.

  This is the exact opposite of what was supposed to happen according to our elected scumbags - competition and the free market (which is spoken about as if it is a living breathing entity for some reason) was supposed to deliver lower prices. It utterly failed.

  So you'll no doubt be glad to hear that the NBN is now to be broken up and privatised sometime after it's supposed 2020 completion date. The same scumbags are promising the same horseshit again: lower prices through competition despite the fact that there's NO COMPETITION in the plan from what I can see.

  Of course it wouldn't be the first time that a private monopoly has been created as anyone in SA knows: are you enjoying the choice and lower prices you are paying for water? Nope, didn't think so because it's a private monopoly. Which was supposed to blah blah free market blah blah competition etc. Complete crap from iur elcetd scumbags.

  It's about time we just called it what is: transferring public money into private hands in order to make the rich wealthier by screwing every person who isn't.

  Obviously Telstra will be one of the entities as it seems gummint policy decisions consistently benefit Telstra.

  Get ready to pay a lot more for your internet - just like Turnbull**** has been trying to do all along.

  Sauces: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/17/sell_the_nbn_sooner_…

  • 

    [Deactivated] on 17/02/2016 - 20:05

    +1

    Wasn't the NBN always supposed to be sold off?

    • 

      sir_bazz on 29/02/2016 - 15:50

      The Greens cut a deal with the ALP to ensure it's a little harder to privatise than initially proposed, but yes you're right. Legislation was put in place under the ALP to ensure it can be sold if both houses of parliament agree to it.

      Nothing changed here since the Libs took over.