ISPs: Opposition axing the NBN is “laughable”
- 20 May, 2010 12:12
- Comments 9
The Federal Opposition’s plan to dump the $43 billion National Broadband Network (NBN) if elected has raised the ire of Australian ISPs, who have labelled the decision “laughable”.
Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, proposed cutting a series of the Federal Government’s active ICT projects in his budget reply speech at the National Press Club in Canberra this week. He took the opportunity to reaffirm the Opposition’s commitment to axe the fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) NBN; a move, which it claims will save $24 million over four years.
Primus Telecom CEO, Ravi Bhatia, claimed the Opposition was misinformed and totally misunderstood the NBN situation.
“Consumers want it, businesses want it and the industry wants it,” he said. Tossing out the NBN will adversely impact the Coalition and fail to win over the public, Bhatia said.
“They are damaging their own credibility and are showing their ignorance,” he said. “I don’t think it will sway the public [to favour the Opposition]; I think people will view this as laughable.
“To come out with such a sweeping statement in a budget reply is amazing and ludicrous.”
Yet despite its public sentiment, Bhatia did not believe the Opposition would go through with scrapping the NBN. The view was shared by another Australian ISP, who declined to be named in this story for commercial reasons. It expects the Coalition would refocus or refine the scope of the NBN and continue to invest in broadband infrastructure.
“The issue is overly political at the moment due to the upcoming election and I think it’s disappointing,” the ISP’s representative said. “At the end of the day, consumers and the industry are looking for leadership from both sides of Government.
“We were really anticipating a bipartisan approach to solving some of these bottleneck issues clearly evident in the industry structure in Australia.”
Adam Internet managing director, Scott Hicks, was concerned the Opposition would stall progress of the NBN should it be elected into Government.
“It has taken such a long time to get from where we originally started, from fibre-to-the-node [FTTN] to now fibre-to-the-premise [FTTP], which is a better solution in the long term,” he said. “This really throws another spanner in the works and is a big worry [for us].”
According to Hicks, the Opposition’s disdain for fibre was unwarranted.
“Fibre is what everybody, globally, is rolling out to future-proof their countries with,” he said. “Everybody does it with Greenfield rollouts and it’s a no-brainer that it’s a more cost-effective solution.”
Telstra refused to comment on the topic. Optus was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.
Follow ARN on Twitter: Watch ARNnet
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email ARN
- Follow ARN on twitter
- Market Potential-Strategy Guide to the Active Archive Market
- In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution —Tape Delivers Significant TCO Advantage over Disk
- In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution —Tape Continues to Be a Major Player
- Red Light In the Control Centre Saves Hours of Chaos
- Spectra Logic and Australian National University Success Story - March 2012
-
Facebook could buy Nokia to build 'FacePhone', expert claims
-
It's not all Doom at new media conference
-
Tech Watch: Who watches the datacentre?
-
Facebook scammers host Trojan horse extensions on the Chrome Web Store
-
Webroot: Growth in security
Get exclusive access to ARN's news, research and invitation only events. 
Comments
Noel Peters
What is laughable is that ISP's expect the Austraian taxpayer to pay for the infrastructure that ISP's will use to make profits. How about an ISP tax.
Murdoch
Noel, what's laughable is your ignorance about the ISP's actually paying NBNCo to use it's infrastructure. Money into NBNCo is money back into the public coffers at least until it's sold off, by which point it will have paid for itself. I suggest you do a little more reading.
Shaun
The NBN is for improving Australia's digital economy. We are far behind many other countries which already offer FTTN or FTTH solutions. I believe $43 billion is a worthwhile future investment which will keep Australia competitive against other countries.
Much Poorer Ozzie
Murdoch, Noel is right, in my opinion.
Rudd and his crew of cretins haven't been able to run the pink batt scheme, computers for schools, building the education revolution, etc, etc. What makes you think their biggest splurge yet ($43 Billion!!) for a network is going to be any different? It's crazy for any government to think it can operate a commercial enterprise better than private enterprise, let alone this bunch of clowns. You can guarantee that IF it gets up, and IF it comes in on budget (a laughable thought), we taxpayers will be lucky to get back one cent in the dollar when it gets sold.
Murdoch
Much Poorer, I would encourage you to attend the various information sessions that NBNCo have and will continue to provide over the rollout stage. When you have a chance to talk to the actual architects of the NBN, you'll realise that they have a specific set of deliverables regardless of the politics and associated shenanigans. I would agree that if the government built it, it would be riskier. However, while the government signs the cheques, NBNCo is getting on with the job. Information is power, it may be a cliche, but actually go and get information first before attributing a nebulous profession like politics with those of the engineers actually building it.
Much Poorer Ozzie
Murdoch, You are missing the point. Governments have no mandate from taxpayers to invest in, or operate, a commercial enterprise, of ANY kind. They are hopeless at it. I don't care how many top engineers or architects NBNco employs, it will act like government department. But I really look forward to being proved wrong!
Murdoch
Much Poorer.
Rubbish. Here's 2 examples from Queensland State Government, a firm called Citec, and another firm called Project Services. Both deal commerically, Citec with IT, and Project Services with building projects. Government can do what it likes, as it's mandate is that it was elected to serve the people. And as for being proven wrong, I'll let the results of the NBN speak for themselves after I get connected.
Daniel
Much Poorer,
The NBNCo is an actual company, and will be regulated by 4 government agencies.
Your poor view of the situation only reflects the past posts of yours over situations such as pink batt situations.
The pink batt situation was not entirely in Government hands and yet it was attacked over the situation (while some of it was, all of it isn't).
The fact that you pointed out the governments previous polices you already discretion your own post.
paleoflatus
Letting the Coalition scupper the NBN this year would be a disaster and letting Labour run it in its usual incompetent way would be almost as bad.
There seems to be little choice. We must vote Labour this year to get the NBN installed and Coalition at the next election to get it run efficiently.
If we can manage a hung parliament, we may also avoid the catastrophe of Conroy's Internet surveillance and the appalling consequences of a massive secret government database.
Post new comment