One-on-one with Shadow Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull

You didn't ask - if you were given the choice - would you prefer dsl(adsl or adsl+2) or fibre to your home

Yeah, okay maybe some of us don't want 1Gbps now... But has he ever considered that people will want that in the future? Isn't it better to have ONE huge expese now rather than multiple as they slowly give out more bandwidth at a speed that they define necessary...

I am so tired of these new articles.
Lets see some real questions to them two communication ministers in discussion with average Australian who are not 500 years old and cant work a microwave because of being technological retards and with representatives from the larger ISP's (Telstra,Optus,iiNet,Internode)?
Doesn't these people in government understand that having these wank fests make people not really care of the item they are pushing?

If I do a 1984-doublespeak reading of this interview I get;
1) we have no policy to speak of but that may change
2) we are the opposition so our job is to oppose, not build the nation
So, yes I kind of have to agree with my literate friend Jason that Malcom in the Muddle has given us nothing new here.

What Turnbull and the Liberal/Nationals are saying, not very clearly I have to admit, is that throwing $43 000 000 000.00 at the "problem" is gross overkill, and that we taxpayers will have to foot the bill for Labor's excesses, as usual. The $43 billion cost is just the start. Most IT managers will know that the ongoing operational costs of a network are additional, and up to 30% of the capital cost, per annum. So Conroy needs to find another several billion dollars every year....

That said, there is no doubt that fibre optics should form the backbone of the Internet (it already does), but that this should be rolled out to, at least, the local exchanges/suburban hubs in sufficient quantity that will allow fibre to every premise, as and when requested by consumers.

ISPs & TELCOs will then be in a position to offer their users access by: 1) Fibre, or 2) DSL, or 3) Wireless, or 4) Any future technology, according to the user's NEEDS and/or BUDGET.

Regrettably, I agree that this fibre backbone rollout has to be driven by the federal government, since Telstra's intransigence and arrogance precludes it and the other Telco's in Australia from a far more logical approach by forming joint venture and pooling their basic infrastructures for the good of the country and their customers. Or Conroy could use the federal government's majority stake in Telstra to pressure it's board of directors instruct the management to do so.

Which government, anywhere in the world, has ever been able to provide a product better and cheaper than private business? The communist countries in Eastern Europe certainly didn't , but most are now fervently capitalist, and as a result, much more prosperous. China started booming only once they allowed and encouraged FREE ENTERPRISE. Guys, this is not rocket science. Catch a bloody wake up!

Only children, and those that live off the taxpayer, think Conroy can deliver Gigabit Internet access speeds to their residences at little or no cost.

NBN - may be the Bugatti Veyron of networks, but in the hands of idiots.......

Anyone who REALLY knows data communications will tell you that the NBN was always a 'beautiful' network, but that it completely ignored the main (and most expensive) chokepoints affecting real end user performance experienced, those being backhaul fibres between connected exchanges and also international fibres / bandwidth availability with most sites falling outside Australia.

Having 100Mbps is great as long as the traffic is not all 'retry packets' due to the lack of designed backhaul and caching. Like a road network, a data network needs to primarily look like a tree, with thick trunks, thick and thin branches that get thinner as they go toward the twigs and finally leaves (User nodes). The NBN is really just costing the leaves and twigs and in some cases their link to the smallest branches without the rest of the tree being addressed as that is the job of service providers and is also very costly. Fibre to regional towns is what is required not fibre from the exchange to the home. Anything, wire, fibre, laser or wireless can do the last mile effecetively.

In most metro areas, over the course of the next few years, telcos will already be providing their own fast bandwidth broadband services, possibly on fibre that will equal and exceed the stated initial NBN 100Mbps. I am in a metro location and have at least 10 current offerings for broadband of various speeds and plans. The NBN will just be one more, and one more cable of visual impact cluttering the telegraph poles of suburbia. Telstra and Optus have 30Mbps and 100Mbps offerings right now on HFC.

The bush needs some form of reliable Broadband as many areas have been left behind, but city folk are already well catered for. Mobile Phone coverage expansion would be much more useful to regions and also provide more wireless broadband at the same time.

The NBN will bleed money hand over fist and NEVER EVER EVER BREAK EVEN in urban areas, when other companies provide the same speed at a reduced rate due to one tier to the client rather than two tiers (one govt company one private company). Not to mention their already half / fully paid off delivery methods.

And real estate for the interconnection points costs?????? in Double Bay?? CBD etc

Phew, lucky the average taxpayer is stupid and has relatively deep pockets.......

BB2: Just gotta love what you think of the average Australian, as per your last sentence. Just about sums up your position?

How many ISP and telco physical connections do you have to your home BTW?

1?
2?
many?

Does each service come with it's own physical connection?

Do you access a wholesale or a retail service?

Many people, along with BB2, seem to be stuck in comparing the NBN wholesale model with various retail models and offerings.

Pointless and a plate full of red herrings.

They said the same about the PMG in regard to profitability, yet when the telecoms arm was split from the postal servcie it was immediately profitable, and the PMG alone had built the national cabling network.

Some people may want to have a better understanding of the teelcoms market before making some of their projections, and this is not something your learn from blogs, forums and Tony Abbott / Malcom Turnbull political statements

Even turnbul never built any national infratsructure programmes, and was the money man for the ISP he was involved in. They also primarily purchased capacity from wholesalers.

Turnbull even admitted this week he had not even met with Quigley, the NBNco CEO, yet he had already proclaimed it's demise and utter failure and was so convinced of his ultimate levels of knowledge about it's failed value proposition, finances, pricing, viability, biz model etc.

Without having been briefed by or spoken with the NBNco staff/execs himself?? With no discussion with the CEO he makes all those claims?

Unfounded, political attack commentary based on the simple motivation to destroy, drag down and ridicule...

And still he has not met with the CEO, CFO, CIO or COO of NBNco. It's like commenting on the quality of a chefs dinner when you are sitting outside of the restaurant and have never tasted the food...

We usually call that the Politics Of Ignorance.

@5Taxpayer "Only children, and those that live off the taxpayer, think Conroy can deliver Gigabit Internet access speeds to their residences at little or no cost."

And only people who have political, shareholder or corporate barrows to push could come up with such silly statements.

Before you repeat this guff, please supply quotes, with links, showing where any responsible person has said NBN will "deliver Gigabit ... speeds ... at little or no cost."

@8gnome, read my post again, and, in particular, the statement you quoted in your post.

I never said that any "responsible person" has ever claimed to provide Gigabit Internet connectivity at little or no cost. Quite the contrary, I said that 'only children, and those that live off the taxpayer (i.e. bludgers)' would believe that to be the case. I formed this opinion after reading many semi-illiterate posts fervently in favour of the NBN.

But I also believe that no responsible person could condone spending money on a project even a fraction of this size without a business plan & budget, but, regretably, it seems that is the case. If not, please provide me with links that prove I am mistaken. Then at least I'll know what a 100Mbps or 1Gbps Internet fibre to the premise link will actually cost every month, and so, finally, will the 20 Million+ other Australians.

BTW, I have neither shareholder nor corporate barrows to push regarding this subject. I do, however, hold political views, hardened after many years of seeing our taxpayer dollars squandered by the idiots we always seem to elect to govern us.

That $43Billion could go a long way to relieving the misery of the tens of thousands of Australians, in pain, still waiting many many months for so-called "elective" surgery. So could the interest on the $43Billion...

LikeM,

I seriously regret I typed that comment quickly and it was a tongue in cheek throwaway line, but as this is a relatively technical forum, I meant 'Technically Un-sophisticated' relating to users and I think that would have been reasonably obvious.

I have no axe to grind in relation to how good fibre to a node is if it can be cost justified as required, but you can't do it while ignoring the backhaul which needs to grow exponentially to support each node. The more nodes connected 'last mile' at super high speeds, the more backhaul bandwidth required which costs considerably more for higher speed uplink cards in routers and uses much more power due to the required high end processors.

You would have to agree that some stringent form of traffic shaping will be necessarily applied by the telcos to limit the costs in backhaul, and retry traffic will be immense. Tell me what size link to a town will support 50,000 users at 100Mbps? This over-utilisation condition will also potentially LIMIT the bandwidth of justified users such as government, medical, media etc as they will need to share very limited bachhaul resources.

'Cherry Picking' is a subject covered in the NBN design draft scoping documents. The answers tend toward regulation ie no competition. You are right in that the PMG were immediately profitable, as they were a government department who could charge whatever they liked for the service, and spread the cost over eons not allowable in ordinary business. But most of suburbia already has reasonably fast broadband and so if it costs much more, people won't migrate.

Please, I understand that you are possibly from NBN or a related vendor certain to be smiling at the bounty about to flow your way, but you must accept that in some regards you may be 'talking your book'. Builders are unlikely to have complained openly about their BER school halls work either. Doesn't mean that it all made complete financial sense in all areas. The NBN will spend an amount equivalent to Bill Gates's fortune in one part of the network, whilst ignoring other areas. Can the SPs make money with the capital expenditure required to do the rest of the job? That remains to be seen.

A cost justification isn't too much to ask.................IMHO