Updated: Government to control the prices of NBN rivals

We have 2 cable providers in this country. Telstra and Optus. Both charge ludicrous amounts of money for their plans, Australia has some of the worst IT infrastructure in the developed world and we pay up to 3 times more for a heck of a lot less.

Further regulation should come from somewhere, because with the lack of competition and the monopoly Telstra holds, (which really was the fault of the Government for allowing he sale of Telstra in the first place, I mean really? Privatising a federally owned telecommunications company and then expecting it to give up it's death grip hold on the market? Yeah, right.)
the NBN and virtually any regulatory laws that come into play are a good thing.
As long as they are done with some amount of cleverness and practicality, it should bring a higher standard of service to the country.

Alarmist articles claiming the government is threatening to cripple the private sector and control it are silly.
We're behind the global curve. This will bring us up to par and get rid of some fat along the way.

Let's just hope the Australian Government doesn't sell off the NBN in 10 years time.

@Pat
In past conversations held with individuals that should know such things, it has been claimed that our constitution forbids any government from affecting or controlling pricing in any way, at least with regard to retail goods, hence in Australia we do not have MRRP (Maximum Recommended Retail Price) printed on goods such as many other nations do, in order to inform consumers what a product ought to cost as a maximum.

Of course this might not be the case with regard to wholesale pricing and or the pricing of utility services, for example the NSW government owns Energy Australia and they wholesale onsell energy to other retailers, some of whom they also own (Origin Energy for example), and I believe there exists a price control of sorts in that market in NSW.

Current infrastructure and provisioned services provided by most ISP's in Australia are based on fast downloads but much slower uploads.

To get fast download and equally fast upload speeds generally requires an expensive commercial or business service, subscribed at extremely high cost, especially on current Telstra or Optus infrastructure, (which must ultimately reflect in a higher cost for goods and services charged to consumers doing business with such subscribed companies). Private consumers seeking fast upload connections also have to pay very high commercial rates to achieve these speeds, if they for example wish to run a data server.

As other countries install their equivalent NBN's the trend is toward flat rate costing of ISP services for commercial and domestic customers. This probably will do more to build those nations consumer and business confidence because everyone knows the annual investment required for such services, up front, with no nasty surprises for excess data use.

In Australia several of the more progressive ISP's, that are also major content providers are moving toward a flat rate unlimited data service model, wherein extra special content such as entertainment and live feeds are billed as a service, but not as metered data per se, to offset their fairer priced broadband subscriptions, this is also a global trend.

If FTTP is not provisioned across Australia as per the NBNCo proposal, the content provision market of the future will be restricted to only those large businesses that can avail themselves of the current expensive synchronous high speed elite access broadband networks, to be superseded by the NBN, the likes of which the Coalition are NOT proposing to instead provision for the entire nation at a fair subscription price.

The Coalition's broadband proposal would have become a de-facto anticompetitive network that due to limited function and higher baseline cost, discriminated against small independent content providers, both domestic and commercial, who would be unable to obtain fair and equitable upload speeds on the network.
The incumbent Telco's on the other hand would have ruled the content market because they can easily and cheaply provision custom network services for themselves and whomever they selectively choose to partner with. And then overcharge Australian consumers for such content as a monopoly.
cont...

Pat, it's not about "protecting" the NBN, it is about the NBN and us the taxpayers NOT subsidising cherry-picking providers that dive for the quick buck in high density and easy to install areas, and leave the higher investment and lower return areas to the NBN and the taxpayer to fund.

National infrastructure is just that: National. You either carry your weight or get out of the game.

If that means the govt must legislate minimum pricing controls to stop system rorting then so be it, if it means that the private suppliers must pay a USO levy inorder to be licensed to partake in national telecoms infrastructure, then so be it.

Cherry-pickers always screw markets Pat, always.

And we the consumer end up paying. Cherry-pickers never do it for the consumers benefit nor the national economic benefit.

If they are so keen to be part of the fibre initiative, let's see if they are ready to implement fibre networks in several (say 12)rural and regional centres to NBN standards and with full national pricing equity to ALL users, irrespective of location.

That would see most of them hopping on a plane faster than Sol Trujillo with his bag of our money and kiting an escape to some cherry-picking fields elsewhere...

Just chant USO often enough and they become like vapour on a hot Sydney summer day... Whoops, already gone!

So what I am hearing is that we are prepared to cover the costs for NBN to provide 100Mb/100Mb access to Cape York, NT and the wilderness of WA - and then amortise the costs across the rest of Australia . This would increase the overheads,and reduce the international competitiveness of the major international organisations in Australia,who pay huge rentals and choose wisely to be located in Capital Cities with the accesses there already that they need.

Again I compare to the fuel costs. In those remote areas they have always factored in and paid a premium for choosing to have their businesses in those locations. If Government was sufficiently rich to provide this Broadband access to the remote areas at Govt cost, I think this would be utopia - but Govt is looking to the taxpayer to fund this exercise.

I am saying that it is brilliant that NBN , like many before them, would like to see the remote areas, not experience the disadvantages of their remoteness , - however it is a fact. They chose the location. They knew the additional costs when they settled there. They had the same options available to them as the companies that paid the premium prices for tenancy in the capital cities with proper broadband access.

I say hurray!! for those providers ( eg i3) who can provide cheaper faster broadband access to those companies located in capital cities that can put Australia forward and progress our country. I do not think that we need to place an embargo on the costs in capital cities and reduce their competitiveness with the Broadband 'price control' that has been put forward - I believe that we need to consider this NBN question and price control very, very carefully.

Wow. Lots of assertions and presumptions. Let me make a bold prediction:

No matter what it costs consumers now, or how wonderful this new utility will be, or who owns it, or whether we have a monoply now, I boldly predict prices to consumers WILL INCREASE, and at a startling rate.

Another prediction:

The government will eventually SELL the NBN. It's only a matter of time.

Finally, I strongly doubt the thing will actually be completed at all.

It's all BS. Turnbull, with all his faults, is actually right on this one.