Conroy: More education needed to counter NBN attacks
- 01 April, 2011 08:26
- Comments 6
Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has indicated more education on the National Broadband Network (NBN) is required in order to counter some of the vicious attacks, particularly from Sydney shock jocks.
At Cisco Live in Melbourne, Conroy said the Government faced a far greater challenge in Sydney than the rest of country.
He singled out Sydney radio shock jocks Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, Chris Smith and Michael Smith, as catalysts to the attacks.
“Sydney is a unique situation,” Conroy said. “There's a particular Sydney drum beat that is championing a conservative push in Australia that comes from some media outlets and particular shock jocks I just talked about. Every single day they attack, attack, attack.”
Conroy also referred to some figures, that showed across 40 working days from December to January, the shock jocks attacked the NBN 158 times.
“Good news for the rest of Australia, is that they don't broadcast around Australia,” he said.
“There's more we're going to have to do in education to counter some of the veracity of the attacks on us.”
But Conroy was confident that as more examples of the NBN in action builds up, the debate will be begin to fade away.
The NBN has been attracting a lot of debate and criticism from industry pundits.
Internode's managing director, Simon Hackett, has previously voiced his concerns that ISPs with less than 250,000 customers were going to be disadvantaged in regards to the NBN's 122 points of interconnect agreement with the Government and consumer watchdog, ACCC.
Instead, they'll have to purchase NBN services through wholesale aggregators.
“What you're going to see is innovative companies that are going to come into the market to do new things that aren't done to this model,” he said.
Conroy said Hackett had a chance to make a submission to the ACCC and it would have been welcomed.
“Simon's made a range assumptions that are a legitimate debate, but fundamentally it was a decision by the ACCC, and when Simon and Internode had a chance, they didn't submit to the ACCC,” he said.
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Comments
Tristan Parry
1
So Conroy calls himself Communications Minister?? I think that makes him something of an expert on the subject, No? Does he not know that Alan Jones is syndicated throughout Australia? Around 28 stations according to the 2GB website - right up to Cairns. Oh, and they can listen to shockjock podcasts using that internetty thing.
Now all we have to do is wait for the NBN to blow out to double the cost. After all, it is a government program.
Crazy Heart
2
So the subjects need "education". Just how much money and time has gone into documenting dissenting views on the "NBN". It makes sense for the government to build a fibre network to areas that are not commercially viable to do so, but to say that no other provider can lay fibre is just ridiculous.
Chris
3
Id suggest the best way to silence them is to deliver on time and on budget and to spec. Till then I guess its a case of you reap what you sow.
Simon Hackett
4
Senator Conroy is wrongly claiming that when 'Simon and Internode had a chance, they didn't submit to the ACCC'.
Simon and Internode did submit to the ACCC back in October 2010, and their submission is on the public record on the ACCC web site here:
http://www.accc.gov.au/content/index.phtml/itemId/961575
Internode has been highlighting these concerns ever since:
http://blog.internode.on.net/2010/12/19/nbn-points-of-interconnect-and-the-future-of-competition/
Regards,
Simon Hackett
Normalised
5
“Good news for the rest of Australia, is that they don't broadcast around Australia,” he said.
- An expensive project dreamt up to sound popular to the public on the pretence of ‘nation building’.
- No business case to speak of.
- Creating another monopoly that we don’t need which is to be eventually sold off to the highest bidder.
- Costs blowing out and behind schedule.
- No real benefit in the price of services in metro areas.
- Delivery method out of touch with the way the consumer market is headed.
Now what was the good news?
Oh that’s right… apparently us non-thinkers’ thought processes haven’t been tainted by those nasty dissenters in Sydney and we are more open to Conroy’s tripe.
Unfortunately this is the normal arrogant attitude of this guy – he knows best and we should just fall in line.
No Mr Conroy it isn’t an education problem, it is a white elephant you insist on building.
Justin
6
at least hes better than Helen Coonan