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Why Murdoch's media is gunning for your NBN (2013)

41 points| dools | 11 years ago |nofibs.com.au

20 comments

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[+] tom_jones|11 years ago|reply
Interesting but it doesn’t get past the a priori objection to the NBN having been adopted without any economic or commercial assessment to justify it as a political fix when the election promise to provide better broadband at one tenth the cost of the NBN was shown to be hopeless and an embarrassing shambles. And it doesn’t demonstrate that the a priori probability that a proven entrepreneur in the field of Internet based services would be able to do the essential job more cost effectively.
[+] cylinder|11 years ago|reply
I agree, there are many absurd components of the NBN, the most obvious being the idea that the government should spend $2 billion to launch two satellites into orbit just to provide internet to the 400,000 most rural customers who can't get cellular wireless (yet).
[+] locusm|11 years ago|reply
The same reason data casting and any kind of innovation in the digital TV rollout was killed off in 2000. Don't upset the status quo.

That was from Richard Alston back then, again the Liberal party.

[+] tacticus|11 years ago|reply
Richard alston the worlds biggest luddite
[+] gadders|11 years ago|reply
NBN? Anyone know what that is?
[+] tormeh|11 years ago|reply
Australia's National Broadband Network. The gist of the article seems to be that Murdoch wants to kill off fibre in Australia because it's a threat to traditional TV.
[+] scawe|11 years ago|reply
NBN(fiber to the premise) is already killed off. The new government is adopting Fiber to the node for future installations.
[+] etfb|11 years ago|reply
The former government (centre-right Labor party) promised FTTH or FTTP (Fibre To The Home/Premises) but that was scrapped when the slightly-less-centre-and-more-far-right Liberal party got in and proposed FTTN (Fibre To The Node). The "Node" is a box at the end of every street, from which the existing (and rotting) copper network would theoretically connect to each home. Needless to say the idea is profoundly stupid.

FTTH is still available if you want to pay thousands of dollars for your connection, of course. We call this FTTR: Fibre To The Rich.

[+] gelatocar|11 years ago|reply
Not even purely fiber to the node any more, they are going with a "multi-technology mix"[1]

So by the end of 2020, 98% to 100% of the population would have at least 25Mbps[2]. Which is maybe twice as fast as what we have now on average (as a guess).

It is also way behind schedule and over budget[3], when being quicker and cheaper were its main selling points against the FTTP solution proposed by the Labor government.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/10/malcolm-turnbul...

[2]http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/17/nbn-chairm...

[3]http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/12/coalitions...

[+] edgarallenbro|11 years ago|reply
Anyone else have trouble reading the upside down text?
[+] sjtrny|11 years ago|reply
Pipe down or we'll give you the boot!