As William Gibson wrote long ago: “the future is here; it is just unevenly distributed”.

Completely correct, the NBN has made no plans to improve on what is currently available in terms of top speed. It does plan to make high speeds available to a broader selection of the community and spread the cost in proportion (and inevitably some of that cost will be carried by taxpayers).

I admire Stephen Conroy for his energy, his patriotism, and his courage. But his “national high-speed broadband plan” was conceived largely for the political purpose of aligning the Labor brand with “the future’, and costs far too much for what it delivers. It does not survive close scrutiny. That is why the government has been fighting to keep it away from the Productivity Commission, and why it should go there.

The purpose is to close the “digital divide” by force if needs be… make sure no Australian gets something that other Australians don’t get. Productivity really never gets into the calculation… it’s a political calculation, not an economic one.

The main thing that bothers me is not the spending of tax money on fibers, it’s the slated destruction of an existing perfectly good copper network. If the opposition could do one thing only it would be to force the auction of existing copper on a suburb by suburb basis once Telstra has declared it will no longer maintain the copper. Destroying to copper is tantamount to pointlessly vandalizing a public asset. Sure NBN will wring hands and cry and moan that allowing competitive ISPs to buy local copper would spoil their wonderful business plan, but out the other side of their mouth they claim to have an unbeatably superior product. Let them demonstrate superiority in a fair fight.

If local ISPs could buy a suburb full of copper they would have customers flocking to them buying cheap 2M/1M DSL for about $25 per month (with a bundled VoIP phone and 10c untimed national calls). Telstra are well aware of this, NBN are well aware. That’s why they don’t want to let it happen — artificial scarcity. Stupid thing is that cheap 2M/1M copper links would do more for closing the digital divide (by honest free market competition) than anything government does sloshing around tax money.

We need consistent speeds of 24-30mbps to be able to teach professional skills online really effectively, in that something like 70% or more of human communication is non-verbal. It may well be that such functions have not migrated online to date because those sorts of speeds just aren’t available.

As I pointed out last time we had this discussion. Those speeds ARE available. Have you tried bonded DSL?

Yes, faster services do cost more than slower services. Faster cars also cost more than slower cars. Bigger TV’s cost more than smaller TV’s. Lawyers seem to cost more than secretaries for that matter.

Their argument is that the case for government to subsidise or control universal HSB via FTTP is grossly overstated.

They clearly have never encountered Telstra. They clearly have never encountered Telstra in Regional and Rural Australia.

Kenny Brothers Dismissed.

There must be a good reason why Telstra fr some time have been putting in fibre not copper to its new customers considering the cost.

There are quite a few significant current uses for fast broadband (let alone future ones) that AFAIK can’t be catered for adequately with currently available broadband or known enhancements thereof i.e. the existing copper landlines just aren’t up to it. For example CDU law school teaches 90% of its students via online virtual classrooms. Multi-screen HD video with minimal lag rates appears to need significantly more than the 12mbps maximum (with much lower averages) achievable by ADSL2+ or wireless broadband. We need consistent speeds of 24-30mbps to be able to teach professional skills online really effectively, in that something like 70% or more of human communication is non-verbal. It may well be that such functions have not migrated online to date because those sorts of speeds just aren’t available. We’re actually teaching skills online (the first university in the world to do so) but it’s only barely satisfactory with current speeds. I’m sure there would be numerous educational and other uses where a similar situation applies.

Although I argued that fibre to the node + newly available enhancements to ADSL for the “last mile” made those necessary higher speeds achievable, the redoubtable Possum Comitatus argued (quite persuasively I thought) that Telstra’s existing landline infrastructure was so degraded from years of underinvestment that this would not be a significantly cheaper solution. I’m wondering whether your analysis takes this into account or takes issue with it.

PS I absolutely agree that there should be a proper cost-benefit analysis done by the Productivity Commission. It should be possible for it to make some sort of reasonable assessment of broader social benefits and other externalities as well as blue sky/unknown future uses.

I agree absolutely that it should go to the PC. The current price is beyond absurd. If you are ‘saving’ several billion on a project, there’s a problem.

Note that my comment on Conroy’s patriotism is due to some exposure to him long ago. He came here from northern England in his youth, and regards the Australian suburbs as a sort of paradise, something I have always found peculiarly endearing. His patriotism is based on actual comparison data.

I’d rather this comment thread doesn’t become a discussion of Conroy’s persoanl qualities, though. It’s the policy that matters.