Displaying items by tag: fraudband

Malcolm Turnbull has some explaining to do about the costs of the NBN this morning, after Guardian Australia reported figures hidden in a report commissioned by him showed a full-fibre NBN or a multi-technology mix would have cost about the same.

Telstra's variation to the NBN migration plan, using fibre-to-the-curb in addition to other technologies, has been granted approval by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

What's wrong with Australia's national broadband network? That's a hoary old chestnut which has been asked and answered many times over the last five years or more, so when the ABC ran a programme asking the same question, it could only come up with the same answers as before. But in much less detail.

The cost of NBN fibre connections to some residences in the country, published in The Australian this morning, serve to make the Coalition Government look good, at least temporarily.

As the hum of complaints about the NBN grew and grew, reaching a shrill pitch, it was only to be expected that the government would react; each NBN user represents at least one vote in its reckoning.

COMMENT Former prime minister Kevin Rudd first spoke of a 12Mbps NBN back in 2007, which even then wasn’t that fast, so to still have 29% of Australians stuck on 12Mbps in 2017 is shameful.

The NBN Co is back with another round of "facts", something in the same vein as those its chief Bill Morrow was spouting a few weeks back.

Over in Britain, a satellite provider is contemplating steps to provide broadband on flights. Back here in Australia, the government continues on with its disastrous experiment — for it is truly that — to build a land-based broadband network and finds that it is well short of the mark.

If the National Broadband Network really is Australia's biggest ever infrastructure project and vitally important to the nation's future, one would expect the minister in charge and his opposition counterpart to react when a furore of the sort caused by NBN Co chief Bill Morrow erupts.

When will Australia's chances of getting a decent broadband — as opposed to fraudband — network improve? When the government's neoliberal thinking that every public project must yield a profit from day one is set aside.

Politicians excel at dog-whistling. Given that, it is surprising that people are now expressing surprise at the mess that NBN has become, given the clear signals that the Coalition provided well before it was voted into office.