ALP scrap the NBN

[Super Nova]

This place really needs a good flushing.

It does. We need to start with the disruptive trolls.

[Jovial Monk]

I posted some good stuff re the NBN. Trolls like SN and Rotzack take no notice and keep talking shit.

[Rorschach]

We posted better stuff...

[Super Nova]

I posted some good stuff re the NBN. Trolls like SN and Rotzack take no notice and keep talking shit.

You're a funny man Mr Monk.....

It should have read.....

I posted some shit re the NBN. Trolls like SN and Rotzack take no notice and keep talking good stuff.

[Jovial Monk]

Part of the NBN is providing backlog where it was either non–existing or only one company was providing it. This particular link is proving quite a boon:

ASKAP to share fibre with Defence, towns

The Department of Defence, remote Australian towns and Curtin University are among some organisations that can tap into the fibre cable feeding the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).

The multi-terabit network covers 390 kilometres of remote Australia between Geraldton and Boolardy Station, including areas that previously only had satellite internet access.

It is run by research network operator AARNet, which has agreed to provide access to the rare regional fibre under commercial agreements to help fund the network's maintainence and operation.

The Department of Defence was understood to be interested in linking a satellite base to the fibre network.

The network was designed to connect to the Federal Government's Geraldton-to-Perth link, in order to deliver data from the ASKAP radio telescope to the Pawsey supercomputer facility.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/314697,as ... towns.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[mantra]

The Department of Defence, remote Australian towns and Curtin University are among some organisations that can tap into the fibre cable feeding the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP).

The multi-terabit network covers 390 kilometres of remote Australia between Geraldton and Boolardy Station, including areas that previously only had satellite internet access.

It is run by research network operator AARNet, which has agreed to provide access to the rare regional fibre under commercial agreements to help fund the network's maintainence and operation.

The Department of Defence was understood to be interested in linking a satellite base to the fibre network.

The network was designed to connect to the Federal Government's Geraldton-to-Perth link, in order to deliver data from the ASKAP radio telescope to the Pawsey supercomputer facility.

Quite telling! We are probably being offloaded with the NBN to supply American defence bases in WA. It will benefit them, more than us.

Australia'S HMAS Stirling navy base in Western Australia could become the base for an entire United States Navy aircraft carrier battle group, if a proposal by a US think tank is accepted.

The idea is contained in an independent assessment of US force posture in the Asia-Pacific commissioned by the military and delivered to US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in late June.

The report prepared by the Center for Strategic and International Studies focuses on how to align US force posture, now tilted towards north-east Asia, Korea and Japan, to south and south-east Asia.

It outlines a number of options for US forces in the Pacific, including greater use of the Stirling fleet base in Fremantle, to increase overall military capability in the region.

If pursued, a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, up to nine squadrons of aircraft, two guided missile cruisers, two or three guided missile destroyers, one or two nuclear attack submarines plus supply ships could be based at Sterling.

CSIS said Stirling offered advantages such as access to existing Australian naval facilities and Indian Ocean training areas, as well as opportunities to expand cooperation with Indonesia, other south-east Asian countries and India.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/br ... rier-base/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Rorschach]

LOL, so did you understand that Monk.

Do you know what advantages there are and disadvantages there are in it for ordinary Australians?
Or do you just post mass articles in the hope something sticks.

[Jovial Monk]

Manta with the complete and utter discredited shit!

Australian base, not US.

No US carrier group will be based in Australia.

Defying logic, common sense and the like stupid, conspiracy theory driven mad Mantra says the NBN is being foisted on us for the benefit of the US! You need to see a shrink tanty manty!

[Rorschach]

We all know that Monk swallowed the labor line and keep spouting its propaganda when it cones to the NBN (and everything else).
But dumping tech articles, that do not look at other technologies or advances in the pipeline or the fact that technology in ICT is changing rapidly all the time is no way to argue the point re the NBN. It's like shouting and never shutting up to hear the audience response.

So for a more balanced view I'll run some articles that take in a broader view of the NBN.

Not that Monk will ever read them.

Government to spend $63.8 billion more on the National Broadband Network
* by: Terry McCrann
* From: Herald Sun
* August 09, 2012 12:00AM

WE are going to spend $63.8 billion to build and operate Stephen Conroy and Kevin Rudd's National Broadband Network out to June 2021. Much more expensive than Labor's first stated figure. But hey, that is par for the course.

But we'll get back just $23.1 billion in operating revenues over that time.

The difference - a tad over $40 billion - will go straight on the national credit card, along with the other $142 billion of net debt that's already been run up in just five years by the Rudd and Gillard governments.

It's worth adding that these numbers make, of course, the arguably heroic assumption that everything whirrs along seamlessly from this point. But we all know with Labor they never do. Pink Batts anyone?

That the budget does leap back into surplus this year. That the NBN gets built on time and to (its revised) budget. That the punters sign up in droves to download movies faster. The NBNs major benefit. LOL.

Now of course it should also be called Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan's NBN - inverting the old saying about how "success has many fathers while failure is an orphan".

That is to say this quartet has demonstrated that, apparently, in their world, and expressed in 21st century idiom, it is failure that has many non-gender specific parents; while success would be the parent-deprived person.

But while Prime Minister Gillard and her deputy and treasurer Swan can claim to have also committed to the NBN, the fuller credit should go to former prime minister Rudd and his (and her) communications minister Conroy.

They take responsibility for the rigorous assessment that committed to the sort of spending detailed above, all detailed and recorded on the back of an envelope during a VIP flight. The only way that Conroy could get to speak to "the (downunder) boss".

These numbers come from the revised NBN business plan, which was released yesterday. It could have been headed "promises, promises". Uh-huh.

As of mid-2012, the NBN remains very much a "virtual reality" network. It's only going to become "reality" sometime manana.

It's the fabulous cutting edge 21st century network that doesn't have much any customers.

Well, it does have a few. As at June 30, it had 14,000, and only 4000 of those were actually connected by the fibre - what the $37 billion going assuredly to perhaps $50 billion, is supposedly what it's all about. A prime minister Tony Abbott excepted.

Those customers generated just $2 million of revenue over the entirety of the 2011-12 year.

And to get the $2 million, 'operating' the NBN cost $521 million. Over and above, the quite separate build cost. Go Labor.

Don't knock it. The NBN 'business plan' expects revenue to leap to $18 million this year.

True, operating costs will go to $1093 million for the year. But hey, you can't deliver the future without splashing around a few taxpayer bucks.

Revenue is then projected to go ahead in leaps and bounds after that. To $120 million in 2013-14, to $529 million the year after that.

On the other hand, operating costs also rise. To $1.8 billion in 2013-14, to $2.9 billion the year after that.

On the NBN's projections, revenue only catches up with operating costs in the 2017-18 year. By which time the operating deficit has added to nearly $10 billion. Now that is Swan mathematics at its best.

Plus we will have spent another $27 billion by then actually building the network. With more spending to come.

Now the NBN does have a case to explain its slow start. Essentially, the delay in doing its deal with Telstra. Plus some other changes imposed on it.

Even so there are some worrying signs that it is going to turn into exactly the mammoth white elephant in reality that it looked on paper, before any of the money was spent.

That's of course, my paper not the Rudd-Conroy document.

Everything in the revised business plan remains a breathtakingly heroic assumption.

All the projected customer numbers and revenue figures are guesses; maybe calculated guesses, but guesses nevertheless. While the dollars to be spent are all too real.

The NBN doesn't help its attempts to convince by fudging in the big print with references to the number of premises to which construction will have been "commenced (my emphasis) or completed," at successive reference dates.

It sounds impressive that the number will be 758,000 at December this year and a thumping 3.5 million by mid-2015.

But it should go without saying that you can't get any revenue from a customer to whose house the construction of the NBN has only "commenced."

And the NBN is only going to be able to sign up some of the customers even when construction to them has been "completed."

The NBN is claiming that 2.9 million of those 3.5 million premises at mid-2015 will have the NBN "completed." That seems counter-intuitive as well as optimistic.

Even more optimistic is the assumption that at that date it will have 1.5 million fibre customers out of the 2.9 million premises that could take the service.

If the build-out falls short, there were will be fewer premises, fewer customers and lower revenues.

If the customer sign-up falls short, there will be less revenue. So far, both have been the reality. Even though the government is currently subsidising take up.

But the operating costs will be if anything greater; and it's a fair bet that the build costs will come out above rather than below budget. Well that is a given with Labor implementation.

This is clearly the most optimistic projection that the NBN could project; and even it fails any rational test.

Its only 'feasible' because most of the money is going to be provided by the government through the budget. And by calling it 'equity' it's excluded from the budget's bottom line.

But it's still real taxpayer money. And by 2021 the most optimistic case has us $40 billion in the red on the NBN.

[Rorschach]

Remember this...

NBN fiasco whole lot worse than insulation

well not to worry. While Monk has been telling us ISPs can pinpoint our location and identify us, his ignorance and naivety re ICT, has been on massive display with his dumping of articles re technology and his beloved NBN. So far Terry McCrannn is on target to being right about almost everything he has said re the NBN.

NBN fiasco whole lot worse than insulation
* by: Terry McCrann
* From: Herald Sun
* March 03, 2010 12:00AM

THE Rudd Government's crazy pursuit of a national broadband network and its associated extraordinary attack on Telstra is getting extremely disturbing.

In very simple terms it is all shaping up to utterly swamp the insulation debacle in the scale of financial and governance disasters.

Insulation only wasted a couple of billion of your money; the NBN threatens to cost a multiple of 10 or more of that. To end up who knows where. Yep.

The whole thing is at the same time utterly incoherent and disturbingly focused on 'getting' one company: Telstra. Yes

Let's remember where it started, almost a year ago. Rudd and his communications minister Stephen Conroy spent their first year in office running a tender for a $12 billion FTTN (fibre to the node) NBN. Yep, but its, the bigger the better, with Megalomaniac Man and Idiot Boy. So we got instead...

Then almost literally overnight they dumped that because it couldn't work and unveiled an even more grandiose $43 billion FTTH - fibre-right-into-the-home - proposal.

Almost as if to punish Telstra for cruelling the FTTN plan, they mounted the sort of regulatory and policy attack on one company that we have never seen before in this country and was all too redolent of a banana republic.

Telstra would be forced to break itself in two; it would be allowed to keep key business assets only at the government's gift; and unless it bent to the government's will, it would be effectively banned from doing some basic business.

Now you might justify this - as indeed the government and accompanying ACCC chief Graeme Samuel did - as necessary to finally break the Telstra stranglehold on the nation's core telecommunications infrastructure. This was in fact Tanner's plan a few years ago. Not necessarily a bad idea either.

But that certainly doesn't justify the process chosen, or the utter incoherence of what the government actually thinks it's going to achieve. Nor deal with the reality that it can't actually just 'nationalise' Telstra's assets.

There's the practical rub in the current impasse. The government effectively wants Telstra to give away its key assets to the NBN company.

The price offered is so ludicrously low, that even accounting the cost of the penalties the government will impose - will try to impose? - it makes more sense for Telstra to pay those penalties.

Why is it so low? Because for the Government/NBN to pay any more would make the already completely unviable exercise even more unviable.

The government has refused to do the most basic cost-benefit analysis of what is proposed. And both it and the NBN company just keep careering away on their separate but linked paths. Eventually the government had to up its offer.

So the legislation which finally surfaced will allow the NBN to be a retail company in direct competition with Telstra - and all the other telcos. In a complete betrayal of its supposed rationale, to be the true wholesaler that Telstra never was.

It's 'just a draft', says Conroy. So why put it in the draft in the first place?

The NBN company announced yesterday five so-called 'first release' sites where it will roll out the network. To get an on-ground feel for the practical build-issues.

In itself fine. But how on earth can it be done before anyone knows the role of Telstra and its ducts?

Further, if completed successfully, we will have the new high-speed broadband going to all of perhaps 12,000 premises on the mainland two years after the announcement it would be built. Yep

An announcement so important it took no less than three ministers plus the prime minister to deliver.

Assuming it then speeds up - the build, not the broadband - you could safely assume it'll reach everyone just about the time global warming makes Toorak the new Brighton.