Malcolm rambles:

There is probably no Gillard government policy more inexcusably or needlessly reckless than the construction of the national broadband network.

Everybody loudly and emphatically agrees that all Australians should have access to fast broadband and at an affordable price. All of us agree that in those areas, such as regional Australia, where distance precludes the market from delivering affordable services, the government should provide some form of subsidy to make it happen.

Having made the promise of universal affordable broadband, a responsible government would then conduct an analysis to work out the fastest and most cost-effective way to deliver it.

After all, nobody outside of the business really cares about how their telecommunications is delivered as long as it works. To paraphrase Deng Xiaoping: ''copper wire, glass fibre, wireless - doesn't matter so long as it delivers your broadband''.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/let-a-hundred-flowers-bloom-in-broadband-field-20110223-1b5ib.html

...............

Yes Malcolm, a bowl of rice is a bowl of rice... Deng Xiaoping died 14 years ago... Since this time a lot has changed in human communications... And Deng may have proffered his words about 20 years ago when Broadband was not Super-broadband... Your quote shows you still live in the past and do not look at the future on this issue. Like many of your Liberal (conservative) colleagues you still adhere to the book of Job written 2000 years ago...

Even "Mr Google" approves of the NBN, and he should know... "He" holds on tight to "his" secret algorithms that have bamboozled the world...

Intel formally launched its Thunderbolt external I/O technology on Thursday, although it's still unclear what the long-term impact of the interface may be.

Industry sources outside Apple said the initial response to Thunderbolt—once named "Light Peak"—was as a possible replacement for FireWire, the high-speed serial bus that usually sits alongside a USB interface in an external drive. But the technology could also serve as a high-speed interface for a docking station, Intel executives said.

Basically, Thunderbolt is a combination of DisplayPort and a PCI Express x4 connection. Thunderbolt uses two 10-Gbps channels; each channel has two bidirectional lanes, for a total of 40 Gbps, according to Aviel Yogev, director of Thunderbolt engineering.

(When PCMag.com asked for more clarification, an Intel spokesman replied: "It's actually 2 channels, 10Gbps birectional. So in summation you have potential for up to 20Gbps upstream AND 20Gbps downstream, but any single device maxes out at 10Gbps (you don't "combine" the two channels)."

As such, Thunderbolt can drive both an external display as well as serve as a data connection. In a demonstration, Intel showed off a 4K Apple Cinema Display being driven by a Thunderbolt cable from a LaCie Little Big Disk array, with four 1080p uncompressed videos being displayed. The DisplayPort, data, and audio data are all intermuxed (or mixed) across the same channel, with data priorities given where needed, executives said. If necessary, Thunderbolt uses the second channel for additional data.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2380890,00.asp

Gus: this is also a reason why we need the NBN... see toon at top...

An unemployed truck driver who allegedly gave himself the online nickname 'Evil' has been refused bail over what police say could have been Australia's biggest hacking attack.

Twenty-five-year-old David Cecil appeared in court in the New South Wales town of Orange to face more than 40 charges related to an alleged attempt to hack into the systems of Platform Networks, one of the 13 service providers for the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Australian Federal Police officers arrested Cecil yesterday at his home in Cowra after a six-month investigation which they say began when he started bragging about his plans in an internet chat room.

Police say Cecil was working alone and could have caused considerable damage to Platform Networks' systems and to those of other companies.

But they say the attack did not have the potential to cause serious disruption to the $36 billion NBN.

"What he'd basically done is that he'd tunnelled into their [Platform Networks'] system, he had bypassed their firewalls, he'd also bypassed all of their security systems," Assistant Commissioner Neil Gaughan told ABC TV's 7.30.

"So he was in the position where he was mapping their infrastructure, which enabled him, if you like, to be in a position to compromise not only the network more broadly, but also the system where he could basically collapse it if it seemed necessary to do so."

AFP commander Grant Edwards says the NBN was never on the verge of collapse because of Cecil's actions.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-27/afp-makes-hacking-arrest/2811780

Of course, on the North-Shore community radio station — the Joe Hockey for PM radio station — the deep-voiced spruikers were using this item to bag the NBN and also bag the government. This news, in their "reading-between-the-lines" fancy interpretation was a deliberate plot to make us swallow the concept that Julia wants more filters on the NBN than you have under your kitchen sink for your chloride, fluoride and heavy metal-free water.

Ritewingnutters ning-nongs...

Meanwhile the NBN-team providers themselves are waiting impatiently for their turn to hook onto the network... Like most city folks they have to wait. The unfolding of the massive network is prioritised to be in country areas... see toon at top.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has admitted it was a "big mistake" to set up a new company to build the National Broadband Network, adding that Labor left the Coalition a "calamitous train wreck".

• Malcolm Turnbull was the minister responsible for the NBN before he became Prime Minister
• He deflected some questions this morning by saying previous Labor governments were to blame for botched rollout
• He admits there's a "reasonable question mark" over whether or not NBN Co will ever make a profit

Mr Turnbull was questioned about the NBN this morning after Four Corners reported the troubled rollout was creating a digital divide across Australia, with some households saddled with older technology such as copper phone wire and pay TV cables, and unable to access the high speeds they are paying for.

The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman also revealed an almost 160 per cent increase in NBN complaints over the past financial year.

NBN chief executive Bill Morrow said those complaints needed to be kept in perspective given the difficulty of the rollout.

To make this point, the NBN Co revealed the more expensive FTTP connections in each state and territory, including one installation close to $90,000 at a lawn bowls club in Tasmania.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-23/nbn-malcolm-turnbull-labor-to-blam...

Piss orf Malcolm... You stuffed up and YOU stuffed up...

See also: 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/26885

A former executive at the National Broadband Network has predicted that many of the copper wires laid down in the NBN rollout will have to be ripped up and replaced within a decade. 

• Figures given to a Senate committee show only 24 per cent of FTTN connections will reach 100Mbps
• Former NBN stakeholder engagement head says it highlights deep-seated flaws in the network
• NBN argues it will still deliver vastly improved speeds to most Australians

NBN Co has conceded that most Australians with fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) will not be able to get top internet speeds.

The Coalition is building the NBN with a mix of technologies — with high-speed fibre being run to a point in a neighbourhood, and copper wires then being used to reach homes and businesses.

But new figures provided to a Senate committee reveal that only a quarter of FTTN connections can reach the top speed touted by the Government of 100 megabits per second. 

That compares to 100 per cent of customers using fibre to the premises (FTTP), or pay television HFC cables.

Anne Hurley, a former chief executive of the Communications Alliance who worked as head of stakeholder engagement at NBN, said the latest figures highlighted deep-seated flaws in the network's design.

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-17/nbn-fttn-will-not-provide-top-spee...

Read from top...

The CEO of the NBN Corporation now admits that the government is to blame for Australia''s slow internet speeds, writes Laurie Patton.

THE DEPARTING HEAD of the trouble-plagued NBN, Bill Morrow, has finally come clean. He has finally conceded that reusing Telstra’s ageing copper wires is creating major problems.

In a paper published by NBN Co last week, Morrow admits that fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) is causing lower speeds and more dropouts than the fibre that was originally being rolled out. He also acknowledges that there are too many dissatisfied NBN customers.

This is the man who abused parliamentary privilege to slander me for saying what he’s now admitting. Despite a reproach from members of the Senate Estimates committee he was fronting, Morrow refused to apologise, leading the committee to publish my repudiation of his false assertions. Ironically, I also noted my contention that FTTN was creating the very problems NBN Co is now facing.

Until late last year, I was the executive director of Internet Australia. On IA’s behalf, I helped lead the campaign for #BetterBroadband. IA is a member-based group that includes many of the top broadband experts in the country. In a survey in 2015, 80% of the members who voted told us they didn’t think the copper-based FTTN option was good enough.

18 months ago, I met with Drew Clarke when he was the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff and told him exactly what Bill Morrow is now saying. He ignored my advice. Now he’s on the NBN Co board!

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/bill-morrow-s...

Read from top... Considering "my" NBN won't come to my house before 2019, I had buy a Telstra mobile connection just for the internet. It gives me speed of download AND upload around 45 to 50 bps. But it's limited on cost. No favours for going over the limit.

While Australia struggles to figure out its NBN problems, a new plan has been formed based on financial projections, writes Paul Budde.

SINCE THE COALITION GOVERNMENT has taken over the NBN back in 2013, we have seen the goalposts being changed nearly on an annual basis. It started soon after Malcolm Turnbull’s infamous announcement: “we will bring you the NBN for around $25 billion and deliver it in 2016”.

The reality, of course, is that now in 2019 the costs are estimated at $51 billionand the rollout will be completed by the end of 2020, be it for around 100,000 premises that will be left in the too-hard basket, to be sorted out later.

In order to get from investments needed from $25 billion to $51 billion and from completion in 2016 to 2020, ongoing adjustments had to be made and this was also again the case in the new plan.

The aim of reaching $51 ARPU per customer has been pushed forward again — this is a major problem for the industry as that will mean a further squeeze on their margins. Consumers are not willing to pay more for their subscription so the costs of this push will solely rest on the shoulders of the retail service providers. The margins of the RSPs are going down to the 10 per cent mark. In comparison, margins for the retail providers in the energy market are 30 per cent, sometimes even higher.

According to OECD figures, Australia is now the country with the least affordable high-speed broadband network. So it is hard to see how NBN Co will be able to squeeze even more money out of the Australian public.

The company seems to realise this and is starting to change the goalposts here as well. It has changed the weighted format of the ARPU and will now have targets for certain customer groups. They have been successful in the business market and this might compensate for pushing prices higher in the consumer market.

Read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/voila-the-new...

Read from top.

Turnbull and Turdy Abbott damaged the idea of the NBN as much as they could. Scummo is no better at understanding both ends of the shit-stick either. Planning for a service that was going to deliver between 100 and 1000 bps was the way to go. Only optical cable to your house can do it. 

The number of people who complain to me about the NBN is quite phenomenal and I have had my own issues with the cavalier way the connection was made to the old UGLY Telstra/Foxtel coaxial cable from lamppost to lamppost hanging like Spanish moss — lampposts which eventually will be white-anted or torn down by a global warming storm. BUT I can say I am lucky the download of 45 bps is average while the poor upload of 15 bps is maintained throughout, day and night. And this privilege still costs a premium amount of dollars...

I wished the installation would have been a full 1000 bps (or more) optical cable to service my new 20 quantum-bit computer (not available yet — but awaiting eagerly) as to reprogram my Artificial Intelligence into a daily stream of seemingly personal rants and automated cartoons while I go fishing.

But as we all know (we all should) 6G network will soon replace the hardly existent 5G. One of the problems with non-wired connections is the influences of electromagnetic waves from the sun and others, such as the decidedly nasty jamming by world powers to prevent spying and disrupt telecommunicationing... Optical cabling is harder to be interfered with.