Rudd also repeated his assertion that the Coalition’s broadband policy, launched at Fox Studios, which is owned by News Corp, was better for the commercial interests of News Corp’s part-owned Foxtel than Labor’s NBN, and that this could be the reason for the anti-Labor campaign.

The Coalition leader, Tony Abbott, and his communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, have rubbished that claim, saying if fast broadband threatened Foxtel then the Coalition’s plan would be a bigger threat because it would be delivered to homes more quickly and more cheaply

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/news-corp-go-hard-rudd

Read the toon at top CAREFULLY... Tony and Malcolm have no intent to unroll ANY "worthwhile" NBN "due to budget restraint"... As well the Malcolm plan is a total farce... It would not deliver speed necessary for HD TV... So, Mr Murdoch can sleep easy...

 

I did not watch Pyne and Janet strutting their lies on Q&A, last night (12/08/13)... Pyne is the shadow thingy for education and has no idea about it, except destroy common sense... Janet always harp on about sea levels that fall when they actually rise...

But I watched Malcolm trying to sell his ersatz of a concoction for the coalition's "NBN" on Lateline... He had an "important looking" folder from which he clipped out a page from time to time to dazzle his opponent in this debate, the quite amused Albanese who went straight to the chase of providing the future by doing the NBN once and well, without having to come back and add expensive bits... Anyone would have noted that Malcolm lost this debate hands down... Malcolm was blinking mad, like a person who does not believe in his own shit and tries to sell a vastly inferior product, with the ultimate purpose of swindling you out of a vote and give you nothing... 

And one also should tell Malcolm that the copper he is so enamoured with is at the end of its life... The copper network is clapped out and using the final bits to deliver bits to your home would be fraught with blockages and burn out... Fixing the copper would cost nearly as much than replacing it with optic cable... 

Labor NBN is what this country needs. 

See toon at top... Note that it is most likely,"budget imperatives" would kill off the Coalition's NBN, all to suit Mr Murdoch monopoly...

Mr Turnbull said the suggestion that a fibre-to-the-premises network should be rolled out regardless of time or cost was "reckless in the extreme".

"The NBN project at present is running over budget and way behind schedule," he said.

"There will be a strategic review conducted within the next 60 days which will show how long it will take and how much it will cost to complete the NBN on the current specifications and what that means both to the taxpayer and to the consumers."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-12/malcolm-turnbull-labels-anti-nbn-petition-reckless/4954858

Mr Turnbull talks shit of course. See toon at top...

 

 

From the Australian:

NBN Co executive chairman Ziggy Switkowski has vowed to fix the model for the rollout of the

National Broadband Network, which an industry expert slammed as the "Fukushima of

Australia's telecommunications industry".

As former competition tsar Allan Fels, former eBay Australia boss Alison Deans and economist Henry

Ergas emerged as frontrunners to lead the Coalition's cost-benefit analysis of the NBN, Dr Switkowski

told a Senate estimates hearing his priority was to restore confidence in the design, construction and

activation of services.

"We must learn from the past," Dr Switkowski said. "Rather than making promises to pass as many

houses as possible with an operational model that has clearly struggled, my priority is to fix the model

itself."

A senior analyst in telecoms, media and technology at stockbroker BBY, Mark McDonnell, told an

NBN-focused conference in Sydney the project was "the worst idea ever devised in the history of

Australian telecommunications" and this was "in serious trouble". "The magnitude of this mistake is

truly staggering," Mr McDonnell said.

 

 

 

I can't give the link to the article above... due to "firewall"

---------------------------------

That is the crappiest crap ever said about a project that would benefit ALL  Australians. To associate the cost of the NBN with Fukushima's accident is way beyond the pale and very insensitive to that radio-active problem which is COLOSSAL. 

 

But many of the Libs' mates want their cut of the project and they will crap on it as much as possible, while Ziggy will be hailed as saviour for doing less than a half-baked botch should he follow Turnbull's plan...

 

The NBN is AVAILABLE in many areas especially in new estates and apartments blocks, in Sydney and other cities and the country. Meanwhile most of the inner west, the north shore and the eastern suburbs are still waiting for the blue wire...

 

Henry Ergas??? Please, god, save our souls... (and i am an atheist)...

 

The union representing Telstra field staff says the telco's copper-wire network is "beyond repair" and "an absolute disgrace", casting new doubts over the federal government's plans to use it to deliver faster broadband in its mixed-technology national broadband network (NBN).

The comments follow assertions from Telstra on Monday that the century-old copper network is not ageing. Then, in response to a report by Fairfax Media, Telstra's wholesale division managing director, Stuart Lee, denied the copper asset had deteriorated.

Shane Murphy, assistant secretary of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union's New South Wales branch, said the network was nearly beyond repair.

"Replacing the broken bit right now would be [just about] replacing the [whole] network," he said.

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/telstras-copper-is-nearly-beyond-repair-and-an-absolute-disgrace-union-20131120-hv3mp.html

 

One does not have to be Einstein to work out that the landline copper network is "a disgrace". I have had PLENTY  of experience on this subject. I have mentioned this many times on this site... One knows shit when one sees shit... Turnbull should be ashamed at going along with Abbott's ridiculous scheme that has no legs for the future of this country and has to be replaced anyway... Here I am talking mostly of the connections between pits and between pits and houses... The only difference between the proper NBN and the concoction of the CONservative is the cost of the fibre-optic cable...

Please note that my sources have indicated that some of the optic fibre cables were made in Australia, providing jobs in a modern industry.

Tony Abbott is an idiot. He should be in a straight-jacket...

 

 

When launching the Coalition's NBN policy before the election, Mr Turnbull and Tony Abbott made the signature promise that by the end of 2016 all Australians would have internet download speeds of between 25 and 100 megabits per second.

"Disappointingly", this would no longer be possible, Mr Turnbull told the Parliament on Thursday.

The review by NBN Co itself and Boston Consulting and the insolvency specialist KordaMentha finds the original plan would require peak funding of $72.6 billion rather than the previously reported $44.1 billion, would raise $13 to $14 billion less than previously expected and would be delivered three years later.The original corporate plan prepared under Labor was “extremely optimistic and very unlikely to be achieved”.

NBN Co's decision making had been characterised by “blind faith” in the achievability of the corporate plan “notwithstanding clear factual evidence to the contrary”.

There was a “relentless focus on the metric of 'premises passed' as the single most important of corporate success" to the exclusion of considering the number of premises that were actually connectable and the number connections made

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/malcolm-turnbull-reveals-plan-to-break-nbn-promise-20131212-2z8ir.html#ixzz2nDskymRn

Hello! Hello!... please read the cartoon at top very carefully... It's like kicking shit-bricks déjà-vu...
Meanwhile:

A review of the National Broadband Network says the Coalition's plan will be billions of dollars more expensive than promised before the election.

The strategic review states the Government's proposed fibre-to-the-node-based network would require around $12 billion more than estimated in the Coalition's April 2013 policy.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said his policy assumed NBN Co was doing better than it actually was.

"We assumed they would be able to meet their forecasts and a year earlier than has been assumed in the study," Mr Turnbull said. 

He said the Government would not pay any extra to NBN Co and that the extra funding would come from debt.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-12/coalition-nbn-plan-to-cost-billions-more-than-promised/5152246

Er... Malcolm? Blaming the previous Labor government won't wash... You should have been able to know the where of what's what, when you made a DETAILED prospective "plan" for your crappy version. 

 

 

Almost one in three Australian premises will miss out on pure fibre internet connections under the Coalition’s new NBN policy.

The strategic review, announced today, effectively cancels the NBN rollout for almost a third of the country, with those in areas already served by hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) networks receiving upgrades to that network but no new fibre-optic connections.

HFC networks carry data for cable TV signals as well as voice calling and internet data, and according to the review approximately 2.7m premises are already passed by Telstra and Optus’s networks, with another 700,000 premises within the geographic area.

HFC connections can struggle to deliver high speeds consistently for users at busy periods, because they become congested as more people log on.

The strategic review acknowledges that there is a need to upgrade the network, and suggests that by 2019 peak use of the networks will reach 4-7Mbps per user, and that expanding the existing HFC networks could deliver a user experience equivalent to 50Mbps download speed.

But that is still at the bottom end of the download speed the Coalition previously promised, with no commitments made as to minimum upload speed, calling into question the use of the network for video conferencing and other applications that require stable, consistent and symmetrical connections.

It fails to account for connection quality, reliability and other issues that Australia struggles with, and that fibre could alleviate, according to RMIT engineering lecturer Dr Mark Gregory.

“You might be able to get 100Mbps but there are concerns about the effectiveness of those connections, and how well they will be able to carry the traffic they need to carry,” he said.

The new strategy, dubbed the optimised multi-technology mix, will see 26% of premises reached by fibre to the premises (FTTP), Labor’s preferred technology.

Thirty percent will receive HFC connections, and 44% will get fibre to the node (FTTN) – the slower option which relies on copper wiring to carry data from fibre connections into homes and businesses.

NBN Co says this approach will increase revenues, reduce costs and deliver better internet speeds more quickly to more people, but critics say the technologies used mean it will not be able to deliver the hoped-for benefits to health, education, business and entertainment.

“They are selling us a technology that’s already obsolete,” said Gregory. “This is the greatest con in Australian history.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/12/one-in-three-australian-premises-miss-out-coalition-nbn

read toon at top...

 

By David Braue

We knew before today that the Coalition's NBN plan would cost much more than claimed, and that the odds were stacked against its easy implementation, writes David Braue.

After six years of attacking Labor's National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout in opposition, thereality check handed to the Coalition about its own alternative policy has substantially rephrased the entire conversation about the future of broadband in Australia.

In presenting the long-awaited Strategic Review into the current state of the NBN, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the review marked "the beginning of the era of truth on broadband, and the beginning of an era where we will have facts to work with, objective analysis instead of political spin".

It's quite a claim since in opposition Turnbull was, in my view, a master of political spin, engaged in a ruthless smear campaign against Labor's fibre-to-the-premises (FttP) rollout while promoting a less technically-capable alternative NBN built on fibre-to-the-node (FttN) technology that, among other things, requires the government to somehow gain control of Telstra's century-old copper phone network.

The Strategic Review's revelation that the Coalition had seriously underestimated the costs of its alternative policy going into the election - and made rollout promises that it can not deliver - made the review a Pyrrhic victory for Turnbull, who had previously concocted a worst-case scenario putting Labor's version of the NBN at up to $94 billion.

The reality is much humbler - $73 billion if the current FttP rollout is continued, versus $41 billion for the Coalition's mostly FttN model. Factor in potential financial and social returns, and it's not even clear that the Coalition's option represents the best value-for-money option.

Yet behind the headline figures is an interesting story you may have missed, which was played out on the pages of Fairfax Media newspapers and specialist telecommunications site ZDNet Australia, in which I processed and published NBN Co's unadulterated advice to the incoming government in small pieces over the last fortnight.

This advice - which was prepared by NBN Co during the caretaker period to help the now Department of Communications prepare its 'blue book' incoming government brief for Turnbull - was the first formal evaluation of the Coalition's policy and spelled out in some detail just how many challenges the Coalition's NBN model would present.

It was leaked after Turnbull resisted repeated calls to publish the blue book, and the Department of Communications has knocked back repeated freedom of information requests for its release - even in redacted form.

After my stories based on the leaked document began appearing, Turnbull continued to defy calls for the release of the blue book - and said that the NBN Co advice was not part of the blue book.

Just to recap: the advice was prepared by NBN Co for inclusion in the blue book, cleared by its board and, it would be assumed, delivered to the department for inclusion in the blue book. If it did not eventually make it into the blue book, that could only be because either the new minister, or someone in the department, had instructed that it not be included in the incoming government brief.

In other words, the expert and objective opinion of NBN Co - whose over 3,000 staff include some of Australia's most talented telecommunications engineers - was deemed to be so politically tainted that it did not merit presentation to the incoming minister. Turnbull, whether by design or by what we might infer, preferred to make his own truth about the NBN.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-12/braue-the-inconvenient-truth-for-the-coalition-nbn/5152800

 

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has commissioned a fifth audit of the national broadband network since coming to office in September.

The inquiry will concentrate on the period from April 2008 to May 2010. It will look into the processes that led to the creation of NBN Co, the builder of the network, and the steps leading to an implementation study. It is in addition to a review of NBN Co governance already under way by auditors KordaMentha.

Mr Turnbull has appointed former Telstra director Bill Scales to head the audit. A statement from Mr Turnbull's office said Mr Scales brought "a wealth of experience in public policy and telecommunications to the role". He has been chairman of the Industry Commission (now the Productivity Commission), secretary of Victoria’s Department of Premier and Cabinet and has been involved with other high-profile inquiries including the Gonski Review.

In an interview published on the Australian Institute of Company Directors website last year, Mr Scales said he had spend five years as Dr Ziggy Switkowski's chief of staff while at Telstra. A former Telstra CEO, Dr Switkowski is now executive chairman of NBN Co.

The details of how NBN Co was set up have ramifications to the way the government accounts for the cost of building it. It is currently accounted for ex-budget as NBN Co is a separate entity.

The audit will also investigate the choice of Labor-mandated fibre-to-the-premise technology. 

The independent auditor will consult with relevant parties in government and the private sector.

The other reviews included a strategy review already completed, a 90-day study of broadband availability and quality in Australia by the Department of Communications released last month, and a cost-benefit analysis by independent consultants also due in July.

Labor's communications spokesman Jason Clare said Mr Turnbull seemed "to have an unhealthy obsession" with former Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and "with fighting old wars".

"The people of Australia want him to build the NBN, not play politics," Mr Clare said.

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/malcolm-turnbull-starts-fifth-nbn-audit-20140307-hvgmh.html

 

 

Please Mr Turnbull note that the copper network is clapped out and replacing with copper again is like going one hundred years backwards... WE NEED FIBRE TO HOME TECHNOLOGY and Australia can afford it.

 

See toon at top...

 

Malcolm Turnbull relentlessly pursued Labor for going ahead with its NBN without first getting a cost-benefit analysis, which makes it particularly galling that he is now doing the same, writes David Braue.

The Australian public has become so used to our elected politicians breaking their word that new revelations of double-speak are greeted with little more than a shrug.

With the Abbott Government not only breaking repeated election promises around the National Broadband Network (NBN) - but also this week engaging in unconscionable hypocrisy about its planned expenditure of $41 billion without appropriate oversight - it's important that even the most jaded political observer take note.

The hypocrisy revolves around Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull's decision to issue a newStatement of Expectations (SoE) to NBN Co, the company charged with rolling out the next-generation broadband network.

In doing so, Turnbull has completely changed the architectural and strategic direction of the NBN - without waiting for the results of the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that he commissioned in December, putatively to guide his decision about the best path forward for the project.

NBN Co under Labor suffered near continuous browbeating by Turnbull during his nearly three years in opposition, with him repeatedly questioning the credentials of its management and questioning at every opportunity Labor's decision to begin the project without conducting an extensive cost-benefit analysis (CBA).

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-14/braue-nbn-hypocrisy-confirms-contempt-for-process/5384464

 

See toon at top...

 

 

Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull may not want to answer many questions about the National Broadband Network, but it shouldn't stop Australians from asking them. After all, since last September, Turnbull has reneged on pre-election NBN commitments, admitted to giving misleading statements about Labor's costings, made chummy appointments, ignored expert economic consideration, and infuriated the near-entirety of the professional tech community.

And yet, the minister has been able to dodge much deserved public excoriation. His advantage is administering a policy area that significant chunks of the electorate just don’t understand, as well as speaking to an industry that by practice and tradition is pretty insulated from the broader democratic conversation.

An analysis in layperson’s terms of what Turnbull has been doing with the NBN makes clear how Australian people are being denied the quality of essential infrastructure.

Started by the previous Labor government in 2009, the ambition of the NBN project was investment in the to-every-home-and-office installation of the latest-and-best fibre-based communication cables. These new cables are strong enough to enable a “broad band” of communication frequencies simultaneously and at great speeds. The copper wires through which most telecommunications are presently run (and on which the bulk of the Coalition's NBN policy is based on) were built decades before the internet, and our increasing internet usage tax them heavily. Copper wires also corrode, can cease to work in heavy rain, and parts of the old network consists of wires that are actually wrapped in paper, not plastic.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/07/slower-less-reliable-less-productive-this-is-what-turnbulls-nbn-looks-like

--------------------------------

Yes, you've heard Tony-the-Turd quasi say that Turnbull was the "inventor of the internet" not a long time ago, in the Pissonvoterslithic Era... Please Malcolm, don't be so modest or loopy-sided... We need you to fix this thing PROPERLY in a glorious manner that, whatever the cost, will give you a street named after you, a town square statue with small prods to stop the pigeon crapping on it AND/or an Obeid Lamppost gold plaque in your suburb of choice. At present Turnbullville still resembles Crapville on a bad day of colic. 

Please see toon at top and note the predictable predictions...

 

A government minister, believed to be the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had to give a demonstration to explain what a virtual private network (VPN) is to those who have been seeking mandatory data retention powers, Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm has told a US magazine.

Leyonhjelm told Reason magazine that he had spoken to an unnamed minister who knows what metadata is and “knows quite a lot about the internet and how it works”, and who told him that the people who are asking for this power don’t understand it, Gizmodo reported.

“He gave them a demonstration on a VPN [virtual private network] and said, ‘By my IP address, tell me what you can find out about me now.’ And they had no idea there was such a thing as a VPN,” Leyonhjelm said.

“It indicates to me that these people are not well-informed enough to make these kinds of decisions.”

Leyonhjelm told Reason the unnamed minister “knows what he’s talking about”.

“But he’s surrounded by people who don’t know what they’re talking about, who think that they need something more. We don’t know yet where this will end up. It does have the potential to be very dangerous.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/15/minister-believed-to-be-malcolm-turnbull-gave-demo-to-explain-vpn

 

See toons at top...

 

Labor says analysis 'not worth paper it's written on'

But Opposition communications spokesman Jason Clare said the report was not the independent analysis that was promised.

"Malcolm Turnbull's got some of his former staff and his former advisers to write a report about the NBN, and believe it or not, it says Malcolm Turnbull's right. I'm not surprised," Mr Clare said.

"What we've got instead is the report that's been written by people who used to work for Malcolm Turnbull and some of the most vociferous critics of the NBN. That's why Malcolm Turnbull picked them."

Mr Clare said the analysis should have been done by Infrastructure Australia and was not worth the paper it was written on.

"Now this report says that they expect in a decade that only 5 per cent of Australia will want 45 megabits or more, and now already we have got more than 28 per cent of Australians ordering more than 50 megabits per second or more. So the report is already out of date on that front," he said.

"Another problem with the report is it says the cost of building fibre to the home is going up, when yesterday Malcolm Turnbull said the cost of building fibre to the home is going down.

"When you build a network like this, you need to make sure you build for today and tomorrow, and we are getting a second-rate network based on the old copper network."

don't read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-27/nbn-cost-benefit-analysis-released/5698838

I say don't read more because the rest of the article is glowing praise for a camel made from pig, donkey and dog parts.

------------------------------

 

Of course the ABC starts with the startling headline that : "Australia better off under Coalition NBN ABC NEWS" Which is TOTAL CRAP...  Misleading headline to please the masters in Canberra...

Jason Clare is correct. 

The new analysis of the NBN, presented by Malcolm on a white board is a laugh a minute... The first thing of course is to claim that no average Dick wants 120 bops or whatever. We're content with (and will be content with) far less. But this is a similar argument to Joe's "the poor don't drive far"...

Malcolm argument is silly... it's a bit like some creationists moving up a notch to "intelligent design" because they have realised that things are not what they seem... 
And lets face it, the Coalition's NBN is based on the destruction of Labor's vision... But, as someone who knows technology, I know that mixing bits and pieces can work, but it multiplies the amount of possible failure. And the strength of a system is usually the strength of its weakest part — wherever than weak link is. 
Thus the analysis by the "report" has had to hide a lot of the real information for Malcolm to be triumphant... Malcolm's NBN is a botch designed with an intent to create a botch. There, the cost analysis in "HIS" report is completely fudged because it does not take into account maintenance and repairs of the old copper network, which for what I know is clapped out in many areas... And the end result? less bops to you and more cost associated with maintenance and a more complicated future for a system that should be simple...
Malcolm is spreading shit on toast

 

 

 

Phone and internet issues in NSW after the state's wettest two-day soaking in 18 years are not all caused by power outages and trees bringing down phones lines. A big part of the problem is caused by rain water filling up Telstra pits which aren't adequately sealed.

About 70,000 fixed-line services, more than 20,000 ADSL services, a number of 2G, 3G and 4G mobile sites, as well as BigPond cable and Foxtel services were offline across the Sydney, Hunter and Illawarra regions on Wednesday afternoon, a Telstra spokeswoman said, largely as a result of widespread power outages.

But an unknown number of customers were also affected by slower internet speeds due to copper wires in Telstra pits not being sealed correctly, the union representing Telstra field staff said.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/sydney-weather-how-storms-slow-the-internet-20150422-1mql6c.html

Still waiting for the NBN... See toon at top...

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kn-L87ST1BI

 

See also: https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/does-australias-stem-problem-start-from-the-top,8699

 

See toon at top

 

Taxpayers will now have to throw good money after bad with the Turnbull Government's proposed 'broadband tax', in an attempt to fix the bottomless pit crisis the NBN is now resembling, writes Paul Budde.

FROM THE MOMENT this suggestion was first mooted I was strongly opposed to the broadband tax that the government proposed in December 2016. 

It will slam around $7 per month on fixed broadband subscriptions, making the price of broadband services in Australia among the highest in the developed economies.

The aim of the tax is to provide a cross-subsidy scheme for the fixed wireless broadband network that the government is rolling out in regional and rural Australia, through its national broadband network company.

When former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his then Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull (both at that time in Opposition) announced their plans to kill off the National Broadband Network (NBN) – this was later replaced with a policy to roll out a so-called cheap and fast multi-technology mix (MTM) solution – I indicated that this change from the original future-proofed Fibre-to-the-Home network would be fraught with problems. Those predictions have since been proved to be absolutely correct.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/latest-nbnfai...

 

See toon at top and other related gems from Turnshit on this network:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/32022

malcolm releases the LNP stupid broadband policy... 

malcolm in bed with the right-wing ABC...

getting far less than half as much for much more than the original ...

of bovver boys...

Malcolm is back niggardly online...

and many more...

and other networks:

The NBN and the attack of the Luddites

 

The Joint Standing Committee is correct. We need to abandon the FTTN rollout immediately.

Recommendation 2.91: The committee recommends that the Australian Government direct and enable NBN to complete as much as possible of the remaining fixed line network using FTTC at a minimum (or FTTP), and require nbn to produce a costed plan and timetable under which that would be achieved.

Recommendation 2 2.92: The committee recommends, in light of recent results and developments, that the Australian Government commission an independent audit and assessment of the long-term assumptions underpinning NBN's financial projections and business case as set out in the Corporate Plan 2018-21.

 

 

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/joint-standin...

 

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