This from 2013 

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

 

It has taken four years for the government and the NBN company to admit what many people have been warning since the beginning of the change in plans from FttH (fibre to the home) to FttN (fibre to the node).

 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull now claims the "train wreck" was coming all along. If that is so, why did he overrule Tony Abbott's argument to "kill the NBN". That would have nipped the train wreck in the bud.

Obviously, he didn't see his change in policy as a train wreck in the making as he indicated he could build the NBN for $25 billion and it would be finished by 2016. The price tag is now $50 billion to be finished in 2020-21 and we are saddled with a second-rate network.

During my (unpaid) strategic involvement in the initial FttH NBN, I made it clear to then minister for broadband Stephen Conroy, that there were several serious flaws in the plan: the unrealistic high return on investment of 6-7 per cent; the way the NBN would be rolled out (not taking the most urgent areas into account); and the plan to replace Hybrid Fibre Coaxial or HFC.

Nevertheless, the main blame should go to the current government, which changed horses halfway. Among other things, this resulted in a ban on competitors not being allowed to roll-out superior fibre to the home broadband services – who would have thought of such a policy from a pro-business Liberal government? To prop up the NBN, it is imposing a broadband tax on mobile operators, further damaging telecommunications competition.

It is the second-rate solution (FttN) that is causing the main problem. There are no complaints from the 1 million households who were lucky enough to be part of the original fibre to the home roll-out.

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/nbn-let-the-blame-game-begin-20171023-gz6ux6.html

 

Read the cartoon above...

 

Lucy Turnbull is also talking bullshit with her achieving a 30-minute city trumpeted no less than 20 times in the "Our Greater Sydney 2056" document. It's crap with a capital C : CRAP. Treeless crap. But the two of them, him, Malcolm, in Kranbra, doing his damage to the country, day in day out — and her, Lucy, trying to wrestle the Sydney Mayorship from the other power woman, Clover Moore, they are the power couple of crap... Add Gladys Berejiklian to this mix of crap, and the whole city of Sydney becomes a useless construction site designed to benefit developers rather than its inhabitants... Why do we vote for these crappy politicians who help the vultures? And Lucy is not even in government...!!!

 

Sydney, NSW: Four thousand million dollars ($4,000,000,000) to knock down and rebuild two stadiums, smaller than the originals. Sydney, NSW: Forty five thousand million dollars ($45,000,000,000) building a largely discredited and unwanted WestConnex. Ballina, NSW: 15.7 per cent levy on council rates to improve the "health of the Richmond River". Queensland: Please adopt us. We will even support the Maroons and give up daylight saving.

Russell Burford Ballina

http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-letters/nbn-a-failure-of-turnbull-not-...

 

Changing its design for his own political advantage, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has turned the NBN into a massive national disappointment, says Dr Peter Gerrand.

PRIME MINISTER MALCOLM TURNBULL’S latest debating trick on the NBN is to blame Labor for not implementing “the NZ solution”.

Turnbull said:

"They [the New Zealand Government] basically ensured the incumbent telco, the Telstra equivalent, split its network operations away from its retail operations. And then thatnetwork company in effect became the NBN." 

The Prime Minister says the NBN project was a train wreck under Labor after new figures reveal cost blowouts. #NBN #7Newspic.twitter.com/sYRAv51agD

— 7 News Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) October 23, 2017

Prime Minister Turnbull blames Labor for NBN "train wreck".

However, it was Turnbull’s party, the Liberal Party, who ensured that this far better solution would never happen.

The Howard Government had this opportunity up until 2005, while it still owned 51 per cent of Telstra. All of the telecoms industry – except for Telstra and its unions – were calling for the structural separation of Telstra, prior to its full privatisation.

If all of Telstra’s fixed national network infrastructure had been assigned to a new wholesale company, earning billions of dollars from supporting Telstra’s existing retail products, it would not have needed government investment to start rolling out a world-class NBN.

Instead, the Howard Government  – of which Turnbull had been a member since 2004 – opted to close down a Parliamentary inquiry into structural separation. Their overriding objective was to maximise the dollars they could earn in selling off the national carrier — and they succeeded.

The Nationals rolled over and ignored their constituents’ needs — with the honourable exception of the Member for Riverina, Kay Hull, who crossed the floor to vote against the 2005 legislation which sold off Telstra. 

In 2007, the fully privatised Telstra declined to roll out an NBN, except on quasi-monopolistic terms. The incoming Rudd Government then had little choice but to set up a new company, NBN Co, to design and build the new wholesale network. 

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/and-now-for-m...

 

 

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced that representations have been made at the highest level, to both the United States Government and the United Nations, to support an Australian Government proposal to rename the San Andreas earthquake zone "Labor's Fault".

"Anyone who knows anything about geology can see that this is a complete mess," said Mr Turnbull, at a post Question Time press conference on Thursday. "It's massive, it's all over the place. It is a disaster waiting to happen and it has been around since the dawn of time. This has Labor and Bill Shorten's grubby hands all over it."

It is understood that negotiations on renaming the zone have been ongoing for some time, albeit with the issue being dogged by controversy. An unnamed senior Government sources told IA that President Trump "really cracked the shits with Mal on the phone" claiming that plans were well advanced to actually rename the feature, by executive order, "Obama's Fault". 

"Australia has a strong case," said Turnbull. "We are going to press for this deal until such time as America tells us to stop it."

The Prime Minister also said that when the Coalition came to power in 2013, the Fault was a calamitous train wreck that was never going to make any money.

Mr Turnbull said that under Labor Australia should have followed the New Zealand model, referring to the Wellington Fault. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern would not be drawn on the controversy, leading Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to reiterate that she would find it difficult to build trust with Ms Ardern.

"And I don't think much of her frocks," said Ms Bishop.

read more  satire at :

https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/pm-turnbull-leads-pus...

 

 

People who complain about not being able to get connected to the national broadband network should be sent to the back of the connection queue, according to NBN Co non-executive director Michael Malone.

Mr Malone  —  founder of internet service provider iiNet, which was acquired by TPG in 2015 — was referring to "NBN Service Class 0" customers. They are stuck in broadband limbo because of an arbitrary decision set in law that prevents Telstra from connecting customers who should have already been connected to the NBN but haven't been.

...

Malone also hit out at ISPs who lazily lodged support request tickets with NBN Co to address "faults", while 90 per cent of the time the fault was because of a customer's equipment, in-home wiring fault or an ISP-level issue.

 

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/send-complainers-to-the...

 

 

Yep... Things work reasonable well for some people with the old ADSL... Change the system and the customer needs to buy new stuff to make things work. As well you're sitting pretty because your new NBN is directly to your home and it works. But you have issues when you are connected to... your old copper wire in the street which has leaked for years when it rains but is now connected to the node at the top on the street. And your old computer is not NBN friendly... 

In this image, the 1932 copper cable is a blatant exaggeration. My rats would not bother though I know of some people who had the "rat problem". The wire in my street is only from 1936 — so it's younger than me anyway, as attested by the numerous technicians who "fixed it" over the years (three times a year on average) by cutting the ends of the oxidised wires (because of the water in the pits and lines when it rains) and reconnecting them "till next time"...

So it's back to the end of the line for me... Customer zero is me: zero connection till next year or whenever later... Read from top...

Greater Sydney Council boss Lucy Turnbull's plan for Sydney sounds like a rejected plot from the TV show Utopia, except it could be far more damaging. Don Owers reports.

LUCY TURNBULL is the Chief Commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission (GSC). In this role, she is promoting the idea of “re-imagining" Sydney as three great separate cities: Eastern Harbour City, the Central Parramatta River City, and the Western City, in and around the new airport at Badgerys Creek. These smaller cities will, according to Ms Turnbull, be able (in 40 or so years) to meet an essential criteria for a livable city — the 30 minute transport target where residents can travel to work in half an hour or less.

She claims that it is essential to embrace the three-cities approach to deal with Sydney's expected population growth:

"There's around 4.6 million people living in Sydney now. By 2036, it's expected that number will be more like 6.2 million and, in another 20 years, it will be up to eight million."

Sydney does have a major problem with transport. It's now ranked 51st out of 100 cities in terms of ease of travel. Congestion cost Sydney $16.5b in 2015 and its been growing every year, largely because of increased car numbers. But to suggest that dividing the city into three separate identities will somehow mean people will travel less or faster is an absurdity. People commuting to the City Centre from Baulkham Hills, Beecroft or Carlingford will still travel the same distance and face the same delays, despite having their home address changed to Parramatta River City. And, by the same token, this name change won't create more employment in Parramatta or Western Sydney. Fixing Sydney's transport is almost entirely dependent on providing massive amounts of infrastructure for public transport and has nothing to do with name changing. If previous governments could not do that when the population was 4 million, then they certainly won't be able to do it if the population doubles.

read more:

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/is-lucy-turnb...

see above...

for the headline above see: http://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2017-11-03/new-species-orangutan-discovered-indonesia-sumatra-endangered/9099082

 

Monkeys are famous for imitating... I was born a lazy bastard with a cynical bone in my body on a glorious Sunday afternoon. So I am a monkey's uncle in regard to being a minimalist for real work and a maximum plagiarist.

So I got floored today when the ABC had a speech of our own Trumble live on TV. It seems it was to start an APEC summit or such trade bum fight in Perth. It could have been 9 AM over-there because of Summer time over here. The speech was very lucid and clear and excellent and... Suddenly I realised I heard the same speech about trade before. The last time I heard it was in Russian as given out by President Putin at one of the BRIC conferences and the latest regional meet in St Petersburg (I think?) and the same speech was in German as Merkel was inspiring the Europeans and the rest of the "free-world" recently... Of course it's about "free trade" and blah blah blah against the isolationists like Trump (Yamerika First) who are not really isolationist but want to pull the rug a bit more towards protecting their own dinosaur jobs.

So our Trumble pulled all the bells that rang with glorious trade agreements. He did not mention that in some of these ruthless agreements we could surrender our sovereignty on a lot of issues, but who cares. The imagination of peace in trade, touted since the Romans invaded Albionista, can only reflect on the way Pig Iron Bob was doing trade with Japan before WW2 and the Ruskies after WW2.