[clug] Light entertainment for this morning (NBN)

[grail at velocitynet.com.au]

> The man is a professional troll (I can't believe he's really that ignorant
> and stupid - he must be doing it for the page views/letters to the editor)

Do you have any reason to believe that the $43Bn that Rudd has promised
will be spent on anything other than a white elephant?

There is a discussion paper available:
http://www.dbcde.gov.au/communications_for_business/funding_programs__and__support/national_broadband_network/regulatory_reform_for_21st_century_broadband

This paper is basically pointing out how nice it would be to have a
Government authority managing wholesale infrastructure, with all retailers
having equal and fair access.

The current plan doesn't address international connectivity (ie: Internet
access). At present, the plan to have 100Mbps to the premises is only
going to buy lots of Australians a huge financial burden. If people were
prepared to pay the cost of provision of optical fibre to the home, every
home in Canberra would already have high speed network far in excess of
ADSL2. Sadly the cost of providing Internet connectivity from this high
speed network is so high that a normal household can't possibly afford to
have even 40Mbps to the home. To provision that kind of speed today you're
looking at $1000/month (look at prices from Internode).

Would *you* pay $1000 a month to watch YouTube HD videos with no buffering
delay with  side order of free phone calls?

If the NBN does go ahead, I can only see it being used as a means for Sen
Conroy to slip his Internet Censorship plans in through the cracks (hey,
it's the Government's network, they can do what they want with it, right?)