The Australian National Broadband Network board have submitted resignations

http://www.smh.com.au/business/entire-nbn-board-resigns-20130922-2u835.html

by xelfer • 13 years ago

47 28 13 years ago

smh.com.au

Sad, really sad.

Despite being an Australian, I rarely follow the news there, so if someone closer to the action could confirm and clarify here: the notion was put forward to build fiber to the home across the country (extremely costly), it was passed by a government courageously (for supporting any long term benefit at immediate expense is tantamount to severing a near-term political limb), the government changed, and the new one is likely appointing the current chairman of what used to be the state-owned telecommunications provider (sold off by the incoming government in a prior reign) to 'fix' it.

Does it not appear then, on a macro scale, as if the government gave up its golden goose and wound up redistributing wealth to many private hands whilst reducing its actual capacity to get anything done or maintain a semblence of competitiveness with more successful but similar ventures elsewhere? (China, France and New Zealand come to mind)

After spending much time living in China, I can only conclude that two party democracies are essentially incompetent structures for long term infrastructure.

Perhaps my homeland could fix its NBN project with a pause to enforce transparency, issue public reports and a referendum. Of course, the government wouldn't do that ... the've just stolen the goose.

anthonyb2• 13 years ago

Yeah, it's the same story across the board really - not even many private hands, just a small handful of them.

Public infrastructure was never particularly invested in, even under Labour, but now that the Liberals are back in (I'm in Victoria, so double Liberal for me) it's "jobs for the boys", more roads, more private health insurance, etc, etc.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

"Jobs for the boys" is a universal in Australian politics. Scan the resumé of anyone appointed to any board, committee, commission, agency etc etc and you will usually find clear connections to one of the majors.

anthonyb2• 13 years ago

Disgraceful, IMO. The last Liberal government over here entrenched Telstra as a monopoly by selling it off in its entirety. They were kicked out of the process last time, due to not taking it seriously, now that their cronies are back in power, they're off the hook.

http://abbotsinternet.com.au/ gives a good idea of just how bad the offerings over here are. And that doesn't show half of it. My internet drops on a regular basis, and if you call out a technician you will typically get slugged with a callout fee of $100 or so regardless. From... Telstra, because they run all of the phone lines, even though I want to get as far away from them as possible.

shaunpud• 13 years ago

FTFY http://abbottsinternet.com.au/

redact207• 13 years ago

What's the point of a FTTN network? You haven't removed the bottleneck which is the copper wire infrastructure. This was one thing that could have made Australia competitive in the years to come, but instead the people who make the decisions know nothing about it let alone able to spell NBN.

IMO it's not all doom and gloom. By putting in the FTTN "backbone", it leaves the door open to rewire it to FTTH down the line when the government realises that commerce is being stiffed because of a slow network.

cam_l2• 13 years ago

The big issue will be in the sort of contracts they sign with Telstra to rent and maintain the copper infrastructure - which by the figures I have seen published so far may make it more expensive than the FTTH (though no one really knows at this point).

Given that the point of the FTTN as opposed to FTTH is to essentially maintain the status quo for the media (and give established businesses, city areas and the wealthy a competitive advantage - at 2-5G a pop for a connection).. the likelihood is that the libs will try to lock in these contracts as much as possible.

It disappoints me that the article seems to suggest that the board quit due to a lack of faith from the incoming minister, rather than as a gesture which shows a disturbing lack of faith in the incoming minister.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

Does this conspiracy theory that Turnbull is doing Murdoch's bidding have any ... you know ... evidence?

The cui bono is just stupidly thin. Murdoch makes bugger all on his Australian operations. If he divested the lot Wall Street would cheer, holler and stamp its feet.

Edit: "quo vadis" indeed. What's the Latin for malapropism?

waveman2• 13 years ago

though no one really knows at this point

This is half the problem. After 30 years in IT, I note the NBN has no feasibility study, no cost benefit analysis, and is running way beyond schedule. This is the sort of project you try to get off because it will damage your career. What could possibly go wrong? But there's more... It is what is known as a "CEO mandate" project, in this case it resulted from a Kevin Rudd thought bubble. These invariably end in disaster. NAB's ISI project was one example of these and resulted in $billions of write-downs (this is in the public record). Turnbull has promised an actual feasibility study and cost analysis. This at least seems sensible. People act as though it is obvious that NBN is a good idea. It is not obvious to me. NBN will deliver nothing to my area for at least 5 years - assuming NBN gets back onto its planned schedule. The conservatives' plan will deliver a major speedup much more quickly, and as others have pointed out, it retains the option to implement FTTN as an add-on later, if and when and where that makes sense.

shearnie• 13 years ago

I don't blame Abbott, he is merely doing what LNP does best.

We have better things to spend our money on than, like keeping the population white and burning lots of fossil fuels.

enneff• 13 years ago

Former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski is waiting in the wings to be appointed executive chairman.

That's all that needs to be said, isn't it?

Volpe• 13 years ago

Isn't most of NBN Corp made up of ex-telstra... Where else would they get communications engineers?

ajtaylor3• 13 years ago

One thing that always puzzled me about the NBN rollout was why they chose to do the least populated areas first? It seems that it would have helped to allay the cost concerns if they had brought it to more populated areas where the customer uptake would have been greater. By doing places like remote Tasmania (among other small customer base areas), they pretty much guaranteed disappointing numbers up front.

jacques_chester7• 13 years ago

The rollout plan is based on engineering reasons.

The close correlation between rollout priority and marginal electorates is purely coincidental.

ajtaylor3• 13 years ago

Was the reason to try and find the most challenging installations and do them first? Availability of local contractors to do the actual work of digging holes, stringing fiber and connecting it the the equipment? I'm honestly curious because after seeing my suburb wasn't on any list for the first few years I didn't look too much further. My ADSL connects at 18Mb so I'm not complaining in any case!

vacri3• 13 years ago

Brunswick in Melbourne is a pretty solid medium-density suburb, and the area within it that got the NBN is the most dense of the lot - and was one of the first rollouts. It's also one of the politically safest seats in the country, held by a no-name MP, Kelvin Thompson. Maybe he has a lot of behind-the-scenes power? I've certainly never seen his name outside of local papers. Or maybe someone high up in the NBN planning committee lives there? I never could figure out 'why there?', and simply assumed that the rollout areas were political.

The NBN rollout area missed my house by about two streets...

contingencies2• 13 years ago

The NBN rollout area missed my house by about two streets...

Aha! So maybe FTTN (Fiber To The Neighbour) or FTTO (Fiber To The Others) would be more accurate topology summaries?

DigitalSea• 13 years ago

This whole fiasco reminds me of a hilarious satire article I read recently on an Australian satire site called The Shovel: http://theshovel.com.au/2013/08/26/malcolm-turnbull-launches...

Sadly, we all know this sub-par alternative will be a disaster that will go in the history books. In 40 years I'll tell my grandchildren, "I remember a time when you would have to wait 10 minutes to load a video on the Internet" and they'll laugh and call me crazy. But the sad fact of the matter is, the LNP party have outdated views on not only Internet access but gay marriage, the economy and way things work in the real world.

It's going to be a bumpy 3 years, but LNP won't get another term after all of the crap they've pulled. If I were on the board I'd rather get out before the impending ship of failure sinks (and trust me, it will).

zarify• 13 years ago

Never underestimate the power of the opposition to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

We could be having Labor leadership scuffles for the next three years.

GrumpySimon• 13 years ago

I agree. Compare what happened in New Zealand when John Key and the National party ousted the long-term Labor government.

Despite some major missteps from Key/National, Labor's spent the last term and a half fighting amongst themselves about who will lead it. There just wasn't the talent or the public respect for the interim leaders that could compete with Key.

My money's on a few Liberal terms in government, I'm afraid. The scary thing is, the second time they get voted in, they'll treat it was a strengthened mandate to do what they want.

The Australian National Broadband Network board have submitted resignations

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