# Rudd government's broadband plan



## mike (Jun 13, 2007)

Kevin Rudd has announced a pretty comprehensive broadband internet plan for Australia, linking 90% of homes to fibre optics.

Interestingly, they are forming a public/private company to do the roll out, rather than getting Telstra to do the work.

You can't get too excited yet as it is going to take 8 years to implement and who knows what is going to come of the government's censorship plans.


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## Wanderer (Jun 16, 2007)

Rudd himself was visibly excited when being interviewd by Kerry OBrien on ABC, not in a pleasant way though.

I thought at any moment he was going to erupt into a meltdown of some description and personally just see this as more grandstanding by the guy than necessarily good financial management.

And then to have it termed the railroad of the 21st century!


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## mike (Jun 13, 2007)

LOL. I might have to see if I can find the interview on the ABC's website.

While I think the plan is good, 8 years is a very long time when it comes to technology. I know fibre optics can offer data transmission at the speed of light, but I think in 8 years time there could be something even faster.

I think Japan had internet over power lines for instance. 

Even though I agree we need more competition with Telstra, it is or was or national carrier, which the government sold off to the public and now the government is starting a new company to compete with Telstra. Something isn't right here.


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## Wanderer (Jun 16, 2007)

There's a heap of issues to be sorted through Mike and yes what technological developments could take place in eight years is just one of them.

The opposition has already raised that there should be a mix approach for where you have greater population density a higher cost higher performance option may become more viable and viability anywhere is going to be dependant on individuals wanting to pay whatever the cost would be just as much as organisations who will look to recoup their costs by a pass on back to who? - the individuals of course.

It seems that Telstra or the three amigos import management direction was not prepared to bid for a fibre roll-out service without certain conditions, and you'd suspect they would have been looking at future viability and now the government has found that their tendering process kind of fell flat for whatever reason.

How successfully you can set up an organisation with partners to have an expenditure of some 43B over eight years I'm buggered if I know and suppose that's a reason for starting in Tassie, essentially a trial in many ways and they'll be hoping to develop organisational contractual arrangements as they go, siomething that'll likely be a contractors money dream and a cost paying nightmare for taxpayers, having seen enough of contractual claims in power station construction over many years.

And then the aspect of eventual move from state owned as Telstra was with so called efficiences of the private sector Vs profits for shareholders is always going to be the $64Q. and just how would we go about assessing whether we are better off re quality/cost of services under privatisation, power industry again being another prime example, Sydney outages of last week one aspect and skyrocketing costs in Queensland another and btw when it comes to new power technology the government has apparently renegged/gone slow on wind farm developments already and seems forever behind the eight ball re solar.

Personally I'd be much happier for the government to get serious about water supply infrastructure, like developing a canal/pumping system to bring northern Qld tropical rainfall down to the Darling/Murray for super fast internet is not going to fill ones stomach nor help too much as far as a transport means.
Meanwhile the gov is hell bent on buying back water rights and farmers going broke have been lapping up the dollars but who/where in end is food going to be produced.

Nope, we're going to suffer a Kruddy sickness down the track.


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## mike (Jun 13, 2007)

I have been reading so much negative press about the internet broadband plans, I am really wondering whether the government is going down the right path. With so much money at stake and the time to develop the network, we really need to have a good debate about the proposal.

And as you say, if people don't have enough food or water who is going to be worried about the internet. 

Perhaps we should be getting the people in the capital cities set up first. It's the businesses there that will benefit most and help the economy with super fast internet.


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## AZN*GaL (May 5, 2009)

What I'm more worried about is that by the time those 8 years have gone by with the implementation of the fibre optic cables other countries would already have flying space cars and floating buildings.

I think what Australia need isn't "faster" (which equates to much more expensive) internet but more affordable internet.
Internet is best focused on the distribution amongst a wider demographic of people than 'fast' internet for the elite few.


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## Wanderer (Jun 16, 2007)

There's plenty of reasonably priced BB plans of reasonable speed and download about Gal, some of them as low as $10/mth. and then for nix if you go with a package deal.

Mike they just had on tele an update and they're already doing things in Hobart apparently and aside from not to may acceptors in a trial street, not revealed by company but very low take-up.

More than that, what was pretty scarey from a technical viewpoint was the number of balck boxes involved in an installation if what one bloke had in his wardrobe is going to be typical - fair dinkum, there was a heap of gear and I know the kind of problems you can get just with a satellite service modem/router or whatever it is called and then in more humid areas like Queensland, humidity can cause bloody hell.

And then out on the street, they had a black box installed up a power pole, well below power cables and an easy shot for local kids to try their aim on or worse - welcome to the Kruddsters 21st century system we don't really need.

Like if that is going to be external installation standard I can imagine the downtime that could be caused after storms/cyclones and fallen poles and then as timber poles are progressively replaced because of rot/termites, what potential for an ongoing fiasco.


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