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The NBN is on the wrong path

By Mel Mac

After the Coalition won government in 2013, the then Communications Minister and now current Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull promised that every Australian would have access to the National Broadband Network (NBN) by the end of 2016. This clearly won’t be happening and it’s understandable with such a large piece of infrastructure to get your cost projections wrong (including old Australian Labor Party (ALP) figures). Tasmania was to be the first state to have the NBN rolled out by the end of 2015, this has now been pushed out to September 2018. The coalition’s NBN main points of difference with their plan compared to the ALP plan was to roll it out sooner, with faster download speeds and cheaper.

The original budget for the government’s version of the NBN, which is a mixture of technologies and favours FTTN (fibre to the node) over FTTH (fibre to the house) was $29.5 billion this has blown out to $56 billion and counting. Now news is coming out from the less than 15% of Australian’s that do have the NBN, that it’s providing speeds less than the days of dial up or their ADSL2+. Mr Bell, of Belmont North near Lake Macquarie, New South Wales lays the blame squarely at the feet of Malcolm Turnbull. He says:“My children are becoming cynical about promises made by … the Prime Minister about the fast FTTN NBN roll out. Could you please make enquiries of the appropriate officers or Ministers, as to whether the FTTN NBN will provide a worse service compared to the ADSL+2 it is replacing? At the moment that seems to be the case.” Mr Alderton also lives in Belmont and is suffering the same challenges. He says:“What a joke, peak times download speeds around 4 Mbps, that’s less than my old ADSL2.” Mr Wallace of Valentine, near Newcastle, thinks that the problem might be widespread. He says:“There are serious problems with the rollout across Newcastle due to the Fibre to the Node model used here … thinking about switching back to ADSL2+.”

There has been much talk about the copper wire network and how much of it needs replacing to achieve Mr Turnbull’s MTM (multi-technology mix) version of the NBN instead of the ALP version with optic fibre cable. Let’s not forget either that the ALP government had already paid Telstra $11.2 billion to essentially decommission the copper and HFC (hybrid-fibre-coaxial) networks. A figure of $55 million was given by the Turnbull government to replace the copper however a leaked document from late last year suggests a 1000% blowout with the cost being more like $641 million. The figure is so large because it’s for 8.5 million metres of copper of which is enough to lay down between Perth and Pakistan and back again. There has also been Optus HFC network documents leak revealing that the government will need to replace it to achieve it’s MTM at a cost of up to $375 million.

So far the government and Mr Turnbull have failed in their promises with their alternative NBN. One of the reasons that Mr Turnbull has used in the past for favouring FTTN, is that AT&T also favour it yet they now offer GigaPower which is a complete FTTH network. It previously offered FTTN but it also already had mainly fibre optic cables running for most of the network, with just the last mile or so with copper cables.

It’s pretty clear that a simple roll out of fibre optic cabling replacing the old copper and pay TV networks as you went, would be easier than not only resurrecting old technology but attempting to mix it together. Fair enough if it achieves higher speeds, a cheaper budget and is delivered in a timely manner but it hasn’t to date. It’s bleeding money, yet creating profit for the likes of Telstra and Optus while Australian’s that do have the NBN are now worse off than what they were to begin with. A truly connected Australia would surely inspire further innovation and instead of the focus being on the cost it’s about time that it was looked at as an investment. An investment in the future of the people of Australia.

This article was originally published on Political Omniscience.

 

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126 comments

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  1. Neil of Sydney

    including old Australian Labor Party (ALP) figures

    Amen to that . In 2007 the ALP promised a NBN costing taxpayers only $4.7B and be finished by 2013.

    One of the biggest lies ever to win an election.

  2. Jaquix

    A BIG FAIL for Malcolm Turnbull, whichever way you look at it. Labor should be hammering them on this – very bad management on all levels. Clearly their DNA is not up to this sort of thing.

  3. Melanie (@CartwheelPrint)

    Hi Neil of Sydney, I was referring in the article to old ALP figures re guestimates for the nbn project & felt that I was being quite diplomatic. The article is about where we are at now with it not what happened years ago. Happy Saturday to you ☺

  4. cornlegend

    NoS.
    Here is an up to date look at Turnbulls NBN
    I put Jason Clares put down of Turnbull and NBN in full so you can make an informed comment
    Speech: The latest mess Malcolm Turnbull has made of the NBN
    Speeches: 10 February 2016
    Print

    MATTER OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

    HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, PARLIAMENT HOUSE
    WEDNESDAY, 10 FEBRUARY 2016

    *** CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY ***

    Malcolm Turnbull has had one job for the last two and a half years and that is to build the NBN, and he has made a mess of it. Any objective analysis is that he has made a mess of it. Almost everything he has promised he would do on the NBN he has failed to deliver. Now, almost every week, we have more evidence of the mess that he has made with the building of his second-rate NBN.

    I give you just three examples. The first and the worst is the massive blow-out in cost. Malcolm Turnbull said before the last election that he could build a slower second-rate NBN for $29.5 billion. We now know that that has blown out to as much as $56 billion. It has blown out by almost 100 per cent. This is a man who says, ‘I’ve got business experience. I used to be a merchant banker. I’ve got the skills to do the job.’ He has blown the budget on the NBN by almost 100 per cent. If this were anybody else, they would have got the sack, but not this man—he was promoted.

    The second example of the failure and the mess on the NBN is time – the massive blow-out in the time it is going to take to build the NBN. Malcolm Turnbull promised before the last election that everyone would have access to the NBN this year, 2016. That is now not going to happen. How many people do you think will get the NBN this year? It is not 100 per cent, it is not 50 per cent or 40 or 30 or 20 per cent. As we stand here today, less than 15 per cent of the country has access to the NBN. Another massive broken promise, another massive fail by this Prime Minister who deceived the people of Australia at the last election by promising that everyone would get access to the NBN this year. If you are listening to this or watching this and you are still buffering, then blame the Prime Minister because he promised you would have access to the NBN this year. In fact, the former Prime Minister went one step further. He issued an open letter to the people of Australia on election night and he said this:

    I want our NBN to be rolled out within three years and Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to make this happen.

    Well, it seems the former Prime Minister was wrong to trust Malcolm Turnbull on this and a lot of other things.

    I am indebted to the member for Franklin because she has brought to my attention another document which is even more brazen. It is called ‘The Coalition’s economic growth plan for Tasmania’. This doesn’t promise that everyone would get access to the NBN by 2016. This says on page 23:

    The rollout of the NBN under the Coalition will be complete in Tasmania by the end of 2015.

    The last time I checked the calendar it was 2016, and guess what? It has not been built in Tasmania. In fact, not one person in Tasmania has been switched on to their second-rate copper NBN yet. The people of Tasmania, just like people right across the country, have been duped by this Prime Minister and this deceitful government.

    The third example is copper and the massive blow-out in the cost of fixing the copper. Late last year I told the parliament that we had found out in Estimates that the government was buying 2,000 kilometres, two million metres of new copper to build their second-rate NBN – enough copper to link Australia to New Zealand. What we have fond out now is that that is the tip of the iceberg. It is not two million metres. We have now found out from a question on notice that the government are planning to buy eight and a half million metres of copper. Just to put that into perspective, that is enough copper to connect Brisbane to Beijing or Perth to Pakistan or Kalgoorlie to Kuala Lumpur – and back. That is how much new copper they have to buy to make this second-rate network work.

    But that is not the worst of it because through a leaked document that was revealed in the press late last year it has also now been revealed that the cost of fixing the second-rate copper network has blown out by over 1,000 per cent. When the strategic review came out in December 2013, I was scolded by the now Prime Minister for saying he had not properly allowed enough money to fix the copper. He said in this House, opposite me, that:

    The critics of the coalition’s approach to broadband have claimed that the coalition has not paid attention to the need for remediation of the existing copper plant … As honourable members will see when studying this report, that matter has been taken most carefully into account … and very conservative assumptions have been taken.

    He didn’t tell us then what those ‘conservative assumptions’ were but, thanks to this leaked document, we know that then when they released the strategic review they assumed that it would cost $55 million to fix Telstra’s old copper network to make their second-rate NBN work. What we also know from this document is that it is not going to cost $55 million; it is now going to cost $641 million. In other words, it is a blow-out of more than 1,000 per cent. By any objective analysis, this is a massive mess and the Prime Minister has no-one else to blame for this but himself.
    And now in estimates last night it was revealed that there are even more problems. In the first places where they are now switching on their second-rate copper NBN, guess what? It is not working. It is not working properly. Instead of getting the faster broadband that they were promised, people are now getting slower broadband services than they were getting with ADSL.

    Here are just a couple of examples. Max Taylor from Gorokan recently switched over from ADSL to fibre to the node. He used to get eight megabits per second. Now he is getting as low as three megabits per second. That is slower than his old ADSL. Here is another one. Laurence Alderton from Belmont says and I quote:

    ‘I have been connected to the NBN for two days with TPG’s 25 megabits plan. What a joke! Peak-time download speeds of around four megabits—that is less than my old ADSL2.’

    Here is another one. Jan Rigo’s elderly parents live in Bundaberg have now gone from 12 megabits per second with ADSL down to as low as two megabits per second and as a result, these elderly people can no longer Skype their children and grandchildren in the UAE and Korea. We have lots more stories like this. They are flooding in to affected electorate offices, both Labor and Coalition. It is a right royal stuff-up and more evidence of the mess that this Prime Minister has made of the NBN. He promised people faster broadband speeds, in fact, they are getting the reverse. The boss of NBN last night in estimates admitted, and I am quoting him here:

    ‘I am certain these problems are real.’

    In a minute we are going to hear from the government and they are going to crow about what a fabulous job they have done on the NBN. My response to that is fix this mess. Fix this problem.

    This is where we are – the cost of their second-rate NBN has doubled, the time it will take to build this second-rate NBN has more than doubled, the cost of fibre to the node has tripled, up from $600 to $1,600, the cost of fixing the copper has blown out by more than 1,000 per cent and in the places where they are starting to roll this mess out it is not working properly.

    Let me be very, very clear: this mess is going to haunt this Prime Minister. It is evidence of his failure to deliver and evidence that he can’t be trusted. It is evidence that he says one thing before an election and then does another. In the longer term it will be evidence of his bad judgement, lack of vision and that he just simply got this wrong.

    I will give one more example to prove it. Before the last election in his election policy the Prime Minister said, I’ve got an example from America to show why fibre to the node is better than fibre to the premises. He gave the example of Verizon and AT&T. Verizon built fibre to the premises, AT&T went and built fibre to the node. He said, AT&T made the right decision because it was cheaper and they will make the same amount of money. Guess what AT&T announced in December last year? They are rolling out fibre to the premises for 14 million homes across the country and, in places where they rolled out fibre to the node, they are going back and building fibre to the premises. That is what is going to have to happen here in Australia. It is going to take a Labor government to do it—to come back and finish off the NBN and fix Malcolm Turnbull’s mess.

    ENDS

  5. kerri

    NoS
    Yes that was “one” lie.
    Compared to how many from the LNP?

  6. lawrencewinder

    Now, tell me again what excellent economic managers the Liarbrils are.

  7. Deidre Zanker

    Wasn’t the NBN FTTP going to compete with Murdoch’s business? No surprise it failed.

  8. Möbius Ecko

    Oh here we go again, NoS rolling out a Labor attack point he’s used an untold number of times before, and just about every time a legitimate criticism of Turnbull’s very flawed NBN is raised.

    Neil has also been shown the context of point on the 2007 announcement, but that’s never going to stop him continuously using it out of context against Labor. In the meantime nothing on the deliberate massive lie on every front from Turnbull on his NBN. Lies that haven’t stopped.

    But from NoS on the every growing long string of Liberal failures, lies and dysfunction we, as we always have, get crickets chirping in the background.

    kerri that wasn’t a lie. Go back and read the context of what Labor promised at the time.

  9. olddavey

    Mobius,
    Neil’s a prat, as are most posters with “of” in their name.
    Just ignore him

  10. Florence nee Fedup

    It is a crime and unnecessary waste to replace any copper. Waste even to remediate it. The cost of using and maintaining fibre is coming down every day. Even this NBN whatever one calls it, has admitted to that.

    The practice of putting copper into greenfield sites has no defensible argument whatever. Can only be ideology that drives it. The ideology that anything Labor supports or proposes much be destroyed.

    NBN can’t even fine any explanation to what is causing so much trouble in Newcastle, except to say in is not fibre to the node. They are blaming everyone else.

    If it was fibre to the premises, all one would have to do is hook up. No other technology needed,

  11. Florence nee Fedup

    What Neil ignores, is that Labor attempted to put that promise in place. Went the way of Howard’s 17 tries. No uptake from private sector. Was undoable while Telstra control the copper.

  12. Chris Huculak

    Just a word of praise for Labor’s “old” fibre to the premises NBN. We’ve been connected here in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria for two and a half years and it’s been a joy. Fast reliable speed and service guaranteed. No fuss, no bother. It grieves me to think that most of Australia is now being denied this possibility.

  13. Wally

    Neil of Sydney

    If you have not worked it out yet the LNP have fu#$ed up the NBN.
    They have wasted every cent they have invested in the NBN.
    We will have to replace this shit NBN and it will cost even more.

  14. Mercurial

    “The coalition’s NBN main points of difference with their plan compared to the ALP plan was to roll it out sooner, with faster download speeds and cheaper.”

    I don’t believe the LNP ever claimed their version would produce faster download speeds. “Sooner” soon morphed into ‘faster’ as in a faster rollout, and this was interpreted by some as faster download speeds.

    I even remember Turnbull looking askance at Abbott at one point in the launch at Foxtel studios of their NBN policy. As if to say ‘we say it will be sooner, Tony, don’t say faster because people will assume that means faster downloads.’

    Not surprisingly, it didn’t stop Abbott. They might have sucked you in too, Mel.

  15. Mercurial

    Labor’s NBN FTTP didn’t fail, Deidre Zanker. It was nobbled. By the current PM.

    And NoS, Abbott has a monopoly on the “biggest” lies ever to win an election (given you haven’t said what measure you are using for your “bigness” of lies, i’ve deeded to use my own). He’s streets ahead of the opposition. Just remember that next time you’re doing your daily talking points. Labor’s “lie” as you call it wasn’t a lie because it never had a chance to be proven wrong. Labor lost the 2013 election, remember? Losing the election meant the NBN was the responsibility of the LNP government.

  16. Möbius Ecko

    olddavey NoS and I go back a long long way. I was there when he made his first post on a blog that was the ancestor to the AIMN.

    Indeed I got so tired of his mindless repeats that for a long time I did ignore every one of his posts. The only titbits I got for years were when someone quoted him and I read their post. Neil actually got some things right, as rare as that was, and I had no hesitation in either apologising for calling him wrong or in acknowledging he had it right. But in true Neil fashion he would then use just those small handful of times to bash Labor and other posters over and over incessantly. But heaven forbid if you would ever get Neil to admit outright he was wrong or to face up to obvious Liberal failings, even if you slapped him the face with the evidence.

    Seems I might have to go back to ignoring him totally if he keeps to his old tired hack of repeating Labor as an attack for every answer to every topic and every valid criticism of the Liberals past and present.

  17. stuff me

    Oh look, there is neil of Sydney, come out of the woodwork quoting figures 9 years old! Oh dear!

  18. margcal

    Is NoS a real person, or whichever member of an LNP Troll Team that happens to be on duty?

    I’m OK about debating contrary views but the nonsense that NoS comes up with is so off the wall that it doesn’t merit consideration. If the LNP wants to make some headway in this particular forum, they need to seriously reconsider their strategies.

  19. totaram

    “One of the biggest lies ever to win an election.”

    You think that is what made them win the election? Seriously? Nothing else?

    And it was not a “lie”, because they did try to proceed with it, but it didn’t work out as planned and they had to come up with a new and different proposal, the NBN which they eventually proceeded with. Where is the lie in that?

    A proposed NBN which Malcolm Turnbull has royally shafted, at the behest of Rupert Murdoch. Imagine replacing old copper with new copper! The cost difference of replacing it with fiber would be miniscule, but no – ideology trumps good sense.

    If there is anything which really proves what a slimy bastard Turnbull is, it is this: his Fraudband gift to the nation. He will never live it down.

  20. diannaart

    Have I the car deal for Neil of Sydney?

    You betcha!

    A brand new 6.2-litre LS3 V8 engine has just been installed in a 1978 Holden Commodore sedan.

    A little beauty, if you don’t mind that the upgrade only consists of a super powerful engine – but that’s why this car deal is so good – saved a fortune by keeping original wiring, chassis, suspension, diff, steering, the tires are a bit threadbare but the wheels still turn round.

    …and no pointless new-fangled extras like air-con, power steering – who needs it when the engine is so powerful.

    Let me know Neil

    deals like this don’t last for long…

  21. Kaye Lee

    In her maiden speech in 2005, new deputy leader of the Nats Fiona Nash said “The Copper Age was 5,300 years ago, and that is where copper belongs. “We need to embrace optic fibre, wireless and satellite so that we have the right mix of infrastructure to take us into the future.”

    Then she and Barnaby co-authored a paper that said copper was fast becoming “redundant” in the delivery of internet services and recommended the Howard government investigate the cost of fibre to the home.

    Perhaps we should give them a buzz……all of us who agree that we need FttP. If we have to endure Barnaby and the fast food advocate, we can at least ask them to help us get real NBN as they both suggested was necessary over ten years ago.

    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/13/barnaby-joyce-and-fiona-nash-accepted-in-2005-copper-redundant-for-internet?CMP=share_btn_tw

  22. Michael Taylor

    Kaye, perhaps she can invest in it like her boss did. In France.

  23. cornlegend

    diannaart
    Don’t knock the V8s ,I love them 😀
    I drive a Holden Senator Signature which I fondly call ‘Joe ”
    {to remind me every day the utter bloody stupidity of dumping Louise Pratt]
    you wouldn’t believe the carbon offsets I had to do on our properties to ease the conscience

  24. Michael Taylor

    My car would chew up and spit out a V8 Commodore. 🙂

  25. cornlegend

    Michael Taylor
    i have always been a petrol head ,
    LUV V8s
    and am waiting for the delivery date of my new Mustang
    That will be a few hundred more trees planted

  26. Pilot

    Great article!! Thank you.

    Re: NoS… Good grief people, he’s an idiot. He’s playing with himself reading the responses here, lol. In short, like 99.99% of Liberals, he’s a Master Baiter…….

  27. Mercurial

    NoS likes attention, and he doesn’t care how he gets it. Trolls shouldn’t be fed, it only encourages them.

    Worse still, it distracts the rest of us from the real debate.

  28. diannaart

    @cornlegend

    If I was truly dissin’ the Holden I would’ve used a Tesla engine instead of the final V8 for Commodores.

    I considered NoS and his incomprehension of tech for the 21st century – I am a kind person, I played to NoS’s level.

    Bwwaaahahaaahhaaaahaaaahahaha

  29. Neil of Sydney

    A brand new 6.2-litre LS3 V8 engine has just been installed in a 1978 Holden Commodore sedan.

    Have you any idea how much Labors FTTP plan would cost? Well nobody really does because something like this has never been built.

    There are a lot of people who want cheap access to the internet and do not want to pay hundreds of dollars/month. Anything you like, building FTTP would make the internet unaffordable for some people. NBNCo is not charging at the moment the rate it would need to make a profit but is running at a loss and if FTTP was built i would suspect the fees would be outrageous.

  30. Michael Taylor

    You conveniently ignored my comment of the other day when I said that after I switched over to Rudd’s NBN while I was still living in Canberra my monthly internet/phone bill came down by $10. Can’t for the life of me work out how those fees are outrageous.

  31. Neil of Sydney

    And you ignore my point that they are not charging a fee which would cover their costs and make a profit. They are charging a rate to suck people in and anyway the Coalition is building the cheaper version (FTTN). That is my opinion and i am entitled to it. Things built by the govt always cost 2-3 times more than predicted. History tells us that.

    Nobody really knows what FTTP would cost. There are been estimates but it is impossible to predict how much FTTP would cost. FTTN should be cheaper and faster to build.

    Many people do not want to pay hundreds of dollars/month to access the internet.

  32. Michael Taylor

    It’s a government infrastructure project, so why does it have to make money?

    Neil, government isn’t a business.

    And of course people don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars a month.

  33. Wally

    Neil of Sydney

    You do not have a technical knowledge of networking or appropriate qualifications and you ignore the opinion of experts (just like the LNP) so in my opinion you are not entitled to have an opinion on the NBN. Sometimes people should just shut up and let those with knowledge make the right decisions without political influence. After all that is why the public pay to educate people.

  34. Florence nee Fedup

    Neil, hate to disillusion you. When it comes to broadband the MTM is the one out, one you are unlikely to find anywhere else. The go is fibre to the premises, as cost installation and maintenance have dropped dramatically.

    We still have no idea state of copper. Cost of unnecessary remediation. Telstra has managed to offload both costs onto NBN, When Turnbull’s MTM give estimates of cost, they don’t include these costs.

    The trials on the Central Coast, the little that were carried out, pointed to the fiasco in this area now. They went ahead regardless.

    No one disagrees, that what is being put in place is only a stop gap measure, that by 2020 it will need to be replaced by fibre to premises.

    The cost is as great or greater than NBNCo.

    The only ones to benefit are Telstra shareholders.

    I think even Murdoch has woken up to the fact, there was opportunity to make big money with fibre to the premises.

    What we are getting has nothing to do with economic or up to date technology. It is purely political.

    It is unwinding at a million mph because people are just being connected. They aren’t happy little vegemites at all.

    As they say, they truth of the pudding is in the eating. They are spitting it out, as it is inedible.

    Most of Abbott’s endeavours are slowly becoming visible to the public.

    We are now seeing the results of defunding all community based organisations becoming evident, as they fold. Many will put extra pressure on hospitals and other health agencies.

    The longer the PM waits for an election, the worse things will get for him.

    The first budget’s cuts were scheduled to come into play now and early next year. Suspect Abbott had planned to have the election over by now.

    Abbott has left a environment where it is nearly impossible for the government to bring down a budget.

    That is why we see Abbott sitting with that smirk on the back row. He knows all the hidden land mines that are coming into play.

    Neil, I know you love recanting what you believe to be Labor wrongdoing and history.

    The trouble is, it has nothing to do with what is happening today. Nothing to do with where this country is heading.

    You need to get yourself up to date.

  35. Rossleigh

    Neil, you are entitled to your opinion, but that doesn’t mean that it’s in any way correct. Personally, if I were you I’d stay silent and risk people thinking that you have very little idea about anything, rather than opening my mouth and confirming it.
    Of course, you also seem to think that you’re entitled to make up your own facts to back up your opinion, which tends to make you sound like an opinionated old fool who has nothing of any value to contribute.
    That’s my opinion and because it’s mine I’m entitled to it, so how dare you argue.

    🙂

  36. cornlegend

    Neil, I know you don’t like responding but what would you say to these people about Abbott/Turnbulls superion NBN ?
    I have been patient waiting for a response , about 26 hours .
    You have commented after that , so now I’m getting the feeling you don’t like me :[-{

    Jan Rigo’s elderly parents live in Bundaberg have now gone from 12 megabits per second with ADSL down to as low as two megabits per second and as a result, these elderly people can no longer Skype their children and grandchildren in the UAE and Korea. We have lots more stories like this.
    Max Taylor from Gorokan recently switched over from ADSL to fibre to the node. He used to get eight megabits per second. Now he is getting as low as three megabits per second. That is slower than his old ADSL. Here is another one. Laurence Alderton from Belmont says and I quote:

    ‘I have been connected to the NBN for two days with TPG’s 25 megabits plan. What a joke! Peak-time download speeds of around four megabits—that is less than my old ADSL2.’

  37. diannaart

    Shhh, everyone.

    I think Neil is going for my deal of the century – I could really clean up here.

  38. Florence nee Fedup

    Three or four years down the track and I still can’t make up my mind whether Neil is a young or old fool.

  39. Wally

    Florence nee Fedup

    Does age make any difference?

    A fool is a fool.

  40. Wally

    diannaart

    I think Neil would go for the parts left over, the new shiny car with a clapped out motor.

    That is all the NBN is, yesterdays technology wrapped up in a new suit.

    Thinking about it this definition could be applied to many things including Tony Abbott.

  41. Florence nee Fedup

    Well if young, there is a chance for change, Then with Neil there has been no change from day one.

    Yes there maybe a little change, he no longer calls us all liars.

    I have asked on most sites I visit, including twitter and Facebook for those who have been connected to the MTM broadband to let us know how wonderful the experience is.

    No takers yet.

  42. diannaart

    Wally

    You are absolutely on the money.

    Neil isn’t an ‘under the bonnet’ type of buyer – he’s demonstrated his eye for the surface, the bright, the shiny with no regard to any of the underpinnings.

    I have gone about this all wrong, for thinking that a rusted on RWN like Neil would even consider value over price.

    Its not like he hasn’t been clear:

    Have you any idea how much Labors FTTP plan would cost? Well nobody really does because something like this has never been built.

  43. Neil of Sydney

    Neil, I know you don’t like responding but what would you say to these people about Abbott/Turnbulls superion NBN ?
    I have been patient waiting for a response , about 26 hours

    I will play devils advocate. I will say that Labor is playing the game of selective examples. I bet you with FTTP you would find people with the same problems. With any new technology there is always someone worse off for some unknown reason. It is the percentage worse off that is the statistic that needs to be looked at.

    But of course it is a worry if people are getting slower speed with FTTN compared to ADSL.

    But i still say FTTP is unaffordable. But i guess we will never know since at the moment FTTP is dead. Unless of course Labor gets back in then they can start bankrupting the country again.

  44. Wally

    Neil of Sydney

    “bet you with FTTP you would find people with the same problems.”
    No most problems are interfacing with the old copper and any problem with fibre would be unlikely to recur.

    “With any new technology there is always someone worse off for some unknown reason”
    In most cases cost cutting and not doing the job correctly in the first place causes this.
    And fibre optics is not new technology.

    “It is the percentage worse off that is the statistic that needs to be looked at”
    Will never know with LNP’s secrecy in place, we don’t even know how many boats have landed.

    “But of course it is a worry if people are getting slower speed with FTTN compared to ADSL”
    It is a much bigger worry than just poor performance now, future issues will cause extreme cost blowout.

    “But i still say FTTP is unaffordable.”
    Under the LNP you are probably correct but Labor had a plan that seemed responsible.

    “But i guess we will never know since at the moment FTTP is dead.”
    Not for long as that is what we need for the future.

    “Unless of course Labor gets back in then they can start bankrupting the country again.”
    At least we get something for the money under Labor, the LNP are spending money and zilch in return.

  45. totaram

    “But i still say FTTP is unaffordable. But i guess we will never know since at the moment FTTP is dead. Unless of course Labor gets back in then they can start bankrupting the country again.”

    All your bullshit is demolished here:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber_to_the_premises_by_country

    There are such networks being deployed on an increasing basis. The tech and cost issues have been thoroughly discussed in the tech blogs. Your contention that “no one really knows the costs” of FTTP is just rubbish. Even if the cost is double of what was estimated, there is no problem because NBNCo is not really required to make profits for some shareholders and the cost of borrowing is very low.

    “bankrupting the country again”. It was a LOAN to NBN co. Also remember, borrowing by the Federal govt. cannot “bankrupt” the country because it cannot default on its loans which are denominated in AUD, which the RBA issues (we already proved that, and it was backed up by an article in the smh, remember?) Don’t keep repeating that lie.

  46. gangey1959

    Neil. Just piss off back to pommyland with margie and the girls and leave Australia to the people with their brain-cells attached. You could do us a real favour , and take the rest of the incompetent lnp wankers with you.
    Between the employment created, and the investment in a long term solution to information dissemination to the entire nation, the alp had a plan that should have been carried on by the lnp, but NO, ta (aka NoS) and his dickhead mates said nope nope nope, we are going back to tin cans and string and bullshit, the same as they did with the insulation scheme, the carbon reduction measures and the car industry.
    Bugger me, they didn’t even have to deal with the cross benches to get legislation through, and jojo hockey couldn’t get his beans balanced.
    It is about time ALL of our politicians in BOTH major parties stopped looking at being “in charge”, and started putting Australia first.
    Just a question for you, Neil, before you spout off another stream of vitriolic crap, that must cause an unsightly rash down your chin and stain your shoes.
    What sort of internet connections do you think exist in ta’s, mt’s, sm’s and some of the more marginal lnp seats. FTTP or copper TTN ?

  47. Neil of Sydney

    Neil. Just piss off back to pommyland

    I was born in Australia

    Under the LNP you are probably correct but Labor had a plan that seemed responsible.

    Seemed responsible?

    So did Labors 2007 broadband policy which helped them win the 2007 election and deceived the country. Labor lied about their broadband plans to win the 2007 election. After the election win Labor threw their 2007 election policy in the bin. But what to do next?

    On a plane flight from Sydney to Melbourne the current NBN policy was written down on a drinks coaster. And we are stuck with it because Labor wrote contracts which are unbreakable. So it is still labors NBN but the Coalition is going to do FTTN rather than FTTP.

    There were no costings for several years and nobody really knows how much it would cost to build FTTP.

    I would not call that story responsible.

  48. Michael Taylor

    So you’re on a plane, an idea comes into your head, you have nothing to write it on but a drink’s coaster.

    So what’s wrong with that?

    I’ve done it before myself.

    If you’re going to come here and keep complaining about that then you are truly a sad, pathetic individual.

  49. Neil of Sydney

    Well the rumour is that after the NBN policy Labor took to the 2007 election failed, Conroy was having trouble getting Rudds attention. There needed to be a decision about what to do next. It appears the Rudd govt was so chaotic ministers had trouble getting Rudds attention. Conroy finally managed to get Rudds attention on a plane flight and the current NBN policy was thought up on the back of a drinks coaster.

    It shows how disfunctional the Rudd govt was.

  50. Michael Taylor

    To the contrary, you show how ridiculous you are.

  51. Michael Taylor

    You really do carry on about the most irrelevant of things.

    I’m sorry, but after ten years of listening to you I’m convinced you have a brain the size of a walnut.

  52. Kaye Lee

    I am so sick of these trite oft-repeated phrases like “back of an envelope”. If you really think that that was the only planning that went on then you are a fool. An idea starts somewhere. The hard work follows. What Turnbull has done is destroy what would have been nation building infrastructure purely for political reasons. It is a travesty for which he should be condemned.

  53. Neil of Sydney

    What Turnbull has done is destroy what would have been nation building infrastructure purely for political reasons.

    For political reasons? Really? What political reasons? My understanding is that the Coalition changed the NBN from FTTP to FTTN for one reason only- money. A country the size of Australia cannot afford to build FTTP. Most people drive Holdens rather than a Rolls Royce because they cannot afford luxury cars.

    One project that was destroyed for political reasons was the one the Coalition signed contracts to build wireless broadband for regional Australia. Conroy broke the signed deal and now we are being sued by OPEL/OPTUS

    http://paulfletcher.com.au/component/content/article/2-uncategorised/498-eighteen-failed-broadband-plans-from-the-coalition-wrong-labor-wrong.html

    Thirdly, and in some ways most remarkably, one of the programs that Labor claims failed is the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program. Under this program, the Howard Government entered into a contract with a private sector provider (a joint venture between Optus and Elders) to build a wireless broadband network in rural and remote Australia. Labor cancelled this contract in early 2008, after Stephen Conroy had repeatedly promised while he was Shadow Communications Minister to honour the contract.

    This program did not fail: it was cynically cancelled by Labor for political reasons. Had it been allowed to proceed, hundreds of thousands of Australians in rural and remote locations would be receiving services today – using exactly the same technology and radiofrequency spectrum that NBN Co will use when it finally begins delivering wireless services at some unspecified point in the future.

  54. Michael Taylor

    Oh do shut up. Go somewhere else and annoy other people.

  55. Möbius Ecko

    Did not Abbott tell Turnbull to demolish the NBN?

    How can that be anything but political, especially coming at the time from Captain Negabore?

    Notice that yet again Neil is slushing into the past to fling mud at Labor solely to keep the attention off the present Liberal government failures, in this case their woeful MTM and the billions in cost overruns to now, with what looks like more cost blow outs to come.

    The end result will be a far inferior broadband system, placing us ever lower on the world scale, for a cost that will be more than the full fibre system. No wonder Turnbull invests in overseas FTH companies.

    What a rolling joke this Liberal government is. A true reflection of their supporters.

  56. Kaye Lee

    Tony Abbott has ordered Malcolm Turnbull to “demolish” the Government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) as he today brought him back to the Coalition frontbench to head up its communications portfolio.

    Declaring the NBN would be the “absolute focus” of the political battle of the next 18 months, Mr Abbott said he could think of no better person to “ferociously” hold the Government to account on the issue.

    “The Government is going to invest $43 billion worth of hard-earned money in what I believe is going to turn out to be a white elephant on a massive scale,” Mr Abbott said.

    He’s no tech head….obviously.

  57. Neil of Sydney

    I do not know when that statement was made but the NBN is now impossible to demolish. We are stuck with it. Labor signed contracts which are too expensive to break. So instead of digging up every road in Australia (FTTP) the Coalition is going to dig up the main roads and use the existing telephone lines in the side streets (FTTN). That has to be cheaper and faster to build. Nobody really has any idea how much FTTP would cost to build.

    The only program that was destroyed for political purposes was destroyed by Conroy.

    Thirdly, and in some ways most remarkably, one of the programs that Labor claims failed is the Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program. Under this program, the Howard Government entered into a contract with a private sector provider (a joint venture between Optus and Elders) to build a wireless broadband network in rural and remote Australia. Labor cancelled this contract in early 2008, after Stephen Conroy had repeatedly promised while he was Shadow Communications Minister to honour the contract.

    And now OPTUS is suing the govt for breach of contract.

  58. Michael Taylor

    Neil, do you sleep at night? I just can’t imagine that a person filled with so much hate could possibly sleep.

    My father fought in WW2. I’m sure that he couldn’t possibly have hated the Japanese as much as you hate Labor.

    The big difference though was that he never talked about it. On the opposite, you never shut up.

    I know that we usually like to encourage different opinions, but you have gone beyond monotonous. Your comments have been getting through, however, I’m about to take a break and I’m not sure if the next moderator will be so generous. So if you want your comments to get through I’d suggest you stop your ridiculous rants. Ten years of them is starting to get to me/us/everybody.

  59. Möbius Ecko

    Yes Kaye Lee, Abbott is obviously not a tech head, nor just as obvious is he an expert in anything else except rorting the public purse.

    But Turnbull for all his faults does know telecommunications and has a good grasp on the technology. This is what makes the current farce of fraudband so galling. It needn’t have happened because of Turnbull’s expertise and position, and the $15 billion and growing in overruns thrown away for a worsened outcome could have been saved.

  60. gangey1959

    NoS. If you were born here, show some native intelligence or bugger off.
    If the lnp are going to do FTTN, WHY oh WHY are they pissing around with copper at all?
    And ok, I said ‘seemed’ when I should have said ‘was’. I forgot you’re a dumb-ass. People were being employed, it works, it was over budget but not going to need replacing in the immediate future if not sooner, and it was as on schedule as any govt scheme is.
    Get a life and start being at least a little bit positive about something, or just stop writing your bullshit on here.
    @MT. I don’t think the red sea pedestrians hate nazis as much as nos hates the alp.

  61. Florence nee Fedup

    Michael, what Neil forgets to add, Conroy went on that plane trip, I believe to PNG so they could discuss NBN.

    What he neglects to tell us, Turnbull promised Fibre to the node. Open and transparent implementation., We still have had no reliable costing from his coat of many colours, MTM broadband. Not all fibre to the node. We still have no costing for remediation of crapped out copper. We still have no idea how bad it is.

  62. Florence nee Fedup

    The speed of any broadband is only as fast as its slowest link. In this case copper, crapped out copper at that. Why anyone would try to speed it up with other technology is beyond me. Fibre needs no updating technology. Telstra said back in the early 1990’s the copper was crap.

    Fibre is now cheaper to laid, cheaper to maintain. Lasts many decades into the future,’

  63. Florence nee Fedup

    Turnbull has destroyed NBN fibre to the premises, How one unwinds the mess is beyond me. If was to the node without handing all back to Telstra, one might have a hope. I can’t even see how they are going to upgrade the necessary fibre to the premises in 2020. everyone, including Turnbull says this will be needed.

    Copper is even being laid in greenfield sites, This is stupidity of the highest order.

    Turnbull could have given Abbott what he wanted, leaving the door open for changed,

    Maybe Turnbull wanted to see Abbott with egg on his face. Bet now he wishes he didn’t take broadband down this track.,

  64. Lee

    I can’t wait to see how useless the NBN is. I have a friend, who formerly worked for Telstra, and worked for NBN Co two years ago for a short time. He said they were cutting costs everywhere and tossing fibre-optic cables over fences without a care. Several of his colleagues didn’t have a good understanding of what they were doing and NBN Co were not supplying decent tools to do the job. He couldn’t stand the poor quality workmanship, nor the way NBN Co treated employees, so he quit. Another friend completed a course last year with Telstra to install cables into Telstra’s network. She said a couple of guys from NBN Co also participated in the course, worked in an extremely rough way with fibre-optic cable, and walked out leaving small pieces of glass on the bench. She and her work colleague were not impressed with what they witnessed. Let’s hope these examples are not typical of the quality of workmanship on the NBN.

  65. Florence nee Fedup

    Neil what broadband do you have?

  66. Lee

    “Conroy finally managed to get Rudds attention on a plane flight and the current NBN policy was thought up on the back of a drinks coaster.”

    Pfft… NoS, that proves beyond all doubt (as if anyone had any) that you’re full of shit.

  67. JohnJ

    lol – I actually think its quite funny how NoS is able to get everyone so upset.
    The truth of the matter is, NoS is supportive of Lib/Nat, and adverse to anything Labor, just as others here are supportive of Labor, regardless, and will denigrate anything Lib/Nat, all the while, both sides are equally as bad for all of us and neither is working for our best interest above their own.

    There is a paddock across the road from me, that according to the NBN website, has been able to access the NBN for at least the past 12 months, yet I still have about another 18 months to wait.

    politicians shouldnt write things down.. makes them look silly.
    http://www.fionanash.com.au/Media/MediaReleases/tabid/84/ID/213/LABORS-RURAL-FRAUDBAND.aspx

    Not Happy, Jan..

  68. Lee

    JohnJ, there are plenty of progressives here who are not entirely happy with Labor and don’t have a problem admitting it.

  69. Möbius Ecko

    The OPEL companies are claiming $25m in loss revenue for a system that was never started. They are also claiming $2.5m for the cost of planning the system, which the government has agreed to pay, but OPEL has rejected.

    The government claimed at the time that the OPEL consortium’s plan would have covered 72 per cent of under-served premises with broadband rather than the 90 per cent agreed to in the contract.

    As is normal for NoS he has deliberately cherry picked bits and pieces that appear to support his forever Labor bashing whilst leaving out key information, but most of all always ignoring the context.

    What craps me off about Neil’s forever repeated small handful of lame attack points against Labor is even after the context is shown to him, often many times, he still repeats the same out of context attack.

    His current one against Conroy and OPEL has been answered before, and it’s still to be heard, yet he will continue to raise it whenever the considerable failure and cost of the Liberal’s fraudband is bought up. It’s another distraction, but what I like about his use of a Labor bash as distraction is that each time he does it he proves the Liberals have failed yet again. If the Liberals weren’t failing in a massive way NoS would have no need for a Labor bash distraction and could publish post after post about how well the Liberals are doing and illustrate the success of their policies.

    If OPEL lose the case, and there’s a chance of that will Neil eat his words? Of course not. He’ll ignore that and still go on about it for years to come whenever the sad history of the Liberals failed NBN is raised.

  70. Möbius Ecko

    JohnJ there is a world of difference between the Labor support here, a lot of it tentative and conditional as compared to Neil’s mindless support of the Liberals, which solely consists of Labor bashing constantly using the same handful of mute points.

  71. Neil of Sydney

    Pfft… NoS, that proves beyond all doubt (as if anyone had any) that you’re full of shit.

    Well it may be an urban myth but many people have stated it. Just do a google search

    http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/governments-nbn-approach-the-way-of-the-future

    Was it just hubris of Rudd and Conroy to devise this scheme on the back of a drink coaster between Sydney and Brisbane?

    And your statement about the quality of workmanship by NBNCo shows why a govt owned company should not be building the NBN. The workers do not care.

    Neil what broadband do you have?

    I signed up to the NBN. It was a nightmare getting installed. They had to come out 4 times to get it installed. Then after about 5 months it stopped working. When i had ADSL i just rang up about any problem and it was fixed over the phone. This problem meant a technician had to my home and took 2 days before my internet was working. The one good thing about it is that it is WiFi so i don’t have to stick any cables into my computer.

  72. Lee

    “And your statement about the quality of workmanship by NBNCo shows why a govt owned company should not be building the NBN. The workers do not care.”

    More BS from NoS. I’ve worked in the public service for 30 years and lots of workers care about doing a good job. Of the two friends I mentioned, one was a former public servant and the other a current public servant, both of them appalled by the quality of workmanship they saw in private workers.

  73. Wally

    JohnJ

    “both sides are equally as bad for all of us”

    The LNP cater to the demands of the rich who top up party funds, some might say Labor are the unions puppets but Labor generally do what in the best interests of the ordinary folk and the poorer people in our society. Where it really counts for families struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads there is no comparison at all.

    There are many things Labor could do better, all but the extremely rich are better off under a Labor government, even asylum seekers be it only a marginal improvement. The problem is many people do not realise the Liberals they vote for today are no longer conservatives, they are right wing extremists.

  74. Roswell

    True, Mobius. If the government was any good then Neil would be talking about them instead of Labor all the time.

    And talking of Neil, I’m totally sick of him. Why do we have to put up with his rubbish day after day? I’m hoping one of the site owners gives him the flick.

  75. Geoff

    NOS – I live about 1km outside Strathalbyn (SA). Strathalbyn township was slated to get FTTH, but suddenly all they got was FTTN. Stiff… Our house was on copper, but it was so crappy that we couldn’t download anything greater that a small word file. We were allowed to go onto the satellite. That got full and was not much faster in the end. Anyway a nice new shiny wireless tower was erected for the residents south of the township, including us, so we swapped, expecting a better service. There’s not a lot of people/houses around being a rural area, but this have has grown over the last 5 years. The tower is about 1km from our house. Well when it works, it is faster than the satellite, at about 6Mb – 8Mb download speed. At least we can download program updates, videos etc now. However, we have an incredible amount of signal disruptions every day. We complained – “try turning on and off the modem…” well that worked once, but subsequent turn off/on attempts have made little difference. I suspect that, as the area that the tower covers has more houses using it, speeds will slow down.

    Getting NBN installed was easy – both for the satellite (once we could demonstrate we were outside the ADSL region) and the wireless version. The workmen were thorough and professional.

    Let’s face it – anything other than FTTH is crap.

  76. Florence nee Fedup

    Seems Neil has suffered as most in getting hooked to PM’s MTM, coat of many colours network. With straight fibre, no problems as the technology is superior and straight forward.

    Neil, the problems are result of the mess Turnbull has created.

    They managed to only have small trial near Gosford, Didn’t really get off the ground. They went ahead anyway with untested technology. Seems the chickens are coming home to roost,

  77. Melanie (@CartwheelPrint)

    Hi JohnJ, I can appreciate die hard supporters treating the major parties like sports teams but I’m not ALP affiliated etc I just wanted to highlight the differences between them without party bashing, there is enough of that out there as it is 😉

  78. Florence nee Fedup

    I don’t expect any political party to be perfect, fully in agreement with what I want. People have been saying same things about Labor and it’s leaders as far back as I can remember,

    I still recall the hatred many held for Keating in what he did. More from Labor than the other side. So bad, his name or achievements were not mentioned for a decade or more.

    Many were ashamed of the Labor party. This allowed Howard into power, and to remain so long.

    It would only be the old time Labor who wouldn’t agree now, that Keating got much right. Set the economy up for this century.

    Then we had the Rudd haters followed by the Gillard despisers.

    At least most haven’t turned their backs on the achievements of both. Yes, Rudd achieved much then seemed to meet a brick wall, unable to go any further,

    Gillard ran a pretty tight ship, while going ahead with such things as Gonski and NDIS.

    We managed to get through the GFC with most of our skin intact. Deficit was trending downward until end 2013.

    IMHO one has to leave ideology at the door when elected into power. One has to deal with the cards dealt.

    There have been a Liberal PM or two that have done a couple good things, along with the bad,

    Gorton, I always respected. Sadly more that his party did. Was kicked out by them before he had a chance to do much. I always thought he was in the wrong party..

    First was McMahon. Yes useless Billy. he did put up the dole and pensions for the first time in years.

    It was Whitlam that made the biggest improvements and changes.

    Fraser was a bastard that took our parliamentary system to the blink. He did do good when it came to the Vietnam boat people. Some of his work with indigenous people was ahead of what most thought at the time.

    As for Howard, he was disaster as Treasurer. Managed high inflation and high unemployment at the same time. Not a bad effort. IMHO no better as PM.

    I won’t bother making comments about Abbott. I find Turnbull as bad, just weaker.

    I do know that each government has to cope with the world and economy they find themselves in.

    I have found most Labor PM wash up well. Not perfect by a long way. I feel that Shorten, in spite lack charisma has what is needed now.

    He doesn’t seem to be comfortable with stunts or theatrics, Just explaining what he is about in a quiet manner. Doesn’t seem to crave the camera.

    He seems focus on what is needed, Has the patience to wait until best time to act, not rush in blindly. I will be surprise if he lacks guts.

    The man’s academic record is impressive. He doesn’t get flustered.

    In any case he is what we have got.

    What I don’t believe Labor is just as bad as the Liberals. In any case, I don’t want it tested,

    Criticise policy. Yes, say we want ICAC.

    Make our voice heard. Demand a more humane policy for the offshore detention centre. One can do so, without condemning the policy, as is happening now. Demand the secrecy ends. Demand better conditions. Demand that Labor promises to work towards closing the centres by resettling the people. That is doable and politically possible.

    People need to really think about what they want and the best chance of getting it.

    I want to see the Liberals beaten. I don’t care who wins to do it.

  79. Neil of Sydney

    Hi JohnJ, I can appreciate die hard supporters treating the major parties like sports teams

    Yes that is what it appears to be. If the NBN was a Coalition idea ie getting the govt to build a FTTP network, this lot would be against it.

  80. cornlegend

    Florence nee Fedup
    Bloody good post !

  81. Neil of Sydney

    Let’s face it – anything other than FTTH is crap.

    You may be right but the Coalition argument is that the country cannot afford it and it most probably would never be finished.

  82. Möbius Ecko

    No Neil, that’s a lie you also continually perpetrate. We have shown you in the past where this site and Tim’s has heavily criticised Labor and acknowledged good Liberal policy, as I have acknowledged when you have it right.

    But never ever expect the same in return from you as you mindlessly bash Labor for anything and anything, no matter how dubious. And never ever expect you to justifiably criticise a deserved Liberal failure even when there are a long string of them.

    Post after post you prove yourself the greatest of hypocrites and as such you have not an iota of credibility.

  83. Möbius Ecko

    NoS at 11:51 am

    Oh my, Neil quoting Liberal party members as a legitimate source again and expecting it to be honest. Malcolm Turnbull no less, a proven liar and doublespeak. Turnbull who was ordered to destroy the FTTP NBN, who brings in a second rate system in it’s place that’s costing more and looks like blowing out further.

    Another long time habit of Neil’s, sourcing Liberal minister’s and Liberal websites as valid information.

  84. Kaye Lee

    Neil, I am editing your comments because giving the same quote four times on one thread is more than I can tolerate.

  85. cornlegend

    You lot need my missus around to train you

    “Talk to the hand”

    I get that a lot

  86. Michael Taylor

    A lot of people say they want Neil to keep commenting here because alternate opinions are appreciated. They also say that to deny Neil the right to comment here would be a form of censorship.

    But a hell of a lot more question why we let him comment here at all, given his behaviour. We do receive regular complaints about him via our ‘Contact Us’ facility. Too many of them.

    The fact of the matter is that a large number of people have told us that they don’t bother coming to The AIMN if just about every topic gets hijacked by Neil’s lunatic rants and the way he is successful in derailing article after article, day after day.

    Those people are more important to us than Neil, and to be honest, more important than the few who ‘demand’ he be given a voice.

    I believe too that the writers on this site deserve more respect, as do the readers.

    Neil has been given a thousand chances and has blown every one of them. I also believe that it is Neil’s intention to cause disruption and that he receives great joy in doing so.

  87. Michael Taylor

    Kaye, I didn’t let a comment through because guess what he talked about? You guessed it – how many children Labor locked up in detention centres!!! Is it just me, or has that nothing to do with the NBN?

    And people wonder why we pull our hair out.

  88. cornlegend

    Michael Taylor
    A little bit of NoS isn’t a bad thing
    It just let’s you see the absolute f*#kwits there are out there in Toryland and what we have to smash
    “Neil’s intention to cause disruption and that he receives great joy in doing so.”
    I wish he would just stick to pulling wings off flies

  89. Kaye Lee

    Michael,

    His repetition drives me bonkers. I did him a favour editing his comment and letting it pass through. It made him sound more reasonable than he is. I figured if people had to read the optus quote one more time that computers could be at risk.

    cornie,

    It is to the stage of talk to the elbow cause the hand ain’t listening.

  90. Wally

    Michael Taylor

    I think you are totally justified in blocking NoS and I think your suspicion that he is intent on derailing the conversation is correct.

  91. Michael Taylor

    Good call, Kaye. I’m behind you all the way.

  92. Lee

    Neil’s purpose seems to be to disrupt. There’s no other reasonable explanation for his continual refusal to accept any well documented facts that place his beloved Liberal Party in a negative light. Therefore he is a troll. Trolls aren’t interested in debate so blocking Neil isn’t stifling debate.

  93. Michael Taylor

    Cornie, it’s past all that. I’m totally over it.

    Wally, I’m glad you agree.

  94. Lee

    “A little bit of NoS isn’t a bad thing
    It just let’s you see the absolute f*#kwits there are out there in Toryland and what we have to smash”

    There’s an abundance of blatant f*#kwitism on LNP Facebook pages and Twitter. Take a look at George Christensen’s wall and you’ll see what I mean. Many of those comments are so utterly ridiculous that I wonder how those people manage to survive without a brain. Neil has proven repeatedly that it is impossible to have a sensible and earnest discussion with him.

  95. Rossleigh

    Yes, I particularly liked his comment about Labor getting back in a “bankrupting” the country again.
    For a country that had been bankrupted, we got on our feet again surprisingly quickly…

  96. Kaye Lee

    While doubling the debt

  97. Michael Taylor

    Or interest rates under Keating. We haven’t had that one for at least three days now.

  98. cornlegend

    Michael Taylor
    “Cornie, it’s past all that. I’m totally over it. ”
    Where’s your staying power ?
    I must say the discussion with NoS is about as fullfilling as eating air ,
    but being the owner of the joint should instill in you the patience of Solomon 😀

    that’s enough of my bs 😀

  99. Kaye Lee

    Thank gawd for backspace and delete. Rule for self…always read again before submitting and, if drinking, wait till morning. It’s character building being patient. But there comes a time where it moves beyond patience to self harm.

  100. Kaye Lee

    Ok…I just reread that (after submitting) and my rules are more aspirational than actual (she says with champagne in hand).

  101. cornlegend

    Kaye Lee
    I just skipped back and cut and pasted all Neil of Sydneys comments and read them like a novel .
    NoS’s insightful comments have made me stop now, and I will go away and consider the folly of my past political affiliations

  102. Neil of Sydney

    Why do my comments bother you people so much? And i chose to comment on one or two threads so i don’t bother too many people. But i would like to comment on this statement

    Turnbull who was ordered to destroy the FTTP NBN

    The window of opportunity for destroying the NBN has gone. Conroy signed unbreakable contracts and we are stuck with it. So the Coalition is trying to build it cheaper and quicker. It would never get finished with 93% FTTP.

  103. Wally

    Neil of Sydney

    We would have been better off with nothing instead of FTTN it is a waste of money.

    “Coalition is trying to build it cheaper and quicker.”
    They have failed to achieve this objective.

    “Conroy signed unbreakable contracts”
    So in the future this will be an excuse for you to blame the NBN stuff up on Labor,

    I do not mind having a discussion with anybody but it is polite to respond to all of the relevant points in a persons comment and keeping the response based on the current situation not something that did or didn’t happen in the past.

  104. cornlegend

    I apologise to the author of this article for getting off track and shall return to NBN
    Neil of Sydney,
    as you seem to have inside knowledge of all things LNP , and Malcolms NBN maybe you could help me on an NBN related matter ?
    I have waited with eager anticipation for the NBN to reach me but after reading some comments I have concerns at Malcolms Fraudband
    I live 7 miles from town and not too close to neighbours ,so I use internet for contact with the world outside.
    My ADSL is pretty crap now and I looked forward to sizzling speeds etc .
    Now I’m worried as buggery because I live so far out .
    I read this comment re NBN speeds “Jan Rigo’s elderly parents live in Bundaberg have now gone from 12 megabits per second with ADSL down to as low as two megabits per second and as a result……….,”
    Bloody hell NoS, will I get better than dial up speed ?
    Should I purchase and train a bloody great flock of carrier pigeons as backup ?
    I think I’ll buy them anyway as I don’t trust Malcolms broadband, and if Labor happen to win the next election and fix Malcolms mess,
    We could knock the heads of the pigeons and eat them.
    Any suggestions NoS ?

  105. Shortchanged

    Carrier pigeons are a bit too modern for the Liberals.

  106. Neil of Sydney

    cornlegend

    I had a go at answering your question at my post on February 14, 2016 at 6:20 pm

    But you would have had something much better by now if not for Conroy/Labor

    http://www.techworld.com.au/article/395910/opel_would_serving_bush_broadband_today_turnbull/

    Federal opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has used his National Press Club address to argue the decision to scrap the Howard government’s OPEL network for an NBN has denied the bush broadband services over the past three years……It is no accident the technologies to be deployed by the NBN are the same as those which would have been used by OPEL. And, had that scheme not been cancelled by Labor in 2008 would today be providing fast broadband to Australians in those areas.

  107. cornlegend

    Thanks for that NoS
    “had that scheme not been cancelled by Labor in 2008 ”
    Bugger,…… NoS,
    If that was all the problem is, why didn’t Tony or Malcolm just uncancel it .
    Malcolm was supposed to use his knowledge as the “inventor of the Internet ” to solve this shit
    If Labor cancelled it in 2008 , the poor old LNP are slow off the mark . they had plenty of time to renegotiate and renew if they wished .
    I think they just didn’t care

  108. Michael Taylor

    Neil, I’m among the first to condemn you, so it’s only fair that I also be among the first to say that it’s good to see you engage sensibly (at last).

  109. Kaye Lee

    And if Howard hadn’t blocked Telstra’s proposal to begin laying fibre in 2005 when we still owned half of it we would all have got FttP long ago for a damn sight cheaper

  110. cornlegend

    Michael Taylor,
    I see the first tentative steps of what could be a blossoming friendship with Neil and myself

  111. Wally

    Neil of Sydney

    “scrap the Howard government’s OPEL network for an NBN ”

    Correct decision because the OPEL network was based on old technology that could not provide the speed required for the number of users that were to be connected and it would not have provided the coverage to 90% of the population. The technology used for the OPEL network WIMAX sounds good in theory until you look at real world installations and the limitations are revealed.

    A city-wide deployment of WiMAX in Perth, Australia demonstrated that customers at the cell-edge with an indoor Customer-premises equipment (CPE) typically obtain speeds of around 1–4 Mbit/s, with users closer to the cell site obtaining speeds of up to 30 Mbit/s.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX

    Kaye Lee

    And if Howard hadn’t blocked Telstra’s proposal to begin laying fibre in 2005 when we still owned half of it we would all have got FttP long ago for a damn sight cheaper

    You are correct Telstra left to its own devices would have delivered the network we need and it would have been completed years ago. The OPEL network was Howards attempt to kill Telstra (a company he detested with a passion) and in doing so he drove down the price of Telstra shares, the shares he sold off to Australian investors supposedly in good faith??? Howard definitely did not show any consideration for mum and dad investors that watched the share price shrink.

  112. Michael Taylor

    Cornie, I’m not hopeful. :mrgreen:

  113. Neil of Sydney

    The OPEL network was Howards attempt to kill Telstra (a company he detested with a passion)

    Sounds like you have inside knowledge or you are making stuff up.

    Your Wimax link gave another link to countries using this technology. Lots of places use it, some with large rural areas like Canada

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WiMAX_networks

    Also your quote about the deployment in Perth had no citation in your Wiki link. It just said ” citation needed” And i am suspicious enough not to trust a single example where something does not work.

  114. Wally

    Neil of Sydney

    I have qualifications in electrical, computing and networking so you could call that inside knowledge. At the time of signing the OPEL agreement there was little support from the IT industry, much of the aspirations of the venture partners was hope that the technology could be improved over time. I have not kept up with advances in this regard but the big issue was very slow speed and high download errors over the distances the network was to cover.

    Download errors place significant extra load on any system because the same data must be downloaded over and over again, you cannot resume loading a web page that is only partially received. The IPv4 and IPv6 protocols require the download to commence from the beginning. Ask people with digital TV in rural areas how poor it can be at times. The concept of wireless communications sounds very good but the reality is that the systems speed drops dramatically when the work load increases.

    Despite the lack of citations on my link I believe it to be true and you must accept that our population is dispersed over a much bigger area than most countries so it is difficult to get a fair comparison.

  115. Random

    Just so you know, all that bickering with NoS and weighing up the ethics of letting his voice be heard, was tedious. With multiple comments devoted to him, you thoroughly enabled him hijack the thread. Agitating is different to the simple expressing of an opinion that contributes respectfully to the discussion – firm up your commenting policy and issue one warning, just a suggestion.

    But on the subject of this magical NBN, I thought you might find this interesting:

    Yesterday I got a quote for NBN from Telstra, for my employer whose business is in the SW of WA, 9.9kms from a town with a population of about 14K, to weigh it up against current options….although I may still have to wait for 3 or 4 years to have it installed, no orders are being currently taken.

    Only the satelite version is available to us at an exorbitant $599 for 20GB per month plan (the only other being 2GB/m) with a blinding top download speed of….wait for it…. 128Kb/sec – yes KB!!

    I can honestly say, that this blew my mind, so I asked the rep to repeat it to be sure I had heard her right. She repeated the specs then said “this means nothing to me”, so I explained to her (and for those of you not technically minded);

    Remember 10-15 years ago and those noisy little dial-up phone modems we used to use to connect to the internet? This was their top speed. By comparison, the eventual top download speed for our City Cousins will apparently be 100Mb/sec (there are 1000Kb per Mb).

    Forget videos or high detail graphics – forget promoting your business with anything visual (and competing with other businesses). Forget attachments on emails, you’d be better off with snail mail.

    I can’t believe this is the best Australia can do in the 21st Century (regardless of which political party conceives or delivers it) with how many billions of dollars spent so far?!

    The rep responded with “why would you bother?” My thoughts exactly!

  116. Wally

    Random

    Rural users are the biggest losers in Turnbulls NBN stuff up, my area was originally to get FTTP but now we will only be given wireless that is unlikely to be any faster than current ADSL but hopefully the fibre back bone that feeds the wireless will also service local exchanges and improve ADSL speed that currently suffer badly due to congestion, at times I think my old dial up service was faster.

    By the way maximum dial up speed was/is 56kb so the 128kb service would be double dialup speed but still pitiful Depending on your business needs I could offer some suggestions to minimise bandwidth required but still achieve your objectives without excessive expense.

  117. Möbius Ecko

    http://tinyurl.com/zcy5n4m

    This would be funny if it weren’t such a stuff up. Here’s and example of Turnbull’s supposedly cheaper and better NBN and another of a long line of installation stuff ups that will need to be fixed down the track, blowing out the delays and costs even further.

    Complaints on Turnbull’s broadband and beginning to flood in and the numbers are going up rapidly. The biggest complaint is about having a slower internet speed after being hooked up than when on ADSL before being hooked up. That’s right folks, Abbott/Turnbull delivers worse speeds than even the existing network let alone when compared to Labor’s NBN.

    Yet another policy stuff up in a long long line of policy stuff ups by the Liberals.

  118. diannaart

    Indeed ME

    Since 2013 what have the coalition achieved? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8E_zMLCRNg

    Nothing at all, unless massively increasing the Defence Budget while moaning about government spending is doing something.

  119. Möbius Ecko

    They’ve stopped the boats diannaart. the answer to every question that’s ever asked of them on what have they achieved.

    Even Howard said in 10½ years of government his greatest achievements were stopping the guns and stopping the boats. He puts Tampa, an attack on desperate defenceless people using Australian military personnel as his greatest achievement. Says everything about the man and his moral failing as a human being. Also telling is that he doesn’t list the invasion of Iraq to NOT remove a sovereign leader and NOT for oil, but to find his WMD Destroy Terrorists Free the People Bring Democracy Get Rid of Saddam, the thing he first said the invasion was not about.

  120. diannaart

    I understand what you are saying Möbius Ecko, I am concerned that Malcolm has not found his claim to fame, yet.

    I mean, “I f*cked the NBN” isn’t all that catchy a quote.

  121. Möbius Ecko

    Turnbull’s claim to fame. “On Tony’s order I stopped the NBN.”

    But that would be a lie. He hasn’t even achieved that. He may have nobbled it, slowed it, mangled it, rooted it and damaged it, but he hasn’t stopped it.

  122. diannaart

    ME

    I never claimed he, Turncoat, stopped it (NBN).

  123. Ian

    Malcolm has succeeded in demolishing the NBN, as instructed by Capt’n Tony back in 2010.

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