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The NBN (National Broadband Network)

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boyo

Mark Ella (57)
The Royal Commission favour should be returned with an enquiry into the loss of benefits surrounding the Mtm and slowdown of the FTTP rollout.


The NBN phony war is over

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2014/10/16/technology/nbn-phony-war-over

"Malcolm in the middle?
Turnbull has been absent from the debate for the past month and it's time that he explains why the Coalition government appears to have lost control over the telecommunications portfolio.
A short list of questions that Turnbull has been avoiding includes:
  • What are the current and projected FTTP and FTTN rollout costs and whatever happened to his pledge that NBN Co would be open and transparent?
  • Why is NBN Co’s FTTP rollout slowing and what is really happening in Tasmania?
  • Why has Telstra not signed the renegotiated NBN Co agreement which the government said would be completed last June?
  • What extra goodies does Telstra want in the new agreement that it now says will not be completed until sometime in 2015?
It is time for Turnbull to speak up."
 

Pfitzy

George Gregan (70)
Agriculture and minig employ about 8 to 10% of the workforce. 95% of Australians live on the coast or within 200 km. Services will be provided but they will never be at the same level for every village or hamlet. That even applies in more densely populated locations in Europe.


As our society changes its locations( rural urban drift) infracture will follow in it's departure with the people. Look at the size of Ballarat today compared to the gold rush period or many other regional centres.

I think I've made this point before, but I will again.

Your focus on rural = agriculture actually misses the entire point about what NBN can do for this nation.

If you can take tech-based companies from the highly urbanised areas into rural or semi-rural areas, you provide massive benefits to everyone.

Pressure on infrastructure (esp transport) and expansion of needs is reduced in metropolitan regions for a start, as well as real estate which is fucking ridiculous right now.

Cost of housing in rural areas is much lower, which allows companies and families to benefit.

The lower cost of establishment in rural areas offsets the initial costs of the distance that companies will be subject to.

Eventually, the transport infrastructure to rural areas improves due to demand, and technological advancements overcome tyranny of distance e.g. videoconferencing, 3D imagery (hologram) and remote 3D printing etc.

Employees who can buy a house and own it in 15 years instead of 30 are happier employees. They inject capital into the rural areas, particularly schools, retail, and social ventures like sporting clubs etc.

It would basically help stop or even reverse the drift.
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
I think I've made this point before, but I will again.

Your focus on rural = agriculture actually misses the entire point about what NBN can do for this nation.

If you can take tech-based companies from the highly urbanised areas into rural or semi-rural areas, you provide massive benefits to everyone.

Pressure on infrastructure (esp transport) and expansion of needs is reduced in metropolitan regions for a start, as well as real estate which is fucking ridiculous right now.

Cost of housing in rural areas is much lower, which allows companies and families to benefit.

The lower cost of establishment in rural areas offsets the initial costs of the distance that companies will be subject to.

Eventually, the transport infrastructure to rural areas improves due to demand, and technological advancements overcome tyranny of distance e.g. videoconferencing, 3D imagery (hologram) and remote 3D printing etc.

Employees who can buy a house and own it in 15 years instead of 30 are happier employees. They inject capital into the rural areas, particularly schools, retail, and social ventures like sporting clubs etc.

It would basically help stop or even reverse the drift.



You have presented an idealic image there but it is not what the economic realities are. That reversal concept has failed in most of it attempts starting with the soldier settlement schemes, Whitlams Albury decentralization plan, the steel indsutry forced set up in South Australia etc

You might get a company in a high tech area to do it in one place or two but it is not a project that can apply across the board. Transport costs for materials in and out will kill it.

The workers may just fly in and out and how many workers are in that industry?
 

Pfitzy

George Gregan (70)
You have presented an idealic image there but it is not what the economic realities are. That reversal concept has failed in most of it attempts starting with the soldier settlement schemes, Whitlams Albury decentralization plan, the steel indsutry forced set up in South Australia etc

You might get a company in a high tech area to do it in one place or two but it is not a project that can apply across the board. Transport costs for materials in and out will kill it.

The workers may just fly in and out and how many workers are in that industry?


Clearly you're trapped in the old mindset of a manufacturing economy. You need to forget that shit and move forwards.

A mate of mine is a metalworker, who had contracts to outfit fast food kitchen suites and other kitchen hardware, as well as producing high-quality fittings for surgical wards in hospitals. He was working about 18 hours a day, making a shitload of money, to the point where they bought a nice McMansion in Sydney. He had a pretty sweet thing going.

He's now suffering under the same thing all our other manufacturers are: labour costs. His work for producing items en masse has basically dried up in the last 10 years and now he's left doing bespoke items only.

The reason is labour cost - someone can get on the phone to China now, and order up a million widgets of anything without too much effort, and at less than half the cost of what he can do to pay his mortgage. He can't match those rates because he wouldn't cover this.

So when "transport costs for materials" is no longer a concern, are we going to have a technology base capable of making our economy useful?
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
Clearly you're trapped in the old mindset of a manufacturing economy. You need to forget that shit and move forwards.

A mate of mine is a metalworker, who had contracts to outfit fast food kitchen suites and other kitchen hardware, as well as producing high-quality fittings for surgical wards in hospitals. He was working about 18 hours a day, making a shitload of money, to the point where they bought a nice McMansion in Sydney. He had a pretty sweet thing going.

He's now suffering under the same thing all our other manufacturers are: labour costs. His work for producing items en masse has basically dried up in the last 10 years and now he's left doing bespoke items only.

The reason is labour cost - someone can get on the phone to China now, and order up a million widgets of anything without too much effort, and at less than half the cost of what he can do to pay his mortgage. He can't match those rates because he wouldn't cover this.

So when "transport costs for materials" is no longer a concern, are we going to have a technology base capable of making our economy useful?

I am confused here.

Your original statements where about setting up in the bush. There transport costs will override labour costs to a degree as costs for other items can be lower e.g housing as you point out and people may negotiate wages.

Now you speak of a mate in an urban area where the context of transport is less of an issue and I agree labour costs are an issue.

Technology base moves with costs and developments. We don't make whale oil lamps, a coastal business any more , as technology has moved on. There are nuerous similar examples.

The realistic point of where we are heading is the word despoke.
 

Pfitzy

George Gregan (70)
Are you really this ignorant or are you putting extra effort into it? o_O

My point is that my mate's manufacturing business is pretty much finished due to offshore efficiencies. Most of them in Australia are, particularly on a large scale.

So your point about engineering firms relocating, costs of materials transport, and logistics are not going to be a concern for manufacturing into the future.

Those attempts at reducing urban/rural drift failed because ultimately logistics got them.

Are you still with me?

The technology economy that we NEED to become doesn't require close location with its primary resource: people. Communication on a very fast network removes the need for it, particularly the coming advances in VR, 3D projection, and data.
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
Sorry about the whole article but a different view from the smh is behind a pay wall.


Turnbull should break up the NBN

: 17 Oct 2014

David Leyonhjelm

By mid-2015, the national broadband network will have cost taxpayers more than $12 billion, while only 12 per cent of premises will be connected. It will burn $100 million a week this financial year and by mid-2015 will have consumed 46 per  cent of the $29.5 billion in equity the Commonwealth has pledged to it. To call it a scandal would be an understatement. To say it demands urgent attention should be to state the bleeding obvious.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull inherited an unenviable situation. Contracts entered into by Labor, if valued like other Commonwealth contracts, lock taxpayers into $35 billion worth of spending until 2021. And NBN Co, which is responsible for deploying the network, has been highly politicised from the outset, with its deployment strategy used for photo opportunities rather than to efficiently build and operate the NBN.

Moreover, as things stand, Australia is the only OECD country to have gone back on the process of deregulation that began 20 years ago, renationalising telecommunications infrastructure and vesting it with a de facto monopoly. The NBN is now our largest piece of applied socialism.

Long experience shows just how inefficient public monopolies are and, once entrenched, how difficult they are to reform. Those old enough to remember Telecom will know what I mean. If the current NBN structure remains in place consumers will pay too much, taxpayers will suffer huge losses, and governments will have enormous scope to misuse their ownership to serve narrow political ends.

The question is how to get out of this mess. The Vertigan panel, which identified the risks inherent in this kind of monopoly, proposes splitting NBN Co into a number of distinct and competing entities. There would be an “HFC Co” to operate the hybrid fibre co-ax (i.e. pay TV cable) networks, a “Fibre Co” to deploy fibre to the node and to the home, and a “Wireless Co” to take over the fixed wireless network, and possibly the satellite service.

Each entity would have government-imposed service obligations relating to their core assets but would be free to compete outside that area as well.

No time to delay

The result would be more focused management and, by spinning off the HFC and wireless networks, responsibility for funding those structures and the risks they involve would be transferred to the private sector. This would partially reverse Labor’s nationalisation of the network.

Additionally, plenty of international experience shows HFC and fibre-to-the-node/fibre-to-the-premises can be viable and effective competitors, reducing the risk of monopoly pricing. And by keeping all of these platforms in play, this approach would prevent huge quantities of existing infrastructure from being scrapped prematurely, integral to Labor’s approach and still intended to occur under NBN Co’s current strategy.

Regrettably, Turnbull has put the panel’s recommendation on hold, saying it would disrupt deployment and impose fiscal losses. These objections are hardly compelling. The greatest risk to timely, cost-effective deployment arises from a dysfunctional and heavily politicised NBN Co. This is a business that has struggled to deploy even a single technology. It is unrealistic to expect it to manage platforms where it has very little expertise, such as the HFC. NBN Co’s incentive is to preserve its monopoly, not to meet consumer needs.Putting all taxpayer and consumer eggs in this one basket is reckless. As for the losses, they are already there. As Vertigan shows, the costs of the wireless and satellite services are about five times what consumers are willing to pay. It is only because the public sector is not compelled to disclose likely losses (unlike private companies) that this destruction of wealth goes unreported.

Of course, selling the assets would crystallise the losses. But that honesty – putting in place transparent ways of funding any universal service obligations – is a benefit of Vertigan’s proposal, not a cost. So, too, is the fact competition between a future HFC Co and a fibre-to-the node/fibre-to-the-premises operator would drive down prices to consumers.

The greatest risks to both taxpayers and consumers come from not acting promptly to introduce competition when the prior government legislated every single competitor out of the market. If we still haven’t learnt just how high the costs of government monopolies are, the prospects for Australia are poor indeed.

David Leyonhjelm is the Liberal Democrats’ senator for NSW.

The Australian Financial Review
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
Are you really this ignorant or are you putting extra effort into it? o_O

My point is that my mate's manufacturing business is pretty much finished due to offshore efficiencies. Most of them in Australia are, particularly on a large scale.

So your point about engineering firms relocating, costs of materials transport, and logistics are not going to be a concern for manufacturing into the future.

Those attempts at reducing urban/rural drift failed because ultimately logistics got them.

Are you still with me?

The technology economy that we NEED to become doesn't require close location with its primary resource: people. Communication on a very fast network removes the need for it, particularly the coming advances in VR, 3D projection, and data.


Ignorance is bliss.

I understand the efficiencies argument well.

Not all manufacuring will go. Some bespoke is doing very well and may move to regional locations based up costs.

High tech companies may have no need to manufacture but will still experience the effects of transport costs ( workers etc travelling away for breaks, shopping, dentists etc ) there are may other issues which will NOT attract them. Remember that to get teachers into remote areas for a couple of years requires major incentives and don't always expect the best and brightest to go or stay.

Mining uses fly in's as it can't get people to stay and high tech will meet the same issues.

Also the distorted cost the the rest of the tax paying community suffers to do this is not realistic.
 

Pfitzy

George Gregan (70)
Mining uses fly in's as it can't get people to stay and high tech will meet the same issues.


Unmitigated bullshit.

The reason mining has so much FIFO is the mines don't just pop up in towns conveniently, and the cost of flying these people around is cheaper than building a town. Throw in the fact that a lot of FIFO workers are entering the mining industry for the first time, they're not established prior.

I'm talking about existing towns that could be bolstered through the introduction of new people who already have a job, but can telecommute for 90% of their tasks.

As usual, you're making your arguments based on selective detail, and are in no danger of having an original or productive thought.

Monkeys in the cage syndrome.
 

Pfitzy

George Gregan (70)
AND, I might add - while there are still mining towns, this isn't the fucking 1850s when people had to live near the bloody things.

Throw in the fact that mining is slowly choking to death here and your backwards attitude towards the entire issue of the NBN is complete.
 

boyo

Mark Ella (57)
Natural monopolies should be run by Governments, no exception.
Monopolies are always bad, and natural monopolies cannot be challenged by competition. Electricity, water, trains, airports, optical fibre for telecommunications are all natural monopolies. If they end up in private hands the citizens pay economic rent, usually to an offshore company.
Instead, governments should know these assets are off-limit for sale.
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
Unmitigated bullshit.

The reason mining has so much FIFO is the mines don't just pop up in towns conveniently, and the cost of flying these people around is cheaper than building a town. Throw in the fact that a lot of FIFO workers are entering the mining industry for the first time, they're not established prior.

I'm talking about existing towns that could be bolstered through the introduction of new people who already have a job, but can telecommute for 90% of their tasks.

As usual, you're making your arguments based on selective detail, and are in no danger of having an original or productive thought.

Monkeys in the cage syndrome.

May I suggest you watch the ABC program on at the moment on the fly ins.

You still ignore the plain facts of where people will prefer to live. In the Albury experiment piles of money was used to try to attract folk -- didn't work.

Just because you spent heaps of tax payers money putting in an NBN to some rural town doesn't attract people or business. It may work in a specific town that has a location factor like Eden but NOT across the board.

If I can telecommute I will but it doesn't mean I / people will leave behind beaches, shopping etc in droves. What happened to all the call centres located in Tasmania?
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
Natural monopolies should be run by Governments, no exception.
Monopolies are always bad, and natural monopolies cannot be challenged by competition. Electricity, water, trains, airports, optical fibre for telecommunications are all natural monopolies. If they end up in private hands the citizens pay economic rent, usually to an offshore company.
Instead, governments should know these assets are off-limit for sale.


Sounds like a quote from the Communist party manifesto or wait the ALP policy still in place about the nationalization of the factors of production.
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
Oh dear.

You have no idea.[/quote







A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which it is most efficient (involving the lowest long-run average cost) for production to be
concentrated in a single firm. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Telecommunications, electricity etc are all run more efficiently by private firms not a central government as is the world wide experience.
 

boyo

Mark Ella (57)
I didn't write this:-

"A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which it is most efficient (involving the lowest long-run average cost) for production to be
concentrated in a single firm. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

Telecommunications, electricity etc are all run more efficiently by private firms not a central government as is the world wide experience."

Why did you put it as "boyo said"?

The excuse that privatising leads to more efficient operating is a joke. Cost to the public users have soared from every privatised utility and profits are mostly sent overseas whilst these so called privatised entities continue to receive public funding as well!

The world has moved on. Apparently you have not.
 

Runner

Nev Cottrell (35)
Sorry but the system put it up and I tried to change the way it appears without luck.

On the second point, they always cost less to run and therefore are less of a drain on the public purse.
Tax is paid to the profits which enters the public purse for use. Odd that a carbon tax is user pay but privatization based on the same idea is unacceptable.
 

boyo

Mark Ella (57)
NBN Co announces construction trial of 1300 fibre nodes
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/govern...rial-of-1300-fibre-nodes-20141019-118k49.html
"Fairfax Media understands the rollout is a "construction trial", taking fibre only as far as 1300 nodes in street corners in preparation for eventual connection to the premises when negotiations with Telstra for the use of its copper network are finalised"

Notice that the trial doesn't involve connecting the copper (the copper to the premises), the same copper which NBNCo doesn't own or to which NBNCo doesn't have access.

If NBNCo don't reach agreement with Telstra this will turn out to be a pointless and expensive exercise.
 

boyo

Mark Ella (57)
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