NBN: Abbott slams “interactive gambling” waste

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Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has again called for the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network project to be scrapped, claiming Queensland residents suffering in the wake of the state’s catastrophic floods would rather have transport infrastructure rebuilt than the “interactive gambling” that he said the NBN would offer.

In a press conference yesterday, the Coalition leader said he agreed Australia needed broadband — but it didn’t need “a $50 billion white elephant”, which he said was likely to result from the creation of a new government-backed monopoly broadband infrastructure provider.

“So, look, I’m against the NBN and I certainly think that as far as the general public of flood ravaged Queensland and Victoria are concerned, what they want is restored roads, restored railways, bridges that you can safely cross. They don’t necessarily want more interactive gambling or more movie downloads,” he said.

The comments echo previous Coalition remarks on the infrastructure project. After the Labor Federal Government released NBN Co’s business case in late December, Abbott claimed the NBN would primarily be used to fuel the nation’s passion for high-end video and gaming content.

“It’s pretty obvious that the main usage for the NBN is going to be internet-based television, video entertainment and gaming,” the Opposition leader said at the time. “We are not against using the internet for all these things, but do we really want to invest $50 billion worth of hard-earned taxpayers’ money in what is essentially a video entertainment system?”

However, comments by Prime Minister Julia Gillard this week appear to suggest the NBN will go ahead as planned in Queensland.

“More infrastructure is already needed to nurture the mining boom and support economic growth, so the Government is investing in long lived economic assets and infrastructure like high speed broadband, ports, roads and rail,” the Labor leader said in a speech to the National Press Club this week.

“So 2011 remains a year when I will be delivering the national broadband network, creating more opportunity through education reforms and improving health care as well as a year when I will make long-term decisions on workforce participation and a carbon price.”

Union representatives, too, have come out to back the NBN — with Peter Tighe, national secretary of the Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union, telling the ABC’s PM program it was “abhorrent” to use the current situation in Queensland to run a political argument about what was appropriate infrastructure.

And NBN Co chief Mike Quigley also backed the union’s comments on the same program, saying it was “a little misguided” to say there was a choice between deploying the NBN or spending the money on other infrastructure.

Image credit: MystifyMe Concert Photography, Creative Commons

77 COMMENTS

  1. On Twitter I think that in the past 48 hours I have had to explain about the fact that we can’t exactly “scrap” the NBN and then expect ourselves to magically be given a few billion to redirect to the floods, and it feels a bit like wackahole.

    Even through it is clearly a political pull, and his idea of “scrapping” the NBN to pay for the floods, he has managed to convience a lot of people that it is the way to pay for the floods, even when we give them more viable and achievable solutions, for example, scrapping the surplus promise. And this somewhat concerns me.

    • You and me both KnightKhaos. We need the Government to step up and tell the Australia why it is vital the network continues and to try to explain to people that it will help build Australia’s economy, put money back into the community, and provide exactly the sort of next generation infrastructure that Queensland needs to help it find it’s feet over the coming decade.

      Shouldn’t we be thinking about giving Queensland every little bit of help we can to rebuild it better than ever?! While much of Queensland is in ruins, it makes perfect sense to fast-track the roll-out in Queensland now, giving business and homes the head-start they deserve.

  2. Now that we’ve had “interactive gambling machine” and “video entertainment system”, what will Abbott label the NBN next? How about “a giant digital brothel” or “interactive bomb making instruction system”..

  3. 50 billion check
    White elephant check
    Video entertainment system check
    Government-backed monopoly check

    Oh we have a new one this week “interactive gambling” yay! you win teh prize Tony!

  4. I believe in democracy. I believe that candidates should all put their view on the future direction of Australia and allow the population to make an informed choice and pick the best candidates on the day of the election. Information about the NBN should be put forward and the public should debate it on its merit.

    Yet the Liberals are putting out so much mis-information our there about the project and gaining so much support for scrapping it, based on this information. Given that scrapping the NBN won’t free up any extra money for flood relief, how can Tony get away with putting out all this mis-information out there and not be held accountable. How can he throw figures like $50B around and not be pulled up on it?

    I’m a swinging voter, I’ll vote for who I think is the best person on the day. I have never seen a politician stoop to the low levels that Tony does, and that fact he is using the Flood as a way to score cheap political points, is a massive insult to anyone who has just lost everything and even loved ones in the disaster.

    • “the net works just fine as it is”

      So do computers and phones. Therefore nothing needs to change with technology from now on and our bandwidth requirements will never increase.

      All people in the bush are also extremely happy, as we all have exactly the same high speed net right?

      In fact I’m calling to the word right now “Please stop all progress”. Thankyou.

      • Sorry Damo. That reply as not intended for you, rather the enlightened one known as addinall below.

  5. Why do we continue to let such an extreme level of incompetence and incessant political grandstanding participate in our political system? Tony Abbot is not competent to do the job he aspires to, he needs to curl up in a padded cell and forget the rest of the world exists.

    Clearly he has demonstrated he is completely out of touch and has no idea what is going on.

  6. Why am I not surprised that someone going with a nom-de-net of NightKhaos wants a taxpayer funder super fast video game? The current NBN is a pointless wast of time and money, and need to be scrapped at once before more money is wasted. Put the money into decent roads, the net works just fine as it is.

    • “the net works just fine as it is”

      So do computers and phones. Therefore nothing needs to change with technology from now on and our bandwidth requirements will never increase.

      All people in the bush are also extremely happy, as we all have exactly the same high speed net right?

      In fact I’m calling to the word right now “Please stop all progress”. Thankyou.

      • “the net works just fine as it is”

        And it does.

        “So do computers and phones. Therefore nothing needs to change with technology from now on and our bandwidth requirements will never increase.”

        Individual bandwidth is decreasing. With the advent of HTML5 and CSS3 should decrease moreso.
        Unless you want to use the internet as another television platform.

        “All people in the bush are also extremely happy, as we all have exactly the same high speed net right?
        In fact I’m calling to the word right now “Please stop all progress”. Thankyou.”

        People in “the bush” are not going to get anything better then they have now under the NBN architecture.

      • All people in the bush are also extremely happy, as we all have exactly the same high speed net right?

        I live in the bush, and I for one would love to have higher speeds for work and personal requirements. That is just a comment from someone who does not live in the bush.

        • Read my post again. The entire thing was sarcastic! :)

          Of course we need better services in the bush and this is one of the biggest advantages of the NBN.

    • @addinall – The project is self funding. The government is taking out a loan to cover the cost and the revenue from the NBN covers the repayments (loan + interest). Scrapping the NBN doesn’t free up any money to spend on roads/hospitals/flood relief – It just means we are in less debit (debt for investment isn’t a bad thing!).

      Think of it like buying an investment property with a 100% loan and finding a tenant willing to pay enough rent to cover your loan repayments + expenses. At the end of the day, you end up with a house that cost you nothing. But if you don’t buy the house, you don’t end up with any extra cash now available to spend on a holiday!

    • And why am I not surprised old adds here, who claims to have been (perhaps “has been”, would be more apt, Mark) a visionary pioneer in Oz’ IT industry, has popped his head up A G A I N, to promote more visionless, Lib propaganda for OUR future…

      If you were a visionary in IT, as your previous chest beating claimed (elsewhere) addinall, WTF happened to you…, seriously?

      • “And why am I not surprised old adds here, who claims to have been (perhaps “has been”, would be more apt, Mark) a visionary pioneer in Oz’ IT industry, has popped his head up A G A I N, to promote more visionless, Lib propaganda for OUR future…
        If you were a visionary in IT, as your previous chest beating claimed (elsewhere) addinall, WTF happened to you…, seriously?”

        You should ask the dole office to give you more stuff to do.
        Your porn and games MAY seem important, but it isn’t.

        ehealth.addinall.org

        What is it you can’t do with current technology?

        • Oh what an ultra intelligent response (you sound more and more like ol’ Ray) the dole, porn… what a scream you, Abbott and the rest of the 1950’s brigade are!

          All proof that you are indeed that IT legend you keep telling us about [sic]. And I see you again need a free plug (business no good eh, what a shame).

          Ooh BTW, you forgot to tell me to get a haircut…my you are slipping!

          • Shrug. Post a link to YOUR work and a real name.
            Otherwise, I will continue to regard you as a spotty little wanker with no experience, education or anything to say.

            Kindest regards,
            Mark Addinall.

    • cant agree with you more

      if we want 100mb speeds just coz uk has it how about this one…..

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPduAYKk_6I

      the japs have had this train that did 581KPH 8 years ago. our trains cant even run on time. forget running at 500+kph

      euro TGV runs at 200MPH our XPT nsw probably only get to 80-100kph

      our roads are limited to 110KPH
      germany have portions of their autobarn unlimited i think about 33% has no speed limit

      true we have a big digital divide. trust me i know…. i just moved house coz i was only getting 2mbps now getting 100/2 with optus speed pack and i do feal for thoes on crap connections.

      but you must all agree it time we did more aobut other things to. many of witch proably should have been started first.

      imagine if we had a high speed rail link melb -syd-bris would make air travel slow (east to west coast we still need to fly of corse thats a hell of a long way to lay high speed rail, but why not up the east coast.

      also if our roads were built thicker as they are in germany they wouldnt fall apart. and they could then be rated for higher speeds on flat open freeways. before you jump on me let me say we also need more driver training if we did that

      • “cant agree with you more”

        What part do you agree with?

        That the NBN is a “super fast video game”? (it isn’t, there are millions of applications for universal broadband, and not all of them need 100Mbps, but most of them do require more reliable service than we have currently)

        That it is pointless? (it isn’t, in an information based ecomony, such as the one we currently live in, the ability to transfer information quickly, cleanly, reliably and effiecently should be consideredly infinately more vauable than anything else)

        That it is a waste of money? (it isn’t, it just CAN be done cheaper, that doesn’t make the current solution a waste, just excessive overkill and since no one likes spending money, espeically tax money, on high risk low return projects, like the NBN, we porbably should be considering these cheaper alternatives that “push” the industry into the future rather than “pull” them there as the NBN will, after all since we value connectivity so much the industry will respond to demand for faster services if we give them the ability to do so)

        That we need to put the money for Broadband into roads? (we do need to improve roads, but that doesn’t mean scarificing Broadband policy to do it, and considering most road projects are STATE responsibly, I don’t see how scraping a FEDERAL policy will help them, unless you’re thinking of building an Interstate network like they have in the US)

        That the net works fine as it is? (not true, there are PARTS of the net that work fine as they are, and that all depends on your definition. If we define the net for being adequate for what you intend to do with it, then there are a lot of shortfalls that need to be addressed. For exampel a universal problem is uploads, or the lack thereof, for example, even in HFC networks where they have the capablity to offer higher upload burst speeds they still give pitiful uploads of a maximum of 2Mbps, this is vs 100Mbps. Depending on what you are doing, this means it is fairly likely that under many applications, especially ones that use multiple concurrent connections, you will achieve no where near the 100Mbps because you saturate your upload with management traffic, and don’t even try to do something else while this task is underway…)

        “if we want 100mb speeds just coz uk has it how about this one…..”

        It’s not just about speed. Speed is a useful side effect of the NBN’s true purpose, that is all.

        “the japs have had this train that did 581KPH 8 years ago. our trains cant even run on time. forget running at 500+kph

        euro TGV runs at 200MPH our XPT nsw probably only get to 80-100kph

        imagine if we had a high speed rail link melb -syd-bris would make air travel slow (east to west coast we still need to fly of corse thats a hell of a long way to lay high speed rail, but why not up the east coast.”

        The MX-1 is a prototype, not in commerial operation. If you want to include ultra-high-speed rail in an agruement I recommend Shanghai Transrapid? Commerially operating at 420km/h.

        And there are lobby groups thinking of installing a 350km/h system between Brisband and Melbrone, so the issue of our inadquate rail system is being addressed. Just give it time. (Honestly I think they should be opting for the Tranrapid system as that will cost about the same and offer crusing speeds of 500km/h, but they are still at very early stages). But again we don’t need to drop Broadband Policy to do it.

        “our roads are limited to 110KPH
        germany have portions of their autobarn unlimited i think about 33% has no speed limit

        also if our roads were built thicker as they are in germany they wouldnt fall apart. and they could then be rated for higher speeds on flat open freeways. before you jump on me let me say we also need more driver training if we did that”

        We need better driver training anyway, maybe a standardised driving system across states, but most of the roads problem is a STATE problem as I said earlier, not a FEDERAL one. There is limited things a Federal project can do. Interstate highways and standardised driving tests, but that’s about it. So again, there is no need to divert money away from Broadband policy to do this either. (Are you seeing a theme yet?)

        “true we have a big digital divide. trust me i know…. i just moved house coz i was only getting 2mbps now getting 100/2 with optus speed pack and i do feal for thoes on crap connections.”

        Then you understand why it is important, good, but you’re falling for the crap that improving Broadband is “all about speed”, which isn’t true. Yes, there are better options than the NBN to do it, but no matter how you look at it, we still need to do something.

        “but you must all agree it time we did more aobut other things to. many of witch proably should have been started first.”

        It doesn’t matter. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. The Federal government, and the opposition, are discussing improving Broadband (and aren’t getting anywhere I might add), I for one am going to take them off on this offer, because as much as I would like to see all the other things you mentioned happen, Broadband, for some reason is on the table now, and taking it off the table to deal with other stuff is a waste of everybodies time. Especially when dealing with the “other stuff” will still take years if we start RIGHT NOW, so while the people debate the issues on how best to deal with the “other stuff”, we can deal with this problem.

        That is how government works. You prioritise stuff, and for some reason the government, and the opposition consider Broadband more important than the “other stuff” mentioned. And if you don’t believe me that the Opposition support fixing Broadband, it was them who suggested Broadband Connect (which lead to the NBN through a series of questionable decisions and political actions) in the first place. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but they aren’t debating NOT to do anything about Broadband, they are debating instead NOT to do the NBN. They still have their “Real Action” policy (which isn’t good enough, but that is another issue).

  7. Statements like that make me feel good that he didn’t get into Government. I wonder if he thinks these lines up, or has a writer. Either way, they come from his mouth.

    He should spend a month with an IT Business. It won’t be too long before he realises that businesses are being restricted by the lack of serious Internet Infrastructure. This includes workers homes, who generally have even less internet capability.

    Wonder where he sits on “Family/Work” Balance. The ability to work remotely, conference from Home, connect telephony to the office, needs a solid infrastructure. I can’t do it at the moment, and I live in Canberra. I think he clearly wants everyone to stay at the office and work….

    Wonder where he stands on Distance Learning, is this what he calls Video Entertainment System??? Distance learning can be further enhanced with a reasonable amount of bandwidth such as live and replayed Lectures (fitting in with peoples life/work balance). Why hasn’t anyone implemented it, because we don’t have the infrastructure and across Australia.

    Wish the guy would grow up!!! or take the time to understand what he really is talking about. Is this all he uses it for??

    I absolutely feel for the Queenslanders, (have relatives there), but to use it as an ill-informed political argument, is bordering on disgusting.

    • “He should spend a month with an IT Business. It won’t be too long before he realises that businesses are being restricted by the lack of serious Internet Infrastructure. This includes workers homes, who generally have even less internet capability.”

      Well, I have just spent the last 27 years in IT, and I can’t see where business is being adversely affected or held back by lack of bandwidth. Just where is this great shortfall?

      “Wonder where he sits on “Family/Work” Balance. The ability to work remotely, conference from Home, connect telephony to the office, needs a solid infrastructure. I can’t do it at the moment, and I live in Canberra. I think he clearly wants everyone to stay at the office and work….”

      And so?

      “Wonder where he stands on Distance Learning, is this what he calls Video Entertainment System??? Distance learning can be further enhanced with a reasonable amount of bandwidth such as live and replayed Lectures (fitting in with peoples life/work balance). Why hasn’t anyone implemented it, because we don’t have the infrastructure and across Australia.”

      Distance learning IS implemented and is working just fine.
      These are idiotic reasons dragged up to support a bizarre idea that people are going to be “all healthy and educated and stuff” by getting a second rate network for only $50 BILLION.

      What CAN’T YOU DO on the net right now?

      • In your experience, how much bandwidth was needed 27 years ago? Take that as a zero point.

        Flash forward to 2011 – how much bandwidth is needed now? Take that as a value of one.

        Twenty seven years to get from zero to one. How long do you expect it to take to get from one to two?

        It’s going to be a lot less than 27 years.

        If we wait five years to do anything, we’ll be five years behind the eight ball. It might be very true to say that 100Mbps is not required right now, but when it is required in 10 years, it will take 10 years to build up the infrastructure.

        That would total 20 years of wasted time.

        • “In your experience, how much bandwidth was needed 27 years ago? Take that as a zero point.”

          Just enough to log onto IBMNet for my work, and looking at a fledgeling TCP/IP network.
          The IBMNet ran through 3174 terminal servers with MODEMS connected at 9600 kbps.
          That was enough bandwidth to write programs in C and deliver them.

          “Flash forward to 2011 – how much bandwidth is needed now? Take that as a value of one.”

          Not a lot of difference, now I write programs in PHP, Javascript and SQL. The size of my
          code has DECREASED.

          “Twenty seven years to get from zero to one. How long do you expect it to take to get from one to two?
          It’s going to be a lot less than 27 years.”

          Sure are you? Tell ya what, go and find the private investment to build the thing.

          “If we wait five years to do anything, we’ll be five years behind the eight ball”

          What eight ball? Tell me ONE THING you can’t do now using the net as it is.
          More television. If the internet is used for the purpose intended, mainly stateless
          data transfer, it works just fine. The average Australian now downloads 7-8 GB
          per month, and most of that is frappery to make web pages pretty. Are pretty
          web sites important? I think so. Do they need to be prettier and MORE efficient?
          Yes. Hence HTML5, CSS3 and better PHP classes. Not to mention DOM
          manipulation through js.
          The NBN argument is that we should rush into building a project that clearly few
          people want or need, at a HUGE cost! Hoping that in a decade it will work and people find a need for it!

          “It might be very true to say that 100Mbps is not required right now, but when it is required in 10 years, it will take 10 years to build up the infrastructure.
          That would total 20 years of wasted time.”

          And 20 years spending money on REAL infrastructure.

          Given that it is never going to be built anyway, what is the point?

          • So based entirely on your experience of bandwidth, you feel that nobody else should experience the benefits? You feel that nobody else has bandwidth requirements over and above yours?

            The AVERAGE Australian does get around 7 to 8Mbps mark as you suggest. An “average” is a statistical measure which does not necessarily reflect the full picture. If you get 15Mbps and I get 1Mbps, our average is 8Mbps. Good for you. Bad for me.

            This 7 to 8 Mbps number is artificially high due to the amount of ADSL2 and HFC infrastructure found in the large population centres. I would love to see the average speed OUTSIDE of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.

            I am sure it is nowhere near 7 to 8 Mbps.

            Ever listened to the stories of people outside of the reach of even the ADSL1 network? The people who are restricted to dialup speeds on noisy, failing 60 year old copper lines?

            Pull your head out of the sand – the NBN isn’t just about speed. Many people will never see broadband if we persist with the copper network.

            Ever.

          • “So based entirely on your experience of bandwidth, you feel that nobody else should experience the benefits?”

            So, what are the benefits?
            1.
            2.
            3.

            Just fill em in.

            “You feel that nobody else has bandwidth requirements over and above yours?”

            I don’t FEEL anything. I am waiting for someone to give me a business case for
            the NBN topology. So far it doesn’t exist.

            “The AVERAGE Australian does get around 7 to 8Mbps mark as you suggest.”

            You might try reading what I wrote. Given recent analysis the average internet user
            DOWNLOADS 7-8GB per month. And he trend to download is NOT increasing.
            The purchase of DOWNLOAD CAPACITY has increased, but not the use.

            “An “average” is a statistical measure which does not necessarily reflect the full picture. If you get 15Mbps and I get 1Mbps, our average is 8Mbps. Good for you. Bad for me.”

            Wish I had you ad the ABS….

            “This 7 to 8 Mbps number is artificially high due to the amount of ADSL2 and HFC infrastructure found in the large population centres. I would love to see the average speed OUTSIDE of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
            I am sure it is nowhere near 7 to 8 Mbps.”

            Even if I said this (which I did not) so what? How is putting FTTH in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth going to help Joe the farmer in the bush? It isn’t going to do a damn thing!

            “Ever listened to the stories of people outside of the reach of even the ADSL1 network? The people who are restricted to dialup speeds on noisy, failing 60 year old copper lines?
            Pull your head out of the sand – the NBN isn’t just about speed. Many people will never see broadband if we persist with the copper network.
            Ever.”

            What crap. Anyone, in any square foot of this country can have broadband now AS IT IS DEFINED BY THE NBN.

            You are not going to get 12 Mbps via satellite to subscribers. Just not possible. The NBN has scaled that claim down to 2-4 Mbps. Which is what is available RIGHT NOW.

          • “So, what are the benefits?”
            1. The ability for multiple users in the household to use the internet to it’s full potential without concern of preventing another user in the household from using the internet. For example, if on a Skype call another user can browse the web without worrying about interfearing with the call in progress.
            2. The ability for small and medium businesses to quickly and cheaply have access to high bandwidth solutions without the need to install an expensive ad-hoc fibre or SHDSL connection (in order the of $5 to $10) and pay insanely high usage fees (in the order of over $3k) for commited data rates when in actuality they only require high burst speeds for their purposes.
            3. The ability to use offsite backup solutions for small and medium businesses that do not require the physcial transportation of media and thus allow for them to reduce their cost of operations.

            To name three, as you requested.

            Just fill em in.

            “I don’t FEEL anything. I am waiting for someone to give me a business case for
            the NBN topology. So far it doesn’t exist.”

            Yes, you’re right, it doesn’t exsist on this scale. It is unprecidented. With have no mertic to measure this against. Other countries are watching US to see the results of this particular project.

            But what precisely is wrong with being a world leader? What is precisely wrong with being first? Is it the fear of getting it wrong?

            I get that, I do, conservatives have a problem with taking this kind of risk. However, you can’t deny that we need to improve broadband infrastructure. And with that in mind, it is very important we do something to that end… and as I ask everyone who takes your position: what is your plan?

            Even Mr Turnbull muttered something and then turned it back to bashing the NBN, so I actually went and read his plan. And let me tell you, I was not at all impressed.

            “Even if I said this (which I did not) so what? How is putting FTTH in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth going to help Joe the farmer in the bush? It isn’t going to do a damn thing!”

            And giving them wireless solutions capable of 12Mbps per user, which is about 8x what they can get now, isn’t going to improve their situation? Giving the small towns with populations over 1K FTTH isn’t going to help those in the “bush” either?

            “What crap. Anyone, in any square foot of this country can have broadband now AS IT IS DEFINED BY THE NBN.

            You are not going to get 12 Mbps via satellite to subscribers. Just not possible. The NBN has scaled that claim down to 2-4 Mbps. Which is what is available RIGHT NOW.”

            Okay, let us see the source for this please? Because I have not seen anything in the news for them withdrawling on them giving 12Mbps sat services. Unless you mean the fact they are STARTING by providing EXISTING sat services and then UPGRADING as they launch new sats? We yes, we knew that… your point?

            Also, where is your evidence that it is not physically possible to deliever 12Mbps to sat customers?

          • “So, what are the benefits?”
            1. The ability for multiple users in the household to use the internet to it’s full potential without concern of preventing another user in the household from using the internet. For example, if on a Skype call another user can browse the web without worrying about interfearing with the call in progress.

            You want to use Skype, whilst other watch videos on the same network? Wow. THAT is a good reason for a $50 BILLION spend!

            Use a mobile you cheap [censored.]

            2. The ability for small and medium businesses to quickly and cheaply have access to high bandwidth solutions without the need to install an expensive ad-hoc fibre or SHDSL connection (in order the of $5 to $10) and pay insanely high usage fees (in the order of over $3k) for commited data rates when in actuality they only require high burst speeds for their purposes.

            That made no sense. You have never worked as an analyst have you?

            You can host a small business at less than $300 per year, and double that, you can have it in two discrete geographic locations. Anyone who pretends to make money from the net, and is unaware of this, is just plain stupid.

            3. The ability to use offsite backup solutions for small and medium businesses that do not require the physcial transportation of media and thus allow for them to reduce their cost of operations.

            Phhttt! Another [censored]. Go to the post office and BUY a TB disk for about $69.
            Then you can back up your precious work and stick it in a bag going home.

            To name three, as you requested.
            Just fill em in.
            “I don’t FEEL anything. I am waiting for someone to give me a business case for
            the NBN topology. So far it doesn’t exist.”
            Yes, you’re right, it doesn’t exsist on this scale. It is unprecidented. With have no mertic to measure this against. Other countries are watching US to see the results of this particular project.

            Ah yes, unprecidented mertics… The rest of the world are implementing FTTN and choice of last mile. Wireless being the most favoured option.

            But what precisely is wrong with being a world leader? What is precisely wrong with being first? Is it the fear of getting it wrong?
            I get that, I do, conservatives have a problem with taking this kind of risk. However, you can’t deny that we need to improve broadband infrastructure. And with that in mind, it is very important we do something to that end… and as I ask everyone who takes your position: what is your plan?
            Even Mr Turnbull muttered something and then turned it back to bashing the NBN, so I actually went and read his plan. And let me tell you, I was not at all impressed.

            Gee. I am sure the whole world is sad that YOU are not impressed.
            [Censored].

            “Even if I said this (which I did not) so what? How is putting FTTH in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth going to help Joe the farmer in the bush? It isn’t going to do a damn thing!”
            And giving them wireless solutions capable of 12Mbps per user, which is about 8x what they can get now, isn’t going to improve their situation? Giving the small towns with populations over 1K FTTH isn’t going to help those in the “bush” either?
            “What crap. Anyone, in any square foot of this country can have broadband now AS IT IS DEFINED BY THE NBN.
            You are not going to get 12 Mbps via satellite to subscribers. Just not possible. The NBN has scaled that claim down to 2-4 Mbps. Which is what is available RIGHT NOW.”
            Okay, let us see the source for this please?

            Me.

            Because I have not seen anything in the news for them withdrawling on them giving 12Mbps sat services. Unless you mean the fact they are STARTING by providing EXISTING sat services and then UPGRADING as they launch new sats? We yes, we knew that… your point?

            The NBN is going to ‘improve’ the bush by offering what is available today.
            No change.

            Also, where is your evidence that it is not physically possible to deliever 12Mbps to sat customers?

            Look at the birds and do the math you [Censored].

          • hey addinall,

            I’ve chopped out a few words from your post to maintain civility. Let’s keep things on track and not just go around randomly insulting people on Delimiter shall we? I am currently monitoring posts.

            Cheers,

            Renai
            Delimiter Overwatch

          • In reply to this quite frankly it seems just torrent of insults, which I have some time to digest and otherwise look over, I would like to say that I find your behaviour quite disgusting for a 27 year veteran in the industry. It is depressing to think that this, the industry I know and love and wish to be a part of, has made you so bitter. I can only hope my career path does not have such an souring effect on myself as I progress through it.

            “You want to use Skype, whilst other watch videos on the same network? Wow. THAT is a good reason for a $50 BILLION spend!”

            Yes, it is a good reason, as this is what the majority of people buy their internet connections at home for now. There is no point buying it for general browsing, we have mobile services for that, or for a single computer or user, again, we have mobile service for that. No the reason you buy a home broadband connection is to do bandwidth heavy tasks, and to do them concurrently. And I personally pay quite a lot for the privilege of this, approximately $140 a month. So I don’t consider myself to be cheap.

            2. The ability for small and medium businesses to quickly and cheaply have access to high bandwidth solutions without the need to install an expensive ad-hoc fibre or SHDSL connection (in order the of $5 to $10) and pay insanely high usage fees (in the order of over $3k) for commited data rates when in actuality they only require high burst speeds for their purposes.

            “That made no sense. You have never worked as an analyst have you?”

            I know the prices of dedicated fibre installs and the costs to get a dedicated link, and I also know the benefits of such installs for the businesses that actually need them, while I’ll admit aren’t as common as a lot of the other people who are for the NBN would like us to think, but they are significant.

            No, I haven’t worked as an analyst, I’m too young and optimistic for that. Maybe that’s my flaw, but I wear it proudly, after-all it’s you sensible been in the industry for almost 30 years types who are meant to bring us back to reality. However, if I will be honest here, if I was ever working on a project for a small to medium businesses about networking their offices, I would not hire you as a consultant, because your behaviour is intolerable, and waving around your badge with “27 years experience” will not make up for that fact.

            “You can host a small business at less than $300 per year, and double that, you can have it in two discrete geographic locations. Anyone who pretends to make money from the net, and is unaware of this, is just plain stupid.”

            $300 a year? Okay, now, I maybe young, but this complete bullshit. Sure, you can get a virtual hosting server for $300 a year… but broadband connections to office(s), rent for office(s), backup servers or systems, labour for web developers and site maintenance… all of these things go along with your “$300 a year” server, and, conservatively, that isn’t $300 a year, it’s $300 a month. Tell me, would you provide your services for free to a small business, whatever it is you do? No? Didn’t think so.

            “Phhttt! Another [censored]. Go to the post office and BUY a TB disk for about $69.
            Then you can back up your precious work and stick it in a bag going home.”

            For a business such backup solutions are unacceptable, especially for mission critical data, and as a “expert” in the field of 27 years I am actually quite appalled that you would seriously suggest that.
            “Ah yes, unprecedented metrics… The rest of the world are implementing FTTN and choice of last mile. Wireless being the most favoured option.”

            And they will pay for that dearly in the long term, especially if they opt for wireless. As someone familiar with the technologies involved, who seriously considering making a career out of implementing said technologies across the world, you should take me seriously on this, but I’m guessing you won’t because I don’t have your 27 years of experience right?

            “Me.” (as a source of evidence to prove that we aren’t going to be able to deliver PIRs of 12Mbps to sat subscribers)

            “The NBN is going to ‘improve’ the bush by offering what is available today.
            No change.”

            “Look at the birds and do the math you [Censored].”

            Now, even with 27 years of experience in the industry, as I have already stated, you would know that if you talked to a client like this you would be fired on the spot. And if you spoke to a peer like this you would find it quite hard to get work as well.

            So, since this is friendly discussion between one professional to another, one professional who has just entered the industry who knows a lot of theory on the subject matter and asked you to provide evidence to back up your blanket claim that it can’t be done is asking you why, it is only reasonable for you, considering you have experience, to relay your wisdom.

            A well meaning, egger to learn, professional such as myself wouldn’t care if you insulted me in the process, but would still much prefer it if you actually provided the evidence.

            So, what is the reason, is there not enough spectrum to do it? Can we not get the spectral efficiency high enough to do it? Does the power requirements required to deliver this kind of signal to great as to be collected by the panels by the satellite? Does the signal strength required exceed a safety regulation? Does the high latency nature of the connection make it impossible to sustain that kind of throughput?

          • “Just enough to log onto IBMNet for my work, and looking at a fledgeling TCP/IP network.
            The IBMNet ran through 3174 terminal servers with MODEMS connected at 9600 kbps.
            That was enough bandwidth to write programs in C and deliver them.”

            Deliever them at the rate they are written yes. However, with the prevailance of mobile technology the tedancy for codebases to be deleivered asynconously is increasing, i.e. you write the code locally, test it locally, then push the code en mass to the server. However this is just coding, you can usually get away with this, even with a significantly large code base, with a few megabits, simply because you only need to push and pull what has been modified, not the entire code base.

            “Not a lot of difference, now I write programs in PHP, Javascript and SQL. The size of my
            code has DECREASED.”

            Probably because the complexity of the projects you are working on has INCREASED, meaning that you as an individual spend more time reviewing changes and understanding bug fixes, etc, to the code base, than you do actually CODING.

            However the clear problem with these exampels is that the Internet, for the majority of people, is not used for programing. Programing is a relatively low bandwidth application of the Internet.

            “Sure are you? Tell ya what, go and find the private investment to build the thing.”

            i3 in Brisbane is an example. They want to build it case they can see a profit in it, however they like all profit driven enterprises go for the lowest hanging fruit. Therefore, the “digital divide” between remote farm houses and the city will continue to increase because private enterprise can’t be bothered to lower their expectations on an ROI because they are greedy bastards.

            “What eight ball? Tell me ONE THING you can’t do now using the net as it is.
            More television. If the internet is used for the purpose intended, mainly stateless
            data transfer, it works just fine. The average Australian now downloads 7-8 GB
            per month, and most of that is frappery to make web pages pretty. Are pretty
            web sites important? I think so. Do they need to be prettier and MORE efficient?
            Yes. Hence HTML5, CSS3 and better PHP classes. Not to mention DOM
            manipulation through js.”

            This is a sign of someone who has been in the industry for too long doing the same thing, I think you need to move away from your current career choice my friend and try and work on some the exiciting stuff that isn’t using the internet for “what it was intended for”.

            Phone lines were intended to be used for voice calls, and now we pumb up to 400Mbps of data through using various DSL technologies (in practice only 8Mbps, hence the need for the upgrade). Mobile phones were intended to be used for voice calls and now we jam the spectrum with data transfer. The internet was intended to be a way to simplify the process of connecting to serveral mainframes by allowing your terminal to connect to any mainframe on the network. Now we use it to look at funny cats, watch Television, make voice calls, make video calls, check up on friends, look at photos, play games, etc, etc, etc.

            THINGS ARE OFTEN USED FOR THINGS THAT WERE NEVER INTENDED ORIGNALLY. This is what innovation is. It’s taking something, and saying “Oh hello, can’t we do this with that as well?” And then doing it. And Innovation is what drives the economy forward.

            So, innovation has gotten us to the point where we no longer use the internet for “stateless data transfer” and as such, we need to modify the definition of the internet to accomidate for that. If we don’t, we’re just boring (old) farts who think we know better. “In my day we only used the Internet to transfer C code.” Do you realise just how out of touch you sound? I don’t think you do.

            “The NBN argument is that we should rush into building a project that clearly few
            people want or need, at a HUGE cost! Hoping that in a decade it will work and people find a need for it!”

            You are focusing to much on the extreme end of the spectrum. I see it often. “We don’t need 100Mbps.” No, we don’t, but we do need about 12Mbps. And unforunately to deliever a universal “12Mbps” to everyone is an expensive excerise. So expensive, that, in actuallity it is cheaper in a lot of places to deliever 1Gbps/400Mbps capable FTTH services. They only expect 50% of people to get a service over the minimum 12Mbps you realise. And yet they are still managing to make project a 7% ROI.

            It’s just like RAM. To buy RAM for your old Amiga, even through it does everything you probably need it too, is way more expensive than buying RAM for a new PC. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that it cheaper to get a new PC than it is to get RAM for the Amiga hasn’t it? So what do you do, you go buy a whole new PC. In fact you already have haven’t you. The same applies for trying to upgrade DSL.

            The benefits for upgrading from VDSL to ADSL are minial at best. You improve performance to the select few who HAPPEN to live within a few hundred meters of the exchange and the rest get exactly the same they were getting on ADSL2+. So the senisable thing to do is to get a whole new connection technology, based upon mordern principles and mordern innovation. And that technology is FTTH.

            “And 20 years spending money on REAL infrastructure.

            Given that it is never going to be built anyway, what is the point?”

            Telecoms is REAL infrastructure. It was real enough when the government decided to build the original Telecom Australia network, and it is real enough now when they want to build the NBN.

            And the NBN is being built, I think you need to just accept that, and if you have a problem with it, maybe try and think of ways to get similar results for less cost, because clearly the Indepedents who sided with ALP for this term so they could get the NBN thought it was important, because clearly the Greens think it is important, if it wasn’t important, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.

            And once you come up with this plan, because surely with 27 years in IT you can, maybe post it somewhere and get people here to have a look at it. And we’ll see what the reaction is.

            Afterall I think you’ll find it isn’t NBN or nothing for a lot of people here, myself included, it’s NBN because we are yet to see a better idea.

          • Just enough to log onto IBMNet for my work, and looking at a fledgeling TCP/IP network.
            The IBMNet ran through 3174 terminal servers with MODEMS connected at 9600 kbps.
            That was enough bandwidth to write programs in C and deliver them.”

            “Deliever them at the rate they are written yes.”

            You are joking right? I dunno if any of you have noticed but writing an application
            takes MUCH longer than ftp’ing the code up so a server. In the order of 2,000,000:1

            ” However, with the prevailance of mobile technology the tedancy for codebases to be deleivered asynconously is increasing, i.e. you write the code locally, test it locally, then push the code en mass to the server. However this is just coding, you can usually get away with this, even with a significantly large code base, with a few megabits, simply because you only need to push and pull what has been modified, not the entire code base.”

            Drivel.

            “Not a lot of difference, now I write programs in PHP, Javascript and SQL. The size of my
            code has DECREASED.”

            “Probably because the complexity of the projects you are working on has INCREASED, meaning that you as an individual spend more time reviewing changes and understanding bug fixes, etc, to the code base, than you do actually CODING.”

            Gee you read minds as well? Actually no. Instead of writing 700 lines of C I can now

            $db = New Connection( $dbinfo_array) or die “DB failure – ” . mysql_error();

            Libraries are better, faster, easier and encapsulated into the web servers.

            “However the clear problem with these exampels is that the Internet, for the majority of people, is not used for programing. Programing is a relatively low bandwidth application of the Internet.”

            How do you think this editor works? Magic?

            “Sure are you? Tell ya what, go and find the private investment to build the thing.”

            “i3 in Brisbane is an example. They want to build it case they can see a profit in it, however they like all profit driven enterprises go for the lowest hanging fruit. Therefore, the “digital divide” between remote farm houses and the city will continue to increase because private enterprise can’t be bothered to lower their expectations on an ROI because they are greedy bastards.”

            Apart from you lot that want a free TV network…

            “What eight ball? Tell me ONE THING you can’t do now using the net as it is.
            More television. If the internet is used for the purpose intended, mainly stateless
            data transfer, it works just fine. The average Australian now downloads 7-8 GB
            per month, and most of that is frappery to make web pages pretty. Are pretty
            web sites important? I think so. Do they need to be prettier and MORE efficient?
            Yes. Hence HTML5, CSS3 and better PHP classes. Not to mention DOM
            manipulation through js.”

            “This is a sign of someone who has been in the industry for too long doing the same thing, I think you need to move away from your current career choice my friend and try and work on some the exiciting stuff that isn’t using the internet for “what it was intended for”.”

            So, they are?

            1.
            2.
            3.

            Fill them in.

            “Phone lines were intended to be used for voice calls, and now we pumb up to 400Mbps of data through using various DSL technologies (in practice only 8Mbps, hence the need for the upgrade). Mobile phones were intended to be used for voice calls and now we jam the spectrum with data transfer. The internet was intended to be a way to simplify the process of connecting to serveral mainframes by allowing your terminal to connect to any mainframe on the network. Now we use it to look at funny cats, watch Television, make voice calls, make video calls, check up on friends, look at photos, play games, etc, etc, etc.
            THINGS ARE OFTEN USED FOR THINGS THAT WERE NEVER INTENDED ORIGNALLY. This is what innovation is. It’s taking something, and saying “Oh hello, can’t we do this with that as well?” And then doing it. And Innovation is what drives the economy forward.”

            Exactly. That is WHY we innovate and just don’t spend money on hare-brained ideas.
            Your idea of innovation would give me $50 BILLION to build a super racing flying car,
            that can turn into a skateboard, and hope that someone will find a way to use it to cure cancer.

            “So, innovation has gotten us to the point where we no longer use the internet for “stateless data transfer””

            Yes we do.

            “and as such, we need to modify the definition of the internet to accomidate for that. If we don’t, we’re just boring (old) farts who think we know better. “In my day we only used the Internet to transfer C code.” Do you realise just how out of touch you sound? I don’t think you do.”

            I think I am a bit more up-to-date than you!

            “The NBN argument is that we should rush into building a project that clearly few
            people want or need, at a HUGE cost! Hoping that in a decade it will work and people find a need for it!”
            You are focusing to much on the extreme end of the spectrum. I see it often. “We don’t need 100Mbps.” No, we don’t, but we do need about 12Mbps. And unforunately to deliever a universal “12Mbps” to everyone is an expensive excerise. So expensive, that, in actuallity it is cheaper in a lot of places to deliever 1Gbps/400Mbps capable FTTH services. They only expect 50% of people to get a service over the minimum 12Mbps you realise. And yet they are still managing to make project a 7% ROI.
            It’s just like RAM. To buy RAM for your old Amiga, even through it does everything you probably need it too, is way more expensive than buying RAM for a new PC. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that it cheaper to get a new PC than it is to get RAM for the Amiga hasn’t it? So what do you do, you go buy a whole new PC. In fact you already have haven’t you. The same applies for trying to upgrade DSL.
            The benefits for upgrading from VDSL to ADSL are minial at best. You improve performance to the select few who HAPPEN to live within a few hundred meters of the exchange and the rest get exactly the same they were getting on ADSL2+. So the senisable thing to do is to get a whole new connection technology, based upon mordern principles and mordern innovation. And that technology is FTTH.”

            WTF that rant was about is anyone’s guess. You should work as an analyst for the NBN…

            “And 20 years spending money on REAL infrastructure.
            Given that it is never going to be built anyway, what is the point?”

            “Telecoms is REAL infrastructure. It was real enough when the government decided to build the original Telecom Australia network, and it is real enough now when they want to build the NBN.
            And the NBN is being built, I think you need to just accept that, and if you have a problem with it, maybe try and think of ways to get similar results for less cost, because clearly the Indepedents who sided with ALP for this term so they could get the NBN thought it was important, because clearly the Greens think it is important, if it wasn’t important, we wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.
            And once you come up with this plan, because surely with 27 years in IT you can, maybe post it somewhere and get people here to have a look at it. And we’ll see what the reaction is.
            Afterall I think you’ll find it isn’t NBN or nothing for a lot of people here, myself included, it’s NBN because we are yet to see a better idea.”

            I don’t think you have had an idea in your life.
            The political reality is when Labor are kicked next election, the NBN is going to be dumped. As it should be. Aided by people like me that lobby against waste. It is already dead, just dying in an expensive way.

          • “You are joking right? I dunno if any of you have noticed but writing an application
            takes MUCH longer than ftp’ing the code up so a server. In the order of 2,000,000:1”

            And what about the supporting GUI images, textures, test data, rendered documentation from LaTeX documents… all of this information of a 9600 bps modem plus the lines of code would take many, many hours. And as applications become consistant with even more rich media this is even more common. It is unfortunate that you think that because your “codebase” is just a couple of C or PHP files it means that anyone elses code base is. What about level designers, character designers, in the gaming industy?

            Not everything in an application is just text.

            “Drivel.”

            Bullshit. Just because your field of experience deals with small applications. Yes, C programming is like that, web design is like that if you have very few images, PHP is like that… but game design, an industry that is exploding at the moment worth billions now? Nope… nothing like a couple of text files and a few kilobytes. A modification to wireframe package at the wrong point can result in pushing many megabytes of data. Or, if we come a bit from left field here, how about video editing, do they push small amounts of data around? Nope. They will push many gigs.

            “So, they are?

            1.
            2.
            3.

            Fill them in.”

            I don’t like repeating myself, so I won’t.

            “Exactly. That is WHY we innovate and just don’t spend money on hare-brained ideas.
            Your idea of innovation would give me $50 BILLION to build a super racing flying car,
            that can turn into a skateboard, and hope that someone will find a way to use it to cure cancer.”

            Oh so you think that I haven’t throught of alternatives? Of course I fucking have… so far I haven’t been able to make anything stick… so where is your altenertive plan?

            200 words for an alternative plan to deliever broadband::

            –>

            Fill it in.

            “Yes we do.” (Stateless data transfer)

            Just like we still use our phones to make phone calls? Yes of course we still use it for “stateless data transfer” but we have also moved beyond this particular content. We have dynamic on demand content, we have gaming, we have video chat, with have VoIP, we have multicast television. All of these technologies are not “stateless data transfer”, they are huge amounts of dynamic content with constantly changing states.

            “I think I am a bit more up-to-date than you!”

            You have provided beyond a reasonable date that you are not. You think that spouritng the improvements with HTML5 and CSS3 will have for the Internet you are up to date? I know about all that shit, and yes, it’s going to be great, do some useful stuff like Canvas (love that) and the video tag, but the Internet is no longer just about static webpages anymore. There is gaming, there is IPTV, there is video calling and VoIP, there is P2P filetransfer like BitTorrent. There is ultra-high-definition (telepresense) video for business applications.

            It isn’t just static pages and text files anymore. So you can save 700 lines by using a library? Woopdie do… that 700 lines and then some will then be used by a 3 minute promotional video you have to upload for your client.

            “WTF that rant was about is anyone’s guess. You should work as an analyst for the NBN…”

            In simple terms: if you set a minimum of 12Mbps to 93% you need to spend a lot of money to achieve it because all of the technologies deliever a range of speeds based upon things like distance from the exchange, wireless contention, etc, etc, etc. Unfortunately because of the nature of the tech it’s cheaper to deliever an “overkill” solution like the NBN rather than provide a solution that “just meets” or “just exceeds” your mandate. That “rant” was an attempt to explain that in simple terms so the rest of the people following this thread could understand what I was saying.

            “I don’t think you have had an idea in your life.
            The political reality is when Labor are kicked next election, the NBN is going to be dumped. As it should be. Aided by people like me that lobby against waste. It is already dead, just dying in an expensive way.”

            I hear this quite a lot and I have yet to see any information that proves this beyond a reasonable doubt. So what evidence do you have that Labor are going to lose the next election? What evdeince do you have that the Liberals won’t suffer politcal and lobbying backlash that prevent them from dumping the NBN if they happen to get into power? And to add to that, what are the Liberals going to do to improve Broadband in Australia, cause so far, from what I have seen, they have got nothing.

          • @ addinall. “The NBN is never going to be built anyway…” you say? You sound like dopey Ray over at Computerworld… now, hmmm!

            Oh Adds, the NBN is being built RIGHT NOW and has already been built in areas, “it just isn’t completed – yet”! It’s not something that need to be totally completed to have been built, LOL!

            So any credibility you may have actually had, not just what you thought you had as self professed IT legend [sic], is now gone, after such a ridiculous Rayesque comment!

            But gee, if it hasn’t been built, shhh, best not tell those in Tassie, who must be staring at a blank screen and have been doing so for 6 months. Or Internode who have already increased their upload speeds and who are obviously, offering plans and services under false pretences…!

      • “getting a second rate network for only $50 BILLION.”

        Second rate? You must be thinking of that OPEL plan from a few years back, the NBN is mainly a FTTH network not wireless.

        “What CAN’T YOU DO on the net right now?”

        I cant do a lot and what I can do now I do it real slow. 3 months to backup one 500gb hdd, you think that is reasonable on 2011?

        40mbps upload BRING IT ON.

        • “What CAN’T YOU DO on the net right now?”

          “I cant do a lot and what I can do now I do it real slow.”

          I don’t really need to add anything to that observation.

          ” 3 months to backup one 500gb hdd, you think that is reasonable on 2011?
          40mbps upload BRING IT ON.”

          You REALLY spent 12 weeks to back up a tiny hard drive!
          And you could not think of a better way to do it than wait
          for the guvmint to build you a better network!

          BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

          ‘Stupid’ just got a new benchmark!!!

          • Yes it did, the bloke who said “the NBN will not get built”, when people are already and currently using it, YOU!

          • “I don’t really need to add anything to that observation.”

            No need to cry we have enough tears coming from the liberal party, you just need to realise that I am right and you are wrong…

            “You REALLY spent 12 weeks to back up a tiny hard drive!
            And you could not think of a better way to do it than wait
            for the guvmint to build you a better network!”

            oh I’m sorry you seem to think the internet is all about you and YOUR minute needs. It’s not; some of us need to back up data. I could achieve this many ways but in 2011 I want to back up remotely… such a tiny hdd yet it takes 3 months…

            ‘Stupid’ just got a new benchmark!!!

            Sure did we call it the addinall factor.

      • Addinall,

        I have spent 27+ years in IT as well, and probably a far more diverse range of businesses covered.

        I have worked (and continue to do so) in the eHealth space as well, in particular in the MRI Scanning area, and believe me the Internet in its current state is not suitable for the Doctors “requirements”. Showing a Webcam based video on a Website is not proof that the Internet is capable right now. First of all we are talking about needing Quality Video, and in general we are talking about realtime, and believe me there is no room for Video Buffering (a health professional will not accept it) and we are talking about its use across Australia, not just in capital cities.

        I note on your Website, that you talk a lot about Web based technologies (HTML5/Ajax, etc)….that’s great for 60% of systems, but it does nothing for the transfer of large imaging, it doesn’t solve these issues.

        I have a client in the eHealth area, and they have an office in Canberra, and even they cannot get the bandwidth they require and they are in a reasonable business area (Phillip).

        I have a government funded health/advisory organisation in Chifley, they can’t get Internet better than 1.5Mb/s, and to top that off, their organisation is growing quickly, and they have recently found that they cannot get more than one phone line.

        Telstra can’t cut it now, and they won’t cut it with their infrastructure in 10 years time either.

        Regards

        • I can confirm this, we are also in Phillip. Before we started paying $1320 p/month for a 5/5mbit fibre connection, our only other option was ADSL with 512/64kbps max bandwidth or a local VDSL provider providing 10/1mbps. Now divide that by 40 employees using the same connection and another 20 remote employees, plus general network contention issues because its the only option.
          There is not much to go around.

          However, having a 5/5 connection installed, this hasn’t improved all that much. But its the most we can afford to get by doing our business.

        • I have spent 27+ years in IT as well, and probably a far more diverse range of businesses covered.

          Than what?

          I have worked (and continue to do so) in the eHealth space as well, in particular in the MRI Scanning area, and believe me the Internet in its current state is not suitable for the Doctors “requirements”.

          So, what are the ‘requirements’?
          The usual HD MRI at 1mm resolution can take up to 50 scans and 10 minutes in the tube.
          The results of each scan even at this acute resolution are around 2MB per image.
          Less resolution than even the most basic of PC computers.

          Showing a Webcam based video on a Website is not proof that the Internet is capable right now. First of

          Of course it is.

          all we are talking about needing Quality Video, and in general we are talking about realtime,

          Another idiot that has forgotten what ‘realtime’ means.
          So, how many GPs in the country are waiting over a screen to see an MRI response?
          Errrrmmmm. That would be zero.

          and believe me there is no room for Video Buffering (a health professional will not accept it)

          Then you had better start writing something better than TCP/IP, IOS RIGHT NOW, as they all rely on buffering to package data transfer. So when are you due to publish OSI v4?
          Dickhead.

          and we are talking about its use across Australia, not just in capital cities.
          I note on your Website, that you talk a lot about Web based technologies (HTML5/Ajax, etc)….that’s great for 60% of systems, but it does nothing for the transfer of large imaging, it doesn’t solve these issues.
          I have a client in the eHealth area, and they have an office in Canberra, and even they cannot get the bandwidth they require and they are in a reasonable business area (Phillip).

          They need a better consultant.

          I have a government funded health/advisory organisation in Chifley, they can’t get Internet better than 1.5Mb/s, and to top that off, their organisation is growing quickly, and they have recently found that they cannot get more than one phone line.

          See above.

          I needed 4Mbps in Adelaide some 20 years ago, so erected a dish at 97 Pirie Street and built an ISP under it. Took 2 weekends and a small amount of money.
          I connected 100X the users that the NBN has done, for 1/1000 of the cost.

          Telstra can’t cut it now, and they won’t cut it with their infrastructure in 10 years time either.

          And yet you use comms infrastructure…..

          Regards

  8. For 10 years successive Qld government begged for more money to ensure that the No 1 national highway was upgraded to all weather conditions.Some years ago the forgettable Mr Howard stated that this goal had be achieved and that Highway No1 was now all weather, a bit of a minor Bush, the war is over type statement.
    Mr Abbott when in power, you had your chance to ensure that at least the our No1 highway could continue to function, to allow commerce the ability to move goods, post, food throughout the country and you failed.
    For crying out load Tony you sound like bleating, wailing brat who got the wrong Christmas present.
    A national problem like this needs construction and focus from both sides of the house not your bullshit about NBN .
    Even your mate Mal hasn’t sunk so low as to try and seek political gain from such destruction and loss of life.

  9. Cancelling one desalination plant would pay for the flood reconstruction in full.

    • Rumour has it that he’s a mad monk the Liberal party flew in directly from the year 1954 (they weren’t looking far back enough with their policies and needed a specialist who understood the needs of a post war world 2 society).

      • If he is a mad monk, then he should be from the Spanish Inquisition and let him burn every one with an idea to future proof this country

  10. This Abbott kid is a joke. Just trying to spark rage from the idiots of Australia (and that there are many).

  11. The Liberal Govt. had 18 different Broadband policies during their time of power. All of them failed. Infrastructure of all varieties have been neglected by Liberals

    In-World gambling in Linden Labs SecondLife has been banned for quite some time now. A decision based on self-governance.

    It is also a shame that the real benefits of the NBN have been undersold, especially global economics and development.

    Very soon people like Tony Abbott and others of his ilk, will fade back into their “walled gardens”.

    On 22 November 2010 the United Nations General Assembly in their 65th session, the final draft of the “Information and Communications Technologies for Development” resolution A/C.2/65/L.56 was submitted. The final stage is just around the corner.

    http://www.unctad.org/en/docs/ac265l56_en.pdf

    ~ if my online experience has been enhanced, why have I been throttled?

  12. What a flappin’ clown this Mad Monk is, Takes everybody for the fool he himself is.

    Bring on the NBN.

  13. Abbott – What about all the small business operators that rely on the internet to make money…
    Try sitting in my office and run my business on wireless technology and see how much work you can actually get done.
    After the floods, our business reverted to wireless while our cable was out of action for 2 and a half weeks – what a nightmare. Lost count of how many dropouts. Couldnt keep a connection long enough to upload new tutorial videos for my customers – had to cancel all our sale webinars, our business died during those 2 weeks – and although we are in a major capital city, the wireless connection reminded me of dial-up internet speeds from the nineties.
    When the NBN rolls past our door, I will pay premium $$$ for the 100MB limit – for every small business in Australia who does anything remotely serious on the internet it will be a no-brainer.

    And by the way, with faster and more reliable internet my business makes more $$$ and as a result pays more tax $$$’s. And this is what Abbott has missed the boat on… When business owners embrace the NBN and use it, they will make more $$$ and will all pay more taxes – I have no problem with paying more taxes, it means Im making more money.

    • “Abbott – What about all the small business operators that rely on the internet to make money…
      Try sitting in my office and run my business on wireless technology and see how much work you can actually get done.”

      Then your business model is wrong. Don’t blame the rest of us for your stupidity and bad planning.

      “After the floods, our business reverted to wireless while our cable was out of action for 2 and a half weeks – what a nightmare. Lost count of how many dropouts. Couldnt keep a connection long enough to upload new tutorial videos for my customers – had to cancel all our sale webinars, our business died during those 2 weeks – and although we are in a major capital city, the wireless connection reminded me of dial-up internet speeds from the nineties.”

      See above. My copper in West End was fine after a few days, and yes, we did take a lot of water. This new meme that seems to be emerging that somehow an NBN OFT FTTH will protect you against floods and fires just shows how brain-dead the supporters are.

      “When the NBN rolls past our door, I will pay premium $$$ for the 100MB limit – for every small business in Australia who does anything remotely serious on the internet it will be a no-brainer.”

      Anyone who trades on the net for profit has done a RISK ANALYSIS and has machines hosted to cover that risk. My web site didn’t go down for a second.

      “And by the way, with faster and more reliable internet my business makes more $$$ and as a result pays more tax $$$’s. And this is what Abbott has missed the boat on… When business owners embrace the NBN and use it, they will make more $$$ and will all pay more taxes – I have no problem with paying more taxes, it means Im making more money.”

      Yeah, blah, blah,blah…. “Trust me, I weally yam a business person who NEEDS the NBN…”.

      If you are hosting your own machines in ONE location on a network YOU don’t like with no failover, then you are stupid. What can I say? $50 BILLION is not going to help stupidity.

      • “Then your business model is wrong. Don’t blame the rest of us for your stupidity and bad planning.”

        I don’t think he is saying that, he is saying that the NBN will help him increase productivity over his current model.

        “See above. My copper in West End was fine after a few days, and yes, we did take a lot of water. This new meme that seems to be emerging that somehow an NBN OFT FTTH will protect you against floods and fires just shows how brain-dead the supporters are.”

        And now, you’re insulting the supports after not reading a word they have been saying. They are saying that copper wire is not at risk of oxidation which means that it is more likely to function when submerged than copper wire, which is true. However there is still a risk with any technology of it failing in floods and fires, just that OF cable is slightly more resitant in the flooding conditions.

        I have heard no one say that the OF cable can protect you from fires at all. Maybe there are blind supports of the NBN out there that seriously don’t know any better, but those of us that do are the ones you should be listening to.

        “Anyone who trades on the net for profit has done a RISK ANALYSIS and has machines hosted to cover that risk. My web site didn’t go down for a second.”

        Whoopdie fucking do. You probably also know about oppurtinty cost and how a new startup has much less capital to spend on failback, and therefore has to take a higher risk venture in order to maximum profits on there new and untested business model. I’m sure you made some stupid, risky decisions in your career that you look back on and go “I should have known better” this is no different.

        “Yeah, blah, blah,blah…. “Trust me, I weally yam a business person who NEEDS the NBN…”.

        If you are hosting your own machines in ONE location on a network YOU don’t like with no failover, then you are stupid. What can I say? $50 BILLION is not going to help stupidity.”

        See above. And also, seriously, grow up. I’d think for someone as old of yourself you’d actually have some maturity and the ability to agrue without reverting to direct, overt, insults against people, but obviously not.

  14. Whats the difference between a rigged Poker Machine in a Pub/Club, and a Rigged Online Poker Machine on the Internet?

    NOTHING!
    They are both rigged to loose!
    You never win!

    Wake up abbot, your draconian views of the world is really pissing everyone off under the age of 40!

  15. I keep on seeing that the Government has undersold the promotion of the NBN.

    Whilst I do not disagree with this statement entirely, it is a little perverse. Labour and interested parties have been promoting the NBN and its advantages, it is just that the media give far too much credence to fringe, whackjob media personalites to give the impression that they have a valid point of view.

    They dont. Most of it is just FUD. The Australian public appears to be to dense to tell the reasonable criticism apart from Abbot’s bull.

  16. Oh My God! Could Tony Abbot be any MORE of a wanker than he already is? I didn’t think so but he keeps sinking to lower lows than I thought existed. Linking then NBN to gambling? I am surprised he didn’t just go straight for the Pr0n argument.

  17. I live in Brisbane, we to get out of our house on a passer by’s kayak during the flood. The traditional media* did a terrible job of providing information about the flood. Little mention of blocked roads, available routes, where to get food, where volunteers were needed. Plenty of glaringly obvious commentary though.

    The only real avenue for decent, and, for want of a better word, dry information, was the internet. So quite frankly I would be very happy to have that level of service be maintained and improved.

    Information is one of the most valuable things in a crisis of such magnitude. It speaks volumes about how engaged and involved Tony Abbot was with this whole situation if he thinks we were using the internet to play poker on the that Wednesday morning.

    * – I should give credit to abc radio’s Madonna King, she seemed to be reading nothing but data for hours in the early morning when the water filled up Brisbane, which was very helpful.

  18. Posting articles about Mr Abbott’s view on the NBN is only going to make him comment more rubbish :)

  19. “It’s pretty obvious that the main usage for the NBN is going to be internet-based television, video entertainment and gaming,” the Opposition leader said at the time.

    Take your blindfolds off! It is right NOW and much more than your narrow perception of Internet protocols can perceive! I suggest you go back to address core Internet values and strategies which include all social aspects. All ISPs can provide these statistics.

    He would not know ALL the classes of protocols currently passing through the Internet worldwide.

    Obviously Mr Abbott is attempting a proposal where his ideals are now seen as being ANTI-COMPETATIVE and DISCRIMATORY on a global scale.

  20. @d5tryr

    I am not surprised.

    The Internet began as a Cold War project to create a communications network that was immune to a nuclear attack. In 1969, the U.S. government created ARPANET, connecting four western universities and allowing researchers to use the mainframes of any of the networked institutions.

  21. I just want to know why the media are giving Fony Tony any air-time at all. His constant ramblings of canning the NBN and spending the money in QLD are frustrating, insulting and plain ignorant.

    If we all ignore him he will simply go away. If there is no political mileage to get out of the topic Fony Tony will simply stop his ranting against the NBN and try and find something else to whinge about.

    Let’s get this point out of the road straight away. The QLD flood disaster is a tragedy and we all need to stand by our fellow Australians, however to can a National Infrastructure project as important as the NBN that will benefit all Australians, just to focus on a very small portion of Australians is bullsh*t.

    I can just imagine what the response would have been if the Coalition were in Government when the disaster occurred. They would have harped on about private enterprise and how the best way to help QLD residents is to have the private industry take care of the situation, or some bullcrap like that. The Coalition are but mere puppets for Big Business and will always find a reason why private industry should be responsible rather then Government.

    The Coalition and Fony Tony are out of their depth, they don’t understand technology, they don’t understand where the industry is going, they just understand that the Government is building a National Infrastructure project in which they believe should have been contracted out to private industry and that it should have been done for the cheapest price with technology that is outdated on paper, let alone by the time they get around to installing it.

  22. It took me 2.5 hrs to upload a 50mb file to 4shared..Wireless of course.. 2.5 hrs..!!!!
    Give me 40mb upload NBN any day

    • You might find, on closer inspection, that your connection is throttled to hell by your ISP

      • Peter, its Optus 3g, and the Modem is rated 2mbps upload.. The problem isnt Throttling, its Congestion..and Optus acknowledge this .. Congestion and Oversubscription is typical of 3g Wireless..Its no substitute for decent Fixed line.. Especially in the Uploads.. Tony should know this.. and i think he does.. Politics is a dirty business..

        • In the contrary. Optus use deep packet inspection based Traffic Management systems to shape, throttle all traffic passing on their network. In particular, they limit bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume.

          This DPI technology is supposed to alleviate the congestion, as any Cisco salesman will advise. This is the ISPs return on investment because it is claimed that :Service Control enables service providers to capitalise on existing infrastructure, analyse and charge for and control IP network traffic”. Instead it havs backfired and speeds are currently well below advertised rates. Peer To Peer traffic especially is reprioritised because the ISPs claim/perceive its their biggest congestion headache.

          The Hardware
          http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps9591/index.html

          The Software
          http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/cable/serv_exch/serv_control/broadband_app/rel350/scabbug/01_SCA_Overview.html#wp1044462

          On my connection both P2P is shaped and throttled as well as World of Warcraft dame data. Why ISPs throttle the WoW protocol, God only knows. The actual game data transfer during one quest is miniscule and does not account for very much on my dl/ul cap. The game is only playable between 2am and 6am which puts me out of touch with other Australian players.

          As we have no Net Neutrality rules here, like the ones recently handed down by the FCC in the US, the only way is to select an ISP that is compatible with your usage. The problem is that there is currently not much in the way of transparency to allow the consumer to make such an informed choice.

          There is no application currently available for Internet users to detect if their ISP is violating Net Neutrality rules.

          • Peter, Interesting comment.. I have had many discussions with Optus Techs over the poor performance, even though i am just 2 short blocks from Tower with 100% signal and direct LOS.. Each time they state Congestion and no date for fix.. VHA? strewth another poor performer.. Telstra,? well if i didnt have so many services to pay for, i would consider, but the extra cost is too much.. The NBN is currently under construction just 2 hours from our town, so i am hopeful it may spill over to us next.. Provided Tony and Co dont botch it all..

  23. A bit of understanding here please!

    Tony sits in office or at home or uses his wireless laptop in church, the speed is great and the price is better than MasterCard , it’s free.
    gbThats his entitlement as a Represen tative of the people , however Tony is human like the rest of us and does make the odd mistake so.
    I would ask this of you Tony & you as well Mal, till the next election open up either a satellite or wireless account, lets say 15 gb 5on 15 off shaped to 64 kbps, do All your internet though it.
    Pay for it out of your own pocket, no freebe’s, no tax claims, cop it sweet, you know Tony just as the Mum’s and Dads do.
    Then when it’s time and I may use this term loosely tell us the Truth about which has the better “bang for dollar”.
    Satellite/ wireless or what the NBN offers .
    P.S. Mal, no concessions from your internet investments full price only ok.

  24. Seeing as from the outset the Govt specifies that quote

    “This is a major nation-building project that will support 25,000 jobs every year, on average, over the life of the project. At its peak, it will support 37,000 jobs. Given the productivity gains associated with this investment, the full benefits will continue to flow for decades beyond the completion of the project.”

    Tony Abbott – what are you proposing to do with the sudden loss of 35,000 jobs? How are you going to compensate them? Seems that the Coalition and its embumbant lobbiests continue to sell out and discriminate against Australian tech-workers and IT Professionals.

    Seeing Queensland needs a major infrustructure repair to road, rail and ports, it might be an opportune moment economically to incorporate the fibre at the same time. The role the Internet played during this disaster was learned and clearly demonstrated. Both wired and wireless connections had their part to play.

    • Same way all those 4400 that took up training as Green Loans Assessors got dealt with, emergency fund to pay them off with ‘retraining’.

      • At the rate the Liberals are going we will all end up like this:

        QUOTE
        In response to protests against Hosni Mubarak’s nearly 30 years in power, the Egyptian government has ordered the country’s ISPs to sever Egypt’s connectivity to the Internet completely. After shutting down Twitter on on Tuesday and having various success blocking Facebook and Google on Wednesday, country leaders took the bolder step shortly after news leaked out that a protestor had been shot and killed.

        Source: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Egypt-Unplugs-Itself-From-The-Internet-112461

        • To be honest cant see the parallel, sounds something more like a filter will be used for.

          • No clumsy and ineffectual technologies required for any government to switch off their country’s Internet.

            Very simple for Egypt as they only have 4 service providers who own the infrastructure. Link Egypt, Vodafone/Raya, Telecom Egypt and Etisalat Misr. Only need to remove their routers IP addresses from the Internet’s routing tables – goodnight Internet.

            As this has never happened before, it has many wondering what happens to the economics of a modern society and 20 million Internet users stranded.

            We will find out on Monday.

  25. Hi everyone,

    just a general warning:

    I get it, you care about the NBN, I care about the NBN, everyone cares about the NBN ;) But keep your comments civil — or at least, make your insults amusing — or I will bring out the moderation rod of doom. Delimiter is not the place for you to mouth off, it’s a place for actual debate amongst adults ;)

    Cheers,

    Renai
    Delimiter Overwatch

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