We may get to a time in 25 years or so where 100Mbps WILL be unlimited for $60 a month. But certainly I think it’s unlikely before then. It’s not even really feasible until then under the NBN pricing structure allows the CVC to drop significantly as data throughput shyrockets.

That’s not feasible. Not unless you want to pay $120 a month.

In terms of BADNESS – thay are kind of exceeding Telstra, and that is in the first 15 minutes.

I signed up, gave them my bank details etc… up and running, then they give me a call back a week or two later, the guy says there is no record of the phone number that they just accessed to ring me on.

And my personal and bank details provided – TO create the account – in amongst all the fighting with them and the TIO – they send me an email asking me to tell them what my credit card number is, just so they can debit some monster bill – that I do not owe – because they can’t / won’t / are scamming / and don’t / can’t use the direct debit option, that was the way they were supposed to take the monthly payment by.

THEN

The bullshit rattles on for a while – AND they call in the debt collectors – the bill has jumped from $100 – $200 after one month of use and then their getting sacked – the debt collectors demand $700, and 6 weeks later, in the email, TPG is demanding $320.

A HUGE “fuck you” to TPG – those foreign call centers are full of criminals and idiots.

Your post borders on insulting. And also irrational. However, I will say a few things:

NBNCo’s 121 POI’s are more than there are now. So it would be physically harder to filter than now, with the 40 or 50 POI’s that currently exist. I already said this.

The idea that the government setup NBNCo. for a primary goal of filtering the Australian internet is one of the most outlandish things I have heard in a while. I know that won’t mean anything to you however.

You have someone well placed in Telstra telling you……what? That if Police ask they must give them access to metadata on telecommunications? I already knew that. I don’t have a problem with it. It allows them to track persons of interest. I MAY have a problem with it being kept on everyone for 2 years however.

You’re absolutely right I don’t know the man you’re talking about. If I should, perhaps you can enlighten us and we can get a campaign together. Or at least figure out if he actually deserves a campaign. That is what is good about a free country- enough public pressure gets things done.

The NBN was necessary for many reasons, of which I’m not going to go into because it will be talking to a brick wall by the sounds. Why are you reading about the positive aspects of the NBN (good value plans) if you disagree with it? Shouldn’t you be over on Bolt’s blog whipping up support for a ‘burn the NBN’ rally?

Big Brother disgusts me. I watched the 1st ever episode when I was 16 and without my parents even telling me it was disgusting, unnecessary and pointless, I turned it off. Big Brother a la George Orwell, which you mean, is of more concern for me more towards the data retention currently planned. By the way, if there’s a giant conspiracy to filter the internet and spy on us all through the NBN and privacy groups are going nuts just over metadata retention…..don’t you think they’d be going ape poopie over that???

By the logic that is not knowing that the NBN could be used for by a ‘future totalitarian type government’- we should not have electricity. After all, a future totalitarian government could use it as a blackmail to get us back to menial labour paid at $2 a day and gruel every evening or cutoff our heating and lights…..

OK. I’m done now. I will continue to be concerned about data retention, a real public concern about data and privacy and you can continue to believe the NBN is a giant spy network. I’ll think of you briefly if the Coalition win and do scrap it- ‘he must be much less stressed now’ I’ll think….

Apologies Renai if that skirted close. I was a little bit exasperated…..

> the NBN makes filtering no easier unless you believe it will be done without our permission

Hey genius, do you think Telstra phones up drug dealers and asks their permission to record their conversations for the feds? All it takes is for the government to start treating the general public the same as suspected criminals. Enticing the majority of Internet traffic through the government’s own network just makes it technically easier.
Yes easier, because when they have 121 POIs to put filters at they have distributed the traffic more widely and so the interception devices at each site do not need to be nearly as powerful to cope with the load. Easier because instead of putting their filters physically into a private sector node, they are enticing the private sector traffic into a set of purpose-built government nodes.

> and NBNCo. would have to be integrally involved.

Yes, that’s why the government set it up.

> … And there would be hundreds of people who would have to know if not thousands.

No, that’s why the government set it up – as a one stop shop. Very few people in NBNCo will even know it is going on. Even if they did, every corporation in the country is required to assist law enforcement in “investigations”, no choice about it.
Please also note, and I have this from someone who was well placed in Telstra to understand the telco environment, that it is an AFP requirement for carriers that “any traffic scenario that cannot be intercepted must be blocked”. All carrier networks are already designed for interception from day 1. That’s how the AFP and ASIO do their jobs.
For NBNCo to be “integrally involved” would be nothing new. You admit as much yourself in your 3rd paragraph, and yet you insist :
> “Free, democratic people are not going to simply lie and look the other way about a gross violation of rights.”
Of course they are, and so are you. The list of encroachments the public has turned a blind eye towards is as long as your arm.

We have no right to privacy or free speech, but we do have a right to trial by jury in Section 80 of our Constitution. It is one of the very few rights granted to us by that document. But right now there is a fellow currently rotting in a Tasmanian prison who was incapable of committing the crime he was convicted of, and despite being sentenced to life in prison, has never had a jury trial. That’s a fact. And the violation of this person’s rights occurred in full view of the public and national media, and everybody turned and looked the other way.
Of course you have no idea who I am talking about because you are repeatedly and emphatically “aware” of so many irrelevancies.

A broadband network as a government project was completely unnecessary. If there was any demand for it, the private sector would have built it without being asked. Perhaps you’d like a free market to go with that “free and open democracy” that you’re so proud about.
The enticement to use the NBN wholesale comes from greater public consumption of trivial services such as video-on-demand, and that is about it. Anything else you could use it for, such as hot backup co-lo, has commercial solutions already. Forty-three billion dollars for nicer Youtube videos, and this is the government’s gift to the people?? Get real. Ask yourself what the government gets out of the NBN. It’s not money, it’s not even votes because Barry Sixpack doesn’t know how to legally utilise 24Mbps let alone an OC192. What the government gets out of this project is more power.

But I can tell you’re the kind of guy who loves Big Brother. You’ve certainly made enough red-herring excuses for them. Well Big Brother is going to have your greatest hits on constant replay.
[ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-26/police-insist-tougher-data-retention-laws-needed/4282156 ]
It does not matter that you personally have nothing bad to hide, privacy is the ability to retain control over your life. It is purely a matter of faith that their present powers will always be used for good, and in the last 3 years they have been asking for more.

It does not matter if the government appendages of today have no inclination towards a hellish totalitarian state. What about the next government, or the government after it? But no, you are literally more keen to see the network is built than spare a thought for what it will be used for.
Once you have built all of the machinery of a turnkey tyranny, you are living on borrowed time.

However, the logical choice for filtering location would be the aggregate points- POI’s. In the NBN there are 121. Now, there are (likely) less (seeing as Telstra have 14 and they encompass over 65% of the market). Therefore, it is actually likely slightly HARDER to filter using the NBN infrastructure, although only in terms of higher outlay for equipment.

This makes no difference to my previous point however. Unless you believe the NBN is all about the government gaining control of all Australian’s communications…..well, I’ll leave that one there. I don’t really have time nor the will to argue conspiracy theories….

I am well aware of the OSI model. However, do you believe that NBNCo. would be parcel to the government intercepting their own traffic without informing the public, giving whatever government department was in charge of filtering all information, the decryption key freely? You’re free to believe so. I however do not and would not do so without considerable evidence.

My point still stands the NBN makes filtering no easier unless you believe it will be done without our permission and NBNCo. would have to be integrally involved. If you truly believe that our government would essentially overnight turn into the North Korean or Iran government and filter the net without telling its people, hoping we won’t notice…..I’m afraid there’s nothing I can say that would convince you otherwise.

Filtering can happen right now at any exchange in the country. They would simply require the decryption key from Telstra/Optus/whoever. The NBN makes that no different. And no, I do not believe that because NBNCo. is government funded and mandated, they can therefore do what they like people are people. Free, democratic people are not going to simply lie and look the other way about a gross violation of rights. And there would be hundreds of people who would have to know if not thousands.

By the way, I’m aware Telstra and Optus filter a few hundred sites. Considering there are people out there that make it their business to try and access all possible sites available, particularly ones believed to be filtered, unless they suddenly began to ‘disappear’ you’ll forgive me for being content we are free to view whatever content we wish. And I’m not interested in the the slightest in the sites that are currently filtered- they contain material I do not wish anyone to have access to. Those who need access as part of investigation s or genuine research can get monitored access with permission.

We are a free and open democracy. We struggle sometimes and there is the occasional stumble, but unless you believe we will go over night from open democracy to rigid dictatorship or rank communism….. I’ll continue to worry more about whether the NBN will actually be built than whether it can be used in some giant conspiratory to make sure we don’t know we have no access to the real information about the true pay packets of our politicians….or whether we get that vaguely offensive episode of Family Guy from next week etc.

When you said “Filtering has to happen at layer 3″ this was the only true thing you said in your comment.

If you understand how the Internet works then you understand that a layer 7 message must be able to be reconstructed from a series of layer 2 frames, that’s a how message gets from one application to another via the Internet. It is encoded at each step down and decoded at each step up. Thus all data from layer 3 and above are inside a layer 2 PDU. This data can be decoded unless protected by encryption.

Technically it is possible to copy the traffic on optical fibres especially when you have easy access to the endpoints, because that is all the normal endpoints of fiber are doing anyway.

Thus any civil surveillance program will simply reconstruct as many layers as it wishes by intercepting layer 2 traffic, at whatever rate is economically justifiable by government, which (since you are paying for it with your taxes) is virtually unlimited.

Saying “NBN is layer 2″ is not even false, it is irrelevant. They interconnect at layer 2, but all layers by definition are handled within the network. Perhaps they will be handled more than you prefer.

See post above and try again. The NBN is layer 2. Filtering has to happen at layer 3, or at an RSP’s POP, same as now.

Please stop spouting half truths. Or in this case, full untruths.

I said hundreds of thousands. Not millions. These people won’t GET these services anyway, until their newer generation forces them to. This is not changing the point behind the NBN. It is providing a market that Telstra and Optus have artificially locked out with their >25Mbps plans.

And yet you regularly argue it is the CVC, ie. the DATA, that will kill the NBN pricing…..which is it??

NBNAccuracy kind of beat me to it.

NBNCo. cannot implement an internet filter, even if forced to do so. All filtering would have to take place at a minimum at each RSP’s switch in each POI. That’s 121 POI’s x number of RSP’s. OR, at each RSP’s POP. Same as now. This is because to even get the web address, or DNS lookup, which is the thing on the filter list, an IP address has to be readable. This is only possible at a Layer 3 level- ie beyond the NBN network.

Nice try for your first post in a while to bring the NBN into disrepute though Matthew…..

Uniform infrastructure controlled by a single entity (NBNCo) will make it technically easier to filter the internet. I’m not sure that we do have a constitutional right to a non-filtered internet. In fact our current internet is filtered.