Analysis, Featured, Telecommunications - Monday, January 16, 2012 11:49 - 27 Comments

A couple of important NBN corrections

analysis Over the past several weeks, several prominent newspaper commentators have published a number of factual inaccuracies with respect to the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network project. With the aim of informing good public policy debate, it seems appropriate to try and correct the record.

I anticipate that this analysis will be the first in an ongoing series of ‘corrections’ which Delimiter will publish with respect to media commentary about the NBN project. Although Delimiter continues to remain independent from both sides of politics and consequently is not pro- or anti-NBN, there is clearly quite a large degree of inaccurate statements being published about the project, as an extensive Whirlpool thread on the subject demonstrates.

Our first subject for correction this week is an opinionated article published on 4 January by long-time Daily Telegraph commentator Piers Akerman. Akerman’s broad argument is that the NBN is short of its predicted take-up rates, as per NBN Co’s release of customer take-up numbers on 3 January this year (PDF). I’ll address Akerman’s statements here one by one.

Continue…