Turnbull insists MTM CBN not “old technology”

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malcolmturnbull

news Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has issued a statement insisting that the Coalition’s new “Multi-Technology Mix” approach to its Coalition’s Broadband Network (CBN) project is “NOT” “old technology”, despite that several of its constituent parts — the existing copper and HFC cable networks — 15 years to many decades old.

Under Labor’s previous NBN policy, some 93 percent of Australian premises were to have received brand new optic fibre cables directly to the premises, with the remainder of the population to have been served by a combination of satellite and wireless broadband. However, since taking office the Coalition has drastically modified that policy, instructing NBN Co to go ahead with a model which will see 30 percent of the 93 percent served by the existing HFC cable networks which were deployed by Telstra and Optus in the late 1990’s.

A further 44 percent will receive a hybrid Fibre to the Node service (integrated with Telstra’s existing copper network, which was built progressively over the past 100 years), and only 26 percent will receive Fibre to the Premises. This mix of technologies has led some commentators to abandon the “National” Broadband Network label for the Coalition’s broadband plan, with some referring to it as the “Coalition’s Broadband Network” instead.

The move has sparked extreme criticism from telecommunications industry experts as well as the general population. In January, for instance, veteran telecommunications analyst Paul Budde described the Coalition’s new “Multi-Technology Mix” approach as “a dog’s breakfast” of different technologies, which could turn out to be a “logistical nightmare” to deliver in practice. Some 272,000 Australians signed a record-breaking petition requesting the Coalition reconsider its plans.

In a budget newsletter published on his website this week, Turnbull stated that “there will be continuing and indeed accelerated investment by the Government in the National Broadband Network, bringing total Government equity investment to $29.5 billion by 2017-18.”

“As you know we are committed to completing the NBN sooner, at less cost to the taxpayer and consequently more affordably for consumers,” he added.

“And at the risk of repeating myself, we are NOT completing the NBN with “old technology”; the multi-technology design we are using is consistent with the current approach taken by leading telcos around the world including AT&T, BT in the UK, Deutsche Telekom in Germany, Swisscom in Switzerland and many, many others.”

“The Budget also includes $100 million of Government money which will be augmented by co-investment from carriers, States, councils and others to increase mobile coverage in remote Australia – it is worth noting here that in six years of Government and $6.5 billion of investment in the NBN Co, Labor spent not one cent on eliminating mobile black spots in regional Australia.”

However, Turnbull’s several of Turnbull’s statements are not strictly correct.

It is true that other countries’ telecommunications sectors also feature a mix of HFC cable, Fibre to the Node and Fibre to the Premises networks. However, it is believed that there is no other country globally which has chosen to replace its existing copper network fully with HFC cable, as the Coalition is planning to do in up to a third of Australian premises.

In addition, in no other country globally has the Government purchased HFC cable networks from existing telcos, as the Coalition plans to do with Telstra and Optus, or the existing copper network once that network has been privatised.

Instead, globally it is the norm that incumbent telcos have been largely restructured to incentivise them to upgrade their copper networks to FTTN/FTTP, with government funding helping to cover rural gaps. Simultaneously, HFC cable operators are upgrading and extending their networks in competition with incumbent’s existing copper upgrades.

Two of Australia’s closest neighbours, Singapore and New Zealand, are proceeding directly down the technically superior Fibre to the Premises route, and in the US companies as diverse as AT&T, Cox Communications and Google have recently flagged plans to widely deploy gigabit networks — speeds that the Coalition’s CBN network will largely be unable to match.

In addition, Turnbull’s statement that the Coalition’s broadband plan will “cost less” is meaningless, with NBN Co’s Strategic Review stating that under almost all scenarios, NBN Co’s rollout will actually make a return on the Government’s investment, rather than actually costing anything. The claim that consumer network access charges will be less has also been debunked, with current prices on NBN Co’s infrastructure being comparable to ADSL/HFC prices and NBN Co having locked in its prices to match inflation over the long term.

The news comes as Turnbull has recently make a number of similar statements regarding the Coalition’s broadband plans which the Minister is aware are inaccurate, during the Budget process as well as on radio stations Triple J and 2UE.

opinion/analysis
Come on, Malcolm. If FTTN doesn’t represent “old technology”, then what the f*ck is this thing doing sitting in my apartment building?

Image credit (photo of Turnbull): Office of Malcolm Turnbull

73 COMMENTS

  1. No he’s right, it’s not old technology. It’s just the bits he’s using to make it up are f*cking ancient, technologically speaking.

    Spin it any way you like Malcolm, but your network is a dud. No other country in the world is doing what you plan to, despite what you keep trying to tell us. Your network is a go-nowhere “solution” that will achieve nothing, except waste billions of dollars and delay the inevitable FTTP upgrade that you know full well is necessary for another 10-20 years.

    • Was going to say the same thing. Its not the technology going in thats old, its the technology not being removed.

      Classic Turnbull line – “we are NOT completing the NBN with ‘old technology'” is completely true, but infers something highly different to reality.

      I love how this story dovetails into the the Bowen one that states our future is in high tech areas…

      • The MTM is using the existing infrastructure to deliver FTTN. And once we have a solid FTTN (like “no other country in the world has done”… except for Germany… and Poland… and every other country in Western Europe except the UK), we then can move to FTTP (like so many other nations like… Japan… and that’s about it… oh, and you realise Japan is 5% of our land space and we are only 15% of their population too, right?

        FTTP would be awesome for us all, but as a person who works in networking day in day out: Get the backbone right and the connections that terminate from there will improve regardless.

        • Sure, and nobody disputes that. Its the timing and cost people argue about. Cost to the government, and hence us, not the overall cost.

          One build takes 2 to 4 years longer than the other. But the shorter one then has an unknown timeframe to catch up.

          How long, and how much more will it cost to upgrade the ~70% on FttN and HFC to FttH?

          Building the backbone is only half the story. The time factor is more important, because by the time the FttN plan is rolled out, we’ll be needing FttH speeds, and if its going to take even just 5 years to upgrade that ~70%, then we’re behind the rest of the world.

          FYI, you probably dont know me or my family. I have siblings that lecture on this topic around the world, I think I’ll respect their opinion over others. FttN is a stopgap solution that only wastes time and money. Yes, its better than what we have, but when the next tier of technology is in reach, for minimal cost, its ludicrous to waste the time and money on it. By everyones admission we’ll end up there anyway, so why not do it now?

          • No offence, but if your siblings lecture around the world and propose doing FttP before doing FttN, they’re advising wrongly. There’s a vague chicken and egg thing, I realise, but the backbone is the most important part, not the limbs (using the anatomy analogy).

            And the rollout has been changed from a rushed, ill-prepared and under-resourced one to one which has been quantifiably measured down to the wire. The Labor government seems to have literally gone “We think it’ll cost $45B to do this, so that’s the budget” and didn’t do any due diligence until they got into power, only to realise that to deliver on their promises would necessitate closer to $400B. The biggest gap in their initial prices (which seem to have been plucked out of midair, otherwise) is that if we had wages for technicians at US minimum wage of $8 per hour, we could do it. Plus if we had a population of network technicians like they have in the US or many other more populous countries, we again would be in the same boat. But we don’t: we pay network engineers on average $90k a year (i.e. 6 times the US minimum wage) and we have fewer NEs per capita than the US (about half, in fact). So you’ve got an overdemand and an undersupply coupled with an exorbitant cost associated.

            Regardless of what is capable overseas, Labor bit off more than they could chew. Moving to a FttN model initially, get it working to fatten up the pipe, then and only then start to consider the delivery of FttP, otherwise we’ll see deficit and by the time FttP is delivered, the multi-technology mix will be even more complicated, messy and altogether more costly to mend.

          • lol, $400 billion? sounds like you’ve been letting Alan Jones do your maths or something.

            Yes, FTTP will cost more than FTTN initially, however doing FTTN first and FTTP second will cost even more still because of the excessive waste (both of materials and time). Most importantly, there’s also no guarantee ‘part 2’ will actually happen – we could get stuck on FTTN for decades.

            In a perfect world, it would be great if we could cleanly do “half now, half later” with a FTTN->FTTP process, but reality just isn’t that clear cut.

            Granted, if we went down the line of FTTdp, we might be getting closer to the utopian ‘staggered development cycle’ LNP were aiming for, but even then there’s still a level of waste (and technological minefields) we’d have to deal with on that road as well.

            At the end of the day though, the answer is simple: Do it once, do it right.

          • Hi Linc

            Can you name one country that is buying the copper off it’s incumbent so it can build FTTN?

            I can point you to several that building FTTP from scratch, but I’ve never seen or heard of even one that is building FTTN where they don’t actually either own the copper, or they subsidise the incumbent to build it…

  2. How can he possibly say it’s not old technology when large sections of it have been in the ground for decades already? Does he know what the word old means?

  3. I note that his laptop in the supplied picture appears to be plugged into a wired ethernet connection.

    Is this the way that he is trying to tell us that copper is okay?

    • Another lie caught! Apparently wireless is to good for him, even though he has said wireless is faster than fibre…

  4. It seems that Malcolm can claim anything he feels like these days, with very little chance of anyone holding him to account – present company excepted.

    Is this latest claim of “not old technology” really any wilder or weirder than previous pronouncements? Is it anything remarkable or surprising? Is it out of character?

    /sigh

  5. Of course it’s old technology.
    It’s like a doctor hooking up a 90 yr old to the latest heart/lung machine and then claiming the patient is now young and healthy. All because of a machine that goes ‘ping’.

    Turnbull is such a disingenuous mealy mouthed twit.

    • Congratulations on probably the best, most accurate analogy for the coalition’s plan I have read ever. VDSL2 with vectoring is way more technically advanced than GPON. VDSL2 over Cat 5 is perfectly bloody awesome. But as for the general plan the coalition has to offer, which is just the worst hodge-podge of a government fuck-up in the telco market since the privatisation of Telstra, and over what 5 minutes to midnight bits of twine are left in the ground, oh boy. And you’re being asked billions upon billions for the privilege to treat that patient and make it your responsibility.

      Again, either cancel the whole thing, do FTTdp, do FTTP or just say fuck it, dissolve the Department of Communications, buy outright the infrastructure, pass it to the states and let the states and their electricity and water infrastructure concerns deal with this and comms issues. Because any of these would be better than buying hundreds of thousands of these atomic bananas.

      Yes, we know you have your Optus, Newscorp and Telstra buddies who you’re just perfectly chummy with. But maybe stand back once in a while and do this thing called ‘putting yourself in someone else’s shoes’. I know it’s hard to do if you’re by definition never wrong, but some of us find it useful.

      • > either cancel the whole thing

        Frankly, I regret their ever even getting involved. If there had never been an NBN, most apartment buildings would probably have FTTB by now. Sure, there’d be lock-in depending on whoever installed the equipment, but at least it would be *something*. And perhaps regulation could open private FTTB installations up for competition somehow.

        Right now we have the worst of all possible worlds. No industry involvement, because the government claims responsibility. A massive, expensive government project, which has done practically nothing in 5 years. A new, even worse government who’s downgraded the target performance level to what I had on my first ADSL2 connection 10 years ago. No schedule, no accountability, no progress, and no end in sight.

        • How do you think MDU’s would have FTTB by now. Telstra turned down Howard and Rudd todo a FTTN.

          • Entry level, Telstra’s proposal for FTTN back then was apparently $60. Wholesale. Actual FTTN speeds were $85, also wholesale. Under Trujillo. But of course, we could thank the coalition for privatising Telstra in such a way as to make that kind of outcome utterly inevitable.

    • No, it’s more like not using helicopters for alpine rescuers – men on skis are cheaper and can be deployed quicker – and it’s not like skiing is old technology – the latest equipment has kevlar, carbon-fibre, titanium etc – it’s all space age stuff, compared to mid-20th century helicopters.

  6. As an Aussie who relocated to Singapore last year, I just wanted to clarify that Singapore’s fully FTTP is not “proceeding” -it’s now completed. I am currently on a 500/500mbps plan for 70 a month (no contract, no data caps), however on Friday I’m switching providers to get 1000/500mbps for aud 40 per month. Yes- 40 bucks for a gigabit speed with no data caps, throttling, torrent blocking or any of that bs. The real shame is that this ISP (myRepublic) announced that they would be launching in Australia… until the LNP horse and buggy brigade decided to abandon FTTP. Now they are only going to launch in New Zealand.

    • 5-6m people in an area the size of greater hobart is a little different to what the aussie fttp rollout would be.

      • Exactly. Which is why, in the long run, in Hobart you’d want to use a technology that isn’t anywhere near as affected by distance, is cheaper metre by metre and requires less maintenance.

        Waitaminute…

    • Skivvy,
      I was lucky enough to also work in Singapore for a year. I was with M1. 100mb/100mb. and I paid $75 a month and can you believe that was EXPENSIVE! haha.

    • Imagine the difficulty when you’ve got an unemployment rate at less than 2% and a GDP higher than Australia on a third of our population in a landspace smaller than any of our major cities. And, for what it’s worth, Hobart (a similarly sized city) is pretty muchy completed. Our difficulty, when you compare to the rest of the world, is our sheer size to population ratio. The only other country in the world with even a similar ratio is Russia. Check out their connectivity…

  7. Well technically FTTP is old tech as its been around for decades. In fact, it may even be older than some of the latest FTTN tech (or near enough). In some ways turnbull is right.

    However, in this case, age of technology has nothing to do with it, its whether the technology is fundamentally better. Just because its newer doesn’t make it better. Just like your government Mr Turnbull.

    Great picture Renai

    • @elementalest
      I was just about point this out.
      We’re all for the flashy new thing but fibre optics are not the ‘new’ thing. Its just the better technology.
      FYI Polar Bears have fibre optics

  8. “it is worth noting here that in six years of Government and $6.5 billion of investment in the NBN Co, Labor spent not one cent on eliminating mobile black spots in regional Australia.”

    a) I thought that mobile coverage was not in the remit of NBN Co

    b) I thought that the Liberal mantra was “the market will provide”, so the appropriate response is “So what if the previous government didn’t address it?”

  9. as the Minister for Propaganda, he will tell everyone that is state of the art.

    90% will believe him.

  10. If its “old technology” Malcolm, why did you invest you own money in Fibre based technologies in Europe?

    Hmm?

  11. Lets see, we have a PM that winks, and a Communication Minister that claims that MTM is not old technology?

    • To be fair, so does Russia. At last on the winking front. We want a Putinesque leader, right?

  12. It’s not old technology, Telstra told me that it’s just ‘pining for the fjords’

  13. First I was like “yes yes good read, excellent” then I hit the opinion section *coffee snorted out nose all over screen* hahah very nice!!

  14. The companies who did FTTN were slow moving incumbents.

    I say ‘did’ because these companies, if they are still rolling out FTTN are only completing their networks. They started it several years ago and are now finishing up.

    This technology was old when they started! Now it’s fast becoming obsolete – yet Malcolm claims it’s the cutting edge!

  15. Renai :S thats your MDF, i take it?

    The way i see it, MT is full of it, politically speaking (a week is a long time in politics) it IS old technology – we were talking about a FTTN network all the way back at least as far as when Johnny Howard was around.

    and then yes there is the bald reality as Renai says, that the constituent parts themselves are minim 15yo and older. Okay, in that regard sure, there are ~40 YO trunk fibres still in operation now; does that make fibre ‘old technology’ too? maybe, a ‘proven’ technology even?

    the point Re Myrepublic and other providers overseas steaming off into the digital sunset at Gbit rates while we languish sorting this problem (already sorted; in fact, under the FTTP policy) is well taken – and galling.

    I am with you Renai, but i extend it: “what the fuck is ANY of this shit still doing in our homes and apartment buildings?” asides from tying us to the past?

  16. It is undeniably old technology. That, in itself, is not a problem if it can do the job. It can’t.

    It is the wrong technology at the wrong time at a very high cost. It’s not even the most cost-effective technology solution in the NBNCo’s strategic review.

    The RSPs are going to have to wear the fall out from the unreliability of this old technology. They’re the ones who will get the customer complaints. Where are they in this debate?

  17. > Come on, Malcolm. If FTTN doesn’t represent “old technology”, then what the f*ck is this thing doing sitting
    > in my apartment building?
    +1

  18. As far as MDF’s go … that’s actually not bad. 1 of mine looked like a sodden squidgy ball there was so much crap going on. You also don’t have enough tickets hanging off it. One? Entry level.

    What la-dee-daa suburb do you live in again? :P

  19. I am the IT & Comms officer at a volunteer rescue organisation. Internet and phone connectivity is essential for the operations of our base. I also happen to have a B.Eng (Comp Sys) and an open cablers registration.

    The best internet connection we can get is 3Mbps (line speed) ADSL. There are no less than 8 bridge taps between the base and the pillar. We are 3.4km from the exchange and about 700m to the pillar as the cable runs. The ADSL connection is okay providing it doesn’t rain. ISDN is not an available option. (I’ve set up automatic failover to a 3G connection but its costly)

    We have 6 phone lines critical to operations, which average a carrier-side fault of between 1 and 2 a month, the majority have been due to foreign battery. The line with the ADSL service consistently reads 45-46V when isolated (a little low). The CAN in this area is frankly worse than a wet piece of string (in fact I think we would get better ADSL over that!). I cannot see it improving without extensive and costly remediation, and even then it would pale in comparison to what would be achievable with FTTP. I was looking forward to ditching the copper, attaining some descent upload bandwidth, a robust guarantee of reliability in general and running SIP trunks. Sadly that doesn’t look like it will be the case..

    Copper is costly to maintain and well past its used-by date in terms of the bandwidth and service levels it can guarantee.

  20. I was speaking with a recently retired Telstra technician a few months ago. He related how he had to justify to management his increase spend on gas cylinders to pressurise the legacy lead wrapped, paper insulated lines. The lead now has so many holes in it, it uses more than double the amount of gas flow to keep the water out. He only had to explain just how much cable would need to be replaced once it got wet that management rolled over and went quiet very fast. Apparently there is quite a bit of this old cabling still in use.
    Malcolm would probably call it environmentally friendly cabling, no petrochemicals leaching into the ground, just decaying lead (to match the decaying coppper), and nice organic paper. Should be fine, after all, you only need one wire out of a pair to have an ADSL connection, it sucks and cant carry voice, but it does connect you to the inter-ma-jet. Since its now up to 25 mbps, 0.05mbps still qualifies, we don’t need a Notional Broadband Network at all!

  21. When in opposition wasn’t Malcolm decrying Labor’s investment in fiber because “there might be something better around the corner”?

    And now he’s implementing backwards from that point. How could he possibly not know that he’s misstating the truth?

  22. Is this Malcolm Turnbull’s way of telling everyone that his government is increasing the retirement age to 70 by proving to can be done with a phone network?

    • Sergei has been hard at werk! Phone network cannot retire! He needs to keep use thinagmabob.

      Raise the retirement age? Simples!

  23. Renai,

    That isn’t just some copper wire, it’s a damned art installation. All it needs is a plastic bag to really sell the aesthetic.

    Sadly I don’t have any pictures. But I *do* have Telstra’s entire strategic supply of bridge taps on my line. They’re like tribbles and keep breeding (after every visit of a line tech who always manages to find even more).

    More broadly, The Wizard of Wentworth de-ages the network once again before your eyes. It’s a miracle!

    It must be the leather jacket…

    To be fair, Vectoring isn’t particularly old, becoming a standard during 2010. Granted it has issues with ULL, so say goodbye to naked services. And of course unless you are decamped within the node itself, one cannot be guaranteed anything above the speed of a goldish swimming up a waterfall.

    VDSL is getting on a bit; the standard appeared nearly 9 years ago. Lets be honest Telstra never believed there was “demand” for high speed internet (pay no mind to the man behind the curtain, ie 3G, 4G etc) and the only other people to actually dabble were Transact (and iiNet).

    HFC keeps getting blood transfusions care of DOCIS upgrades, but HFC itself is a decades old technology, based on cable designs from the 90’s. It’s hip and new in the same way a septuagenarian is, fresh out of limb surgery.

    It may wear a lounge suit and have a weird taste in music, but it’s not dead yet – in fact it’s feeling better.

    The copper network? is older most of us, dear readers. Malcolm knows full well the only people investing in FTTN, are those whom own the network and want to maintain it’s value for as long as physically possible.

    But then this whole debate actually simply play’s to Turnbull’s favour.

    Frankly the issue isn’t what we build, or how much of it, at this point — that ship has sailed (or in the case of fibre, has been taken out to the shed and shot) — but that we build something at all.

    Whilst Turnbull happily argues semantics and is not held to account, the lack of action will continue. Leaving TPG and others to flaunt loopholes (which bizarrely echo regulator preference) in the attempt to outbuild NBNco.

    Turnbull is free to blame the Opposition, for even his own clumsy attempts at meddling; it’s gravy if you can get it.

    Who knows what Telstra will do with billions added to the war chest (apart from compete directly with NBN destroying it’s value and ruining it’s potential sale price – because we all know that’s coming in the future, just as it did with Telstra).

  24. Is this the place where I post about symmetric gigabit elsewhere? I guess. Switzerland:: $78 a month. Netherlands: $125 a month (includes HBO, actually). California: $40 a month. Or apparently $55 after Sales Tax and fees – the Americans are funny in that aspect. Sure, these deployments aren’t all that exhaustive, but by the time the coalition “NBN” is about halfway done, they’ll be quite a bit more widespread. Especially at those kinds of price points.

    I’m sorry, Malcolm, but the yardstick of what is old and what’s new – assuming we’re going to make the leap and look at the network as a whole instead of some brand-spanking new atomic banana within it – it’s shifting. Dramatically. And when that comparison is 1 Gbps upload vs. some low integer number of Mbps… yeah.

    You don’t judge an age of something by the most recent thing you’re adding. Sure, it’s going to have an influence, but, and this part may be pretty damn tricky for coalition voters to understand, putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t make the pig lipstick years old.

  25. Phew – Thanks for that Turnbull I was really worried there for a minute!

    Glad to know that we’ve entrusted to you a $50Bn project that’s core to our nations economy over the next few decades. I’m particularly heartened when I hear Abbott say he’s going to build the ‘infrastructure of the 21st century’!

    Did you know that some places think that recycling rusty coppery and flattening dirt is the way of the future? I know right, what a laugh!

  26. It’s all old technology, including fibre. The question is which one will scale to our future needs better rather than the age of the technology itself.

  27. I think you are looking at the wrong motivations, greed, etc. It comes from something way more insipid, his inability to admit he is wrong.

  28. I used to think that Turnbull was a man of integrity.

    But watching him promote the MTM CBN as if he actually believes it makes me realise he is no different from the rest of his government colleagues.

    Disappointing…

  29. “And at the risk of repeating myself, we are NOT completing the NBN with “old technology” – MT

    And yet you cannot even start on the completion of “your” network until you you buy a 100+ year old CAN and decades old HFC networks…

    As to you repeating yourself, I have a quote from Mein Kampf for you:

    “But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this world, persistence is the first and most important requirement for success. “

  30. When I received that newsletter from Turnbull, I shot back another detailed letter of utter disgust (with ample sarcasm for good measure) back to him, his offsider Jon Dart, and even our local MP Mal Brough.

    No reply yet though, lol.

    I’ve been blocked on twitter by Turnbull, the local MP hides behind technical ignorance, and every letter or email I get back from Turnbull (of which there has actually been a few over the course of our ~10 month phone and email debate) just digs his pit of lies that much deeper.

    I’m wondering at what point such a blatant act of deceit, abuse of power, and a clear as day Conflict of Interest driven train wreck quite literally becomes criminal.

  31. I just gotta ask, has anyone else noticed how old his laptop is? judging from the look its easily pre 2007

    Also Abbott and Turnbull are complete idiots, every year that passes copper is becoming more and more obsolete, its 2014 and most of Aus is still on ADSL1… NZ are years a head of us now with there internet infrastructure and the rest of the world are looking at us and thinking “what in the hell are these guys doing”

    Were keeping old broken down tech that costs billions to maintain every year instead of sucking it up, buying the new stuff and moving Australia forward as a technologically advanced country

    For the slow witted people like Abbott & Turnbull I’ll simplify this, you wouldnt keep an old broken worthless kettle would you? no? then why in the hell are we keeping this broken worthless internet infrastructure?

  32. “opinion/analysis
    Come on, Malcolm. If FTTN doesn’t represent “old technology”, then what the f*ck is this thing doing sitting in my apartment building?”

    Pretty much sums up ALL of our sentiments..

  33. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.
    The copper local loop line was designed and created at the same time that the incandescent light globe was designed and created.

    And yet, incandescent light globes are considered inefficient, inferior when compared to alternate technologies for lighting.

    But still we cling to the idea that copper loop lines are the way of the future when alternate technologies show it to be inefficient and inferior.

    And yet strangely it was also Alexander Graham Bell who developed the first concepts for transmitting signals by using light, and actually using it to transmit voice on a beam of light.

  34. So Gigabit Fiber is rolling out in multiple cities from multiple providers in the US, but we will be totally cool and keeping up with the world at 25Mbps…

  35. Why are there not tangible consquences for people literally knowingly make negative choices for the nation’s future for god knows what reasons? Honestly why dont we prosecute politicians for continually making criminal choices withthe economy and environment. Liberal ministers: “well good work lads, we’ve just wasted billions taxpayer dollars and set back Australia’s innovative internet sector several years, better go retire peacefuly on our massive pensions.”

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