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The Forum > Article Comments > Broadband ... the only game in town > Comments

Broadband ... the only game in town : Comments

By Selwyn Johnston, published 24/5/2007

Mr Rudd’s donation of $4.5 billion to any telco consortium is at worst a long shot non-achieving punt, or at best a hollow election stunt: here's why ...

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A good article Selwyn. I hope you get Leichhardt.
Posted by healthwatcher, Thursday, 24 May 2007 9:56:46 AM
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Very good article Selwyn,

You quoted:
"However, to overcome all these problems it would appear that a consortium of some 11 telecommunication carriers has floated the idea that they could, and would, build a parallel service to Telstra’s"

You summarised a political stunt beautifully in the comment above:
Any semi-technologist in Australia will tell you that only Telstra can and should build and operate the FTTN with potentially wholesaling or white-labelling to other service providers.

Having a consortium of 11 is a political stunt as all what it will do is:
- Mutilate the network by having hybrid connections.
- Cause multiple points of failure rather than one and hence will eventually become a lot less reliable for international business.
- Will become a great 'finger pointing excercise' since the connection from the exchange to the last mile (home, office over copper) is going to have 3-4 companies responsible for maintenance.
- Telstra still have to maintain the exchanges (ie at the end we are back to square 1).

I have been consulting in the ICT field in Australia for a decade now and the FTTN comes up in discussions. I rarely met a business or technologist who sees the consortium of 11 anything else but a recipe for disaster.

Its worrying that Costello and Rudd have jumped on the political topic without resorting to global best practices.

Whats in Australian consumer and business best interest is for Telstra to step in and execute it.
Posted by Fellow_Human, Thursday, 24 May 2007 10:27:47 AM
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Just shows that the communications infrastructure of Australia should never have been sold in the first place.

If we had this infrastructure still in public ownership this mess would just not exist.

Well done Howard and Costello.
Posted by ruawake, Thursday, 24 May 2007 11:58:55 AM
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Mr Johnson,

Thank you for your article, however you may wish to check a few things:

ADSL stands for Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (not Linkage)

Also, I'm not sure where you get 11 companies putting forward the alternative proposal, last time I checked it was being proposed by 9 companies known as the G9 group - AAPT, iiNet, Internode, Macquarie Telecom, Optus, PowerTel, Primus, Soul and TransAct.

As for Fellow_Human's comments about who would be responsible for the last mile, there is an article on Whirlpool with a link to a G9 press release which deals with some of these issues:

http://whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm/1726

Finally Mr Johnson, anyone can criticise Labor's broadband proposal that involves just throwing money at the industry and hoping that they will magically come up with a proposal that works, and conversely, anyone can say that the government is not coming up with an alternative.

However, as a candidate in the upcoming federal election, what voters expect is that you will have some actual ideas about how to resolve these issues.

From your article, I cannot see any ideas, just criticism. Anyone can be critical.

Best of luck to you anyway,

d
Posted by Deryck, Thursday, 24 May 2007 12:12:16 PM
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Apologies, my comment above should be addressed to Mr Johnston (not Johnson).

Regards,

d
Posted by Deryck, Thursday, 24 May 2007 12:15:42 PM
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Questions about the original article and the first posted comment:

1. Given the rate of expansion of use of networks world-wide, has generally accelerated at a rate approaching their capacity to handle the traffic, why the assumption that a network would be "stranded"? Why would we not have a reduction in price along the lines of the free enterprise competition model? Pricing based on capital costs -- rental -- instead of the milch cow of charge-per-call would be more sensible. When you rent me your house, you don't ask me to pay for the number of times I enter the front or back door. And STD call charges are a joke: the call you make from Bankstown to Milperra may well be redirected way to another city 100kms away if the network is busy at some point.
A second network at least gives a chance of a more rational approach compared with the one adopted by Telstra.

2. Why does Fellow_Human carry on about "hybrid connections" being a "mutilation" of networks ? What does he/she think we already have ? Is an existing network that consists of: plain copper, pair-gain copper, microwave, satellite, wireless, and fibre optic not already one of "hybrid connections"? If not, what the hell is it ?

3. And why would a second network connected to the Internet suddenly develop "multiple points of failure" that are any more complex than the networks set up in other larger countries, and internationally? Would it not inherit the defining characteristic of the Internet: its designed-in redundancy (particularly if it has "hybrid connection" support)? In a sensibly co-operative world, could one not simply argue that the existence of the second network allows for a fall-back situation which we all might be happy to have available, instead of worrying about increased points of failure?
(After all, a new point of failure applies every time you install a router or similar equipment in a network. Is this a worry ?) Sorry, I find this a weird argument.
Posted by PeterGM, Thursday, 24 May 2007 12:54:14 PM
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