Yes black out is SA shows just how good private business works for essential services.
Rolling out national infrastructure like the NBN is absolutely required, and no private company would have any interests in providing the coverage we require. Look at mobile phone coverage, great in the city and pretty ordinary in the bush.

Just mindlessly saying private enterprise would do it cheaper doesn't get us an actual solution.

So, what's wrong with government monopolies David?

Affordable irrigation and gas prices that were 15-25% of the current (privatized) fee charges? The Japanese are paying considerably es for our gas than we are!

David, are you worried we might see the reemergence of vast commission housing estates and with them a return to affordable housing and or rents? Shock horror!

Why people might once again be able to buy affordable housing, or even old age pensioners may once again be able to affordably heat or cool their homes? And that'd be disastrous wouldn't it?

Yes Government monopolies are a bad thing for the unscrupulous, lazy investor, who believes the world owes, him/her a living!

At the end of the day we were vastly better off with government monopolies, affordable electricity, world's safest airline, even more affordable gas and housing! And all the profits retained in OUR ECONOMY!

The only private enterprise model that does that is the co-op! And the only private enterprise, (yes that's what they are) free market model that largely survived the Great Depression largely intact! Even as vast corporations founded the world over!

Better government monopolies, rather than the foreign owned price gouging captive market monopolies, we've seemingly traded them for, and with them, so also our economic sovereignty!

Are you batting for the other non resident foreign team David? Or just manifestly moribund?
Alan B.

There is one simple identifiable cause of this debacle...Abbott and Turnbull!

Had the FTTP been allowed to roll out unhindered, yes it would have been slower but every customer would have had the world's best technology (where practicable) and the NBN would have had a single technology to refine, and maintain for the next 100+ years.
Instead we have adhoc wireless, hybrid systems with degraded overall performance and failing FTTN that offers abysmal performance and worse, high maintenance demands.

And where are the fabled cost savings?

Those two should forever be remembered as historically the most destructive politicians in Australia's short history.

You know Peter King might almost be right for once.

If we had left the KRudd plan untouched we might have all had the best of 2001 technology, no later than 2101. Wouldn't that be great! Well it would if we could afford it, & the world had stopped turning.

Australia's NBN is an absolute balls up. It should never have wandered from the original plan. Now we have a hotchpotch slow and terrible system that is forever going to have problems. That little bit of copper wire is a gigantic downfall.
We had the chance of a super-fast uncomplicated modern system and what are they doing. They are doing something you would find in North Korea.
Asia has the best and fastest broadband, and we get something that should have been left as is. The Abbott and Turnbull show.

Rudd/Gillard! What a legacy. Problem is that Turnbull is no better.

The NBN was arguably the one thing K. Rudd got right? And given it was and remains funded off budget, we can afford it as it was imagined?

Now the real prospect is, we'll spend more money on the Abbott/Turnbull model, then find in around ten years it's outdated and obsolete and need to replace it with fibre to the home that doubles the original roll out costs?

Talk about being penny wise pound foolish with our money!
Alan B.

So Hasbeen...FTTP is 2001 technology eh what?

Wow you neocons continually deliver laughs at your blind ideology and vapid argument.

The Abbotbull FTTN solution currently has a failure rate of around 60% on deployment and in more than 90% of its deployment hasn't gone faster than 50MBS. How do I know this; I have installed about 22 so far in the Shoalhaven region.

Yep you would not want fibre to the premises that every other technologically advanced country is deploying. Anything to deny Kevin and Julia credit; bugger the country!

Peter neverwas aka hasbeen (but I know the truth) has no idea what he/she is talking about, he/she makes as much sense as runner's valuable contribution.

Wow, our lefties know it all.

Tell me does your area suffer the side effects of the KRudd balls up.

Around here no one has been able to get a phone line for over 2 years. The exchange is out of capacity, but no upgrades will be done until the NBN comes through.

When will that be? God knows but he's not telling anyone.

It really would be4 interesting if some of you lefties actually thought about something some time.

My NBN cable which runs from outside into the house has been chewed through twice by rats
according to the NBN techs who came out to repair it. They seemed well aware of this happening, so I deduced it is not an unusual occurrence.

The problem is when the NBN goes down so does my home phone which works via the NBN connection.

Lucky I have a mobile.

.........continued

and when my mobile phone battery is low, and my NBN internet connected home
phone is down, when the internet fails; I have no phone.

How can you expect to sell something that only half works.
Super fast speeds for half the costs. The words of a rat-bag politician.
The stupidest roll out of a national broadband system in the world. B/s strictly for political gain. And stuff the consequences.
This is going to take megga billions more to get a satisfactory result.
How about the marketing 12mb/s for $50 25mb/s for $65 and 50 mb/s for $80
What did happen to our 100 mb/s for everyone.
Abbott's foul mouth caused that, all for his own gain, no forsight at all. Then again he was in a scorching rush to buy 20 billion worth of airoplanes that never saw wind under it's wings.
Submarines in exchange for free passage of a free trade agreement with Japan. He should be lynched.

Doog,

Don't you understand...according to Hasbeen the whole problem including his not having a phone fixed for 2 years is a leftie plot!

Funny I believe the LNP has had the reins for more than 2 years and their "criminal" destruction of the NBN for political opportunism; including off again on again Telstra copper farce has nothing to do with it.

Yeah Right!!

Well Hasbeen is different. He is an Abbott worshiper. Abbott can do no wrong. That was the same bloke that promised everything that was a popular pick to run a political campaign on. Boy did we get had. Remember him saying he will not interfere in the directions of Turnbull. He has done the very opposite since. Just like the political campaign he went the opposite direction.
Probably the very worst is his party did nothing to make amends to the wrong doings of the man they chose to be prime minister. And they continue to allow him to spout innuendo about his own party.

Doog, just for interest, rate Gillard as a person a citizen a patriot & a prime minister.

Your answer if toy are game to give one, should be enlightening.

Gillard was a fine example of a PM. She put a much needed price on carbon, which should never have been retracted and replaced with nothing. All that achieved was a 6 billion black hole.
You will see a resumption of a price on Carbon or its equivalent.
Abbott's witch hunt to nail Gillard Failed miserably, along with several others.
All in the name of Abbott's self esteem. Gillard done very well against an opposition that denied everything for no good reason other than Abbott's own filthy agenda.
Gillard was welcome in high places around the world, unlike your faceless Abbott who would rate worse than Trump. You are the victim of a con job.
With Gillard at the top we would at least have a NBN that is going to work, and not a half baked shamozel of a system that nobody can understand.

Doog,

A price on carbon, who's going to pay for that, the consumer that's who.

At least Abbott had the guts to turn the boats back.
The Labour Party is too wishy washy with national security.

Abbott was also not prepared to bow down to Indonesia, or any of the groups here that
are trying to pull the country apart with their lack of loyalty and cohesion.

The greens won't be happy until they shut the country down with their global warming
extremism.
With the budget I just saw handed down, I may vote liberal, something I have difficulty
doing,because I come from a long line of working class labour voters.
But that doesn't mean I'm always prepared to think anything Labour does is right, and everything the Liberals do is wrong.
I will judge them on who I think is doing right by
the Australian people and the country at any moment in time.

That has become essential, with all the global forces working against Europe and Australia.

It was Rudd that was heading down the path of no boaters will ever be settled in australia.
Boarder control goes back to Abbott denying labor from sending boaters back to malaysia where they came from.

Morrison says good debt and bad debt, our NBN should be good debt, but being compromised to the point of a shambles Abbott has to take the blame.
We were to get a more superior system for half the price, more lies from a fraudster. The NBN is headed for 70 Billion $ with years to go. So it will pan out for 100 Billion $ and not worth doing.
Asian countries have invested in the best possible NBN Fibre to the home. And Australia languishes at the bottom of the barrel, scratching around trying to make things work with a very complicated system.
Abbott and his barrage of election lies are to blame pulling figures out of a hat. All the time worried about our debt problem, showed how to build a cockass system that is going to be a problem for life. Morrison now says some debt is bad and some debt is good. All on paper that is.
So that means trying to cut expenditure is too hard and the brakes are coming off. Our debt is now at 530 billion $. A massive increase since Labor left office. This whole govt is a wasted space, they need to step aside and let a proper govt take control.