http://www.freeaccess.com.au/Structure:%20/2011/01/02/victoria-government-officially-opposing-nbn-opt-out/

With opt in statistics close to 10%, and Victoria, NSW and WA (2/3rds of the population) not implementing the opt out legislation, there is every chance that Julia Gillard will build a network that almost no one uses.

Even for you Shadow Minister that is extraordinary.
10% opt out, so you determine almost no one will use it!
To balanced readers I Offer this question.
Is it not true at least 10% of Australians do not have computers?
I rather think the Liberal Ship Titanic should fear the iceberg.
Duty done I leave your sand box one post is enough lets look for reality else ware.

Belly,

The figures are projections based on the minuscule take up of the NBN in Tasmania, especially since the trial areas did not have the high speeds the cities presently enjoy.

Without Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, the financial justification for the NBN will sink without bubbles.

Too early to rejoice.
If they cannot have it voluntarily, they will take it by force, they will whip us, tearing our flesh till we accept their NBN.

When someone is corrupt and is in power, then only God can stop him/her, but unfortunately He is known to take His time in such matters.

I wish it was not made a political issue, for that only puts red in front of Julia's eyes. I wish she could simply distribute the tax-payer money to her friends and relatives without torturing us with the NBN exercise.

"Without Sydney, Melbourne and Perth, the financial justification for the NBN will sink without bubbles"

But since when do tyrants need a financial justification for their whims? If she really cared for country-people, I wish she just gave those of them who want it their toys, even if the rest of us, tax-payers have to foot the bill, so long as we do not ourselves have to be part of the cover-up operation.

Never mind sparing a thought for the population that does not live in capital city's.
It should be seen as a strategic, importance.
It would not take much to devastate AU's population in one hit.

579, the NBN is nowhere as strategically important as getting the
countries railways up to scratch for when trucks have to be
restricted to local deliveries.
Does anyone suggest that the NBN is more important than any of these;

1. Electrify and duplicate all interstate rail lines.
2. Recondition and reopen a large number of country branch lines.
3. Build additional damns on suitable rivers.
4. Examine if possible to divert some Gulf rivers towards the Darling.
5. Improve public transport nationally, eg the NW line in Sydney.
6. Flood mitigation measures.

These are six projects just straight of the top of my head that are
far more important than the NBN. How many can other readers suggest ?
These more important projects would use many times the $43 billion
being wasted on the NBN especially when you consider that they are
survival projects in a time energy descent.

There is no energy descent, fuel's will change over time when enough incentive is in place to cause a shift.
The NBN is important in decentralization, sydney is full.
Trucks restricted to local, will never happen matter what rail system you have. That is a very short sighted view.
Electric cars are being made in increasing numbers, they can only improve as models go by.
Why not steam power for a train fired with a little uranium. People need incentive to get off oil. [ carbon tax.]

579;
Do I have news for you;

The only argument about oil supply that is now current is whether
peak crude oil occurred in 2005 or 2006 !
The International Energy Authority says 2006 but others say 2005.
Not really much of an argument.
I suggest you read the Hirsch Report, easily found with google.
You should also read;

http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/validity-of-the-fossil-fuel-production-outlooks-in-the-ipcc-emission-scenarios/
Whoops bit long, use this instead;

http://tinyurl.com/yhqn2pv

The link to the full published report is down the page.
There is no way we can generate enough energy in the timescale needed
to replace oil and a bit later coal.
The present silver bullet is natural gas but even that will have a
limited lifespan as it depletes at very fast rates.

Do you still maintain that those projects I listed are less important
than the NBN ?
The NBN will have limited improvement for users and in terms of
really important things, like eating and food you can afford, pales
to nothing.

Peak oil has been around since oil was discovered, what you are saying is there is no more to be found. That would be highly unlikely, and telling explorers they are wasting their time looking.
It only makes cense that we have a communication link that is uniform and the best their is. The NBN will serve us nicely for quite some decades. Communications may be adequate where you are, but not so elsewhere.
Why be against infastructure.
I don't see your argument about food supply, all problems if there is any can be overcome.
The world needs incentive to make changes, or things will just drag on as normal.

The simple fact is we live in the information age and the volume of transmitted data will continue to increase exponentially.

For all those who think that infrastructure should be built to yesterdays needs, wake up. The whole point of infastructure is to build for the future. I see typical small minded infastructure projects every day. Two lane bridges built 5 years ago, are now being duplicated. What a phenomenal waste, savings of more than 50% could be had by buildng 4 lanes in the first place.

Initial take up rates are irrelevant. What is important is the usage over the life of the network. With data usage continuing to increase exponetially, demand for the higher speeds/larger bandwidths will follow. like night follows day.

The NBN will provide us with the capacity to evolve with the changes in information technology. Wireless will not suffer, on the contrary, wireless will improve as it will be able to use the faster speeds of fibre to a local wireless node, and allow greater usage of the available wireless bandwidth.

As for the commercial aspect. The question over whether there is value to be had in the internet sector has been settled by the recent capitalistation of facebook which values the company at 50 billion dollars, making it a global business heavyweight.

579
I never said;
what you are saying is there is no more to be found.

that, of course more oil will be found, it is just that the quantities
and the cost of new oil will not make up for depletion.

I think I understand now that you do not have an accurate grasp of the
situation. The adequacy of telecommunications will be of far less
importance in say, 20 years than it is now.
What will be important will be physical communication of people and
particularly goods. The transport of food and supplies for the
producers of food will have top priority and building supplies will
also have a high priority.

You seem to think that trucks will continue in a business as usual
manner, and they will for a time on natural gas but that will almost
certainly be kept for electricity generation.
The long distance road transport is coming to an end probably in the
2020s or late 2010s. They use up to eight times the per ton fuel
than trains so I just cannot see government allowing them to do long
distance alongside trains or ships.
The price of oil may well decide the matter when diesel reaches about
six to eight dollars a litre.

PaulL, I agree fibre is the way to go and is future proof, but to
run it to every premises is a waste of resources that are needed for
much more fundermental and important projects.
The radio spectrum is too valuable to waste on the internet except
where necessary and can be multishared.
Surely water and transport is more important than any data network
usage that can be dreamed up ?

The fundermental problem is we don't have the money to do everything.
We will in the future have even less.
Our oil import bill will soon be almost as much as the NBN but EVERY year !

I am going to opt out for as long as I can.

Reason:
Most won't bother to opt out so the network will be slow due to high traffic.
My opt out network will not be as busy so faster.
My opt out network will be cheaper
Let those who opt in pay for the fixing of the teething issues.
When I do finally opt in, they will have cheaper rates on offer than those who didn't bother to opt out, so as to attract the opt outters to opt in.

Hey Bazz You been lookin in to ya crystal ball to make that prediction.
Who knows what oil there is to be found.
Hundreds of trucks a day go to West AU now, And they are not bothering the train at all. Train lines tend to go in straight lines;
You don't seem to have much faith in human inventiveness, No long haul trucks, that is giving in before any effort is applied.
I don't know what you mean about communications, being less important in 20 yrs time. What ever scenario you have planned for us will never happen.
There's big dollars to be had for the right ideas, so have a think about it.

Well 579 if this does not convince you then you are unconvincible.
Aaarrrggghhh I tried to copy the graph accross but it appears we
cannot insert graphs here.

So here is the link;
http://www.oilcrisis.com/campbell/
The graph to which I refer is titled the growing gap.
As you can see the quantity of oil discovered each year peaked in 1964
and each year since then the quantity found has been less.
The black line is oil production.
In 1983 the production line crossed the discovery amount.
Ever since then the shortfall in discovery has got larger.
Obviously this cannot go on forever. Currently we are using about 5
times the amount we discover each year.
In other words we are relying on old discoveries and it is these wells
that are depleting.

Now do you understand the urgency of the problem ?

ps the author is a retired oil field engineer and manager of Shell
and CEO of Total, so he has been there and done that.

Iraq is destined to become a bigger supplier than Arabia,
At present there is 4000 wells in production and enough for 40 yrs
at 85000 Barrels / day
Get up to date info at forbes.com

Those figues you quote are obviously wrong.
Iraq production will be one to two million barrels a day.
85,000 a day is absolutely nothing.
85,000 barrels a day would last the world just 86 seconds !

I suggest that 4000 wells producing is also wrong.
It could be that over time 4000 wells have been drilled, some dry and
some had produced and some still producing.
The number of rigs in each country is fairly well known, but off the
top of my head I can't remember where.

The problem is the huge size of the oil industry.
The IEA says that a new Saudi Arabia is needed every two years just
to keep up with depletion. It is just not going to happen.
That chart I linked to says it all.