@Houellebecq: You sound happy about that.

I am happy we still have it in us to go down government doing the nation building road when it makes sense. And it often does make sense. Off the top of my head this is how we built our road, rail, telephone and water systems.

@Houellebecq: Do you also agree with closing tunnels so a private monopoly's motorway gets higher patronage?

Are asking me if making the local neighbourhood to pay for a toll road built for them by forcing them to use it is worse than taxing the entire state? I guess my answer would depend on whether I was a local so was doing the paying, and whether I thought the toll road was worth the money.

I'd have more sympathy with your analogy if looked like it applied to you and the NBN, ie if the forced change over to the NBN meant you were going pay significantly more. As it stands the only people who will pay more look to be those who use their land line for phone only. It will be to the tune of $10/month by the looks of it. But as you say, they are an endangered species.

@Yuyutsu: arbitrary politically-based government prohibition?

It's not arbitrary. The NBN looked to be one of the reasons Labour is still in power. Getting this forced down your throat is one of the unpleasant side effects of being a minority in a democracy.

@Shadow Minister: 10yr old Daihatsu ... porsche .. the extra $40bn or so that connecting homes via fibre could be well spend on hospitals, schools, police etc.

Well then Shadow I guess you are just ecstatic with the $40 Billion being a loan, which will be paid back. So those hospitals are just delayed, not lost forever. Since you are having trouble accepting this might be possible, I'll explain it in simple terms. Lets say you have a shiny car, which you lease for 5 years. At the end of the 5 years it is old and daggy. Now here is the magic bit: now the lease is over you can sell your old daddy car for roughly the payout figure, and lease a shiny new car at no additional expense to you. You just keep paying that lease figure.

Now I can hear you say, "but oh rstuart, I wouldn't do that, I would just continue driving the old car and not pay any lease". For what its worth nor would I. But here is the thing: no one is giving you that choice. Either you pay your current lease to Telstra and reward those long suffering share holders, or you give the same money to the government and they will use it to build a shiny new network. It rude, I know, but I say screw the shareholders, I want my new porsche.

Rstuart,

Firstly, the $11bn purchase of the Telstra access is not included in the $0bn.

Secondly the heroic assumption is that the loan will be paid back. The assumption is that 75% of house holds will take up an NBN Internet connection. Given that 10% typically don't connect at all, the assumption is that no more than 15% use wireless only. Given that the trends today in other countries is approaching 25%, and given the mobile wireless take up figure I have shown, this is likely to be exceeded in Australia.

Given Labor's record on similar infrastructure projects such as the tunnels I would bet a lot of money that it falls on its face.

Thirdly, the cost of the lease is going to be far higher for the basic package than most of us presently pay for a faster, bigger download package. So many are going to be paying for the "porsche" but still only getting the daihatsu.

Finally, all of us are going to have no other choice as competition has been banned.

@Shadow Minister: Firstly, the $11bn purchase of the Telstra access is not included

My understanding is it was included. Originally they had budgeted on not using Teltsra's ducts. Once they got access to the duct the price dropped, as the $9 billion they paid for the copper (not sure what the other $2 billion is for) is cheaper than digging trenches. So, got a link for that?

@Shadow Minister: such as the tunnels

I am not sure what tunnels you are referring to. But if it is the those in Brisbane that have just gone broke, that was Campbell "Can Do" Newman's little project. His election platform has always been "build more roads for cars". For those of you wondering how a single city can be responsible for infrastructure projects worth billions, Brisbane City's budget is larger than Tasmania's.

Brisbane had 5 river crossing around the city, each within a few kilometers of each other. Newman for some inexpiable reason decided to add two more. Naturally, since they are toll roads and there are already 5 crossings, no one uses them. We have one more infrastructure bankruptcy to go. That would be his Go Between Bridge.

Newman is a civil engineer. I might have forgiven him as just being a dumb politician had he been a pastor like his labour predecessor. I am a bit harder on people who should know better.

In the next 12 months wells equal to the production capacity of the 2nd largest producer, Iran, will run dry. That will send a seismic shock thought the economy as we scramble to move our transport fuels over to things like LPG, a seismic shock that will make make the carbon tax look like popping a pimple on an elephants arse. And just prior to this, Newman wastes billions that could be used to build public transport on tunnels for cars? It makes me angry every time I think about it.

But to set the record straight Shadow - Newman, the man responsible for those public infrastructure spending disasters, is a Liberal.

Dear Rstuart,

"The NBN looked to be one of the reasons Labour is still in power. Getting this forced down your throat is one of the unpleasant side effects of being a minority in a democracy."

So on the ideological side, I understand that you believe that it is OK for 51% to tyrannize 49% in the name of democracy. There is not much I can say for such views, but I am still interested in your technical expertise:

"Telephone calls will now become internet data, and sent over the normal internet. With that the transition will be complete. Rather then the internet being bolted onto the telephone infrastructure, telephones will be bolted onto the internet infrastructure. They will become just way we use the internet, along with web browsing, email, internet chat, and watching videos."

This is a very crucial issue for me: while I can use the internet in the office, I will never bring it into my home, which means that I could lose my home-phone, so how does it actually work? is it:

1. Phone works over internet (as in VOIP), so each NTU has an IP (or IPV6) address and phone-calls are directed to a particular TCP (or UDP) port.

or

2. Side-by-side, so both the basic phone service and the internet traffic (and probably other services too) ride independently over some basic, new low-level, NBN protocol.

Very much appreciated.

The $11bn gift from the Labor government to the NBN is to help them reduce their costs, and any real accounting system would accrue this cost to the project. Instead it is just a hit to the tax payer.

As I live in Sydney, the tunnels I was referring to were the Lane Cove and Cross City tunnels which NSW provided traffic figures to the companies based on shutting down alternate routes. The Clem 7 would be similar except for the closing of alternate routes.

The traffic figures proved to be wildly optimistic and the companies instead of being profitable went bust. As I have tried to show, the figures upon which the NBN provides a very meagre profit are very optimistic, and any due diligence would lead any real company to steer clear.

As NBN co is not a real company, and is set up purely to hide the costs from the budget sheet, ENRON style, and its collapse will shaft the taxpayer.