http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/political-news/nbn-blows-out-by-3bn-20120808-23uwi.html

THE fast-talking Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, should understand that anyone could achieve a successful result in implementing the National Broadband Network if they were given unlimited funding and a very flexible timeframe in which to complete the task ("Extra $3.2bn needed to fund NBN", 9/8).

The Australian community will be watching with keen interest as we see this poorly planned and managed project flounder along with increasing costs and an ever extending completion date.

As has often been said in the past, a poorly planned and managed project will produce costly and ineffective results. Conroy is right on track to achieve such an outcome.

What Conroy also fails to mention is that the NBN Co is given all this money interest free, for which the Australian taxpayer foots the bill.

The sooner the Opposition modifies this, to fibre to the node to deliver similar speeds at a fraction of the cost, the better.

And to think, some people out there still think they (labor) can effectively implement the carbon and mining taxes without stuffing those up as well.

In fact, is there anything they have touched that they havnt stuffed up.

heard Conroy on radio today saying "copper has served us well but it's reaching the end of it's life after 50/60 years" True, but then he lapsed into total B*llsh*t regarding fibre optic saying it would give us another 50 years of service. hEY, CONROY! where did you getyour science degree regarding the crystaline breakdown proporties of glass fibre. Perhaps he thinks that atomic chemistry will suddenly do a back flip. I give it 6 to 10 years before it has to be totally replaced due to the flow proporties of silicon which degrades the passage of light. In short, copper beats the be-jezuz out of glass fibre when it comes to long life but fibre carries a thousand times more info, however you get nothing for nothing and in the end, for speed and capacity, you have to replace it more often by a factor of 10. You want the speed, you gotta pay big; and pay and pay and ....

It's funny how all new networks in buildings are 99% copper, and happily get speeds of 1Gb/s. Fibre optic cable has been around for decades, and while it has certain advantages, it also has many disadvantages, any one claiming that fibre is always better is an idiot.

Modern copper cables ie CAT 6 have many advantages over fibre, especially over shorter distances especially:

It is far cheaper,
It is far tougher,
If it is damaged, it is easy to fix. (Fibre is difficult and very expensive to fix.)
It carries power (does not need the UPS wall blister of the NBN)

The NBN is offensive to me not only as a taxpayer, but as an engineer.

One of labor's major flaws in their planning, is that they formulate their plans on assumptions.

Assumptions such as, a certain percentage uptake of the NBN, or, that the mining boom will not only continue, but prices will also hold.

So, when a government uses this strategy in their planning, is it any wonder they often fall well short of projected targets.

Now while this may to some extent be an acceptable gamble with ones money, , it is amplified ten fold when using borrowed money and it is for this reason that the whole NBN plan was flawed from the very beginning.

If big business wants ultra fast Internet connection, then the solution is simple, pay for it, own it, even sell/rent part of it,but don't gamble with tax payers money that we simply don't have and certainly can't afford to loose.

To my mind, the trend is away from fixed lines, not back to the future.

The other risk we face from the NBN is that more of our IT work may be easily outsourced, something we can I'll afford, unless of cause you are one of those who honestly believe our employment numbers are great.

When one can hire an entire office of staff 24/7 over seas, for the cost of one staff here, making this easier seems dumb, to say the least.