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Does Australia Really Want The NBN?

Michael Wyres — Mon, 14 May 2012 03:56:46 +0000

I love local newspapers. In many many cases, they are lovingly created by people who just want the best for their communities, and want to make sure they are informed as to the issues in their local community.

The issues that the big metropolitan newspapers don’t give a damn about; issues that are presented without the political agendas of the Fairfax’s and News Limited’s of the world.

Take for example the three-year rollout plan for the NBN, and the disappointment many communities are feeling, since finding out they aren’t in the initial plan.

No political “white elephant” rhetoric, or “biggest infrastructure project in Australia’s history” whining. Just people calling out for what they really want for their suburbs and towns.

Let see some examples of what local communities are saying about the NBN:

Moe, Victoria:

“Mr Buckley said in an interconnected municipality like Latrobe, Moe’s omission would ‘disadvantage’ the area, with ‘integrated institutions’ like Latrobe Community Health Service and the education sector unable to effectively utilise the technology across its services.”

Esperance, Western Australia:

“The Esperance Chamber of Commerce and Industry is complaining to the Prime Minister over being left out of the initial roll out of the National Broadband Network.”

Bendigo, Victoria:

“I wish to register my dismay at the federal government and its decision to exclude Eaglehawk from the NBN fibre network roll-out in Bendigo. The education and health sectors have been used in their promotion as examples of how beneficial the NBN would be. Why is my secondary college the only one to miss out?”

Berrigan/Jeriderie, New South Wales:

“‘For the Berrigan residents and business owners there were concerns that Berrigan had been left of the map – similar to what had occurred when natural gas was installed in the towns of Finley, Tocumwal and Barooga.”

Drysdale/Clifton Springs, Victoria:

“Drysdale and Clifton Springs will submit a formal request to be included in the next rollout of the national broadband network, according to a community group.”

Orange, New South Wales:

“The long wait for the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Orange may be a hurdle for establishing Charles Sturt University’s (CSU) medical school.”

Sunbury/Macedon Ranges, Victoria:

“Mayor Henry McLaughlin said he was disappointed that the shire was overlooked.”

Port Douglas, Queensland:

“Council officers have been in discussions with NBN Co. with regard to rollout in the Douglas area. While these discussions have been positive, we can’t speculate on any impending announcement by NBN Co.”

Mildura, Victoria:

“It’s extremely disappointing. I would have thought Mildura, as a major inland centre, and at a major crossroads for transport, communication and other services would have been included in this first stage.”

Heathcote/Axedale, Victoria:

“Heathcote Tourism and Development president Wayne McKay said while Heathcote and surrounding communities welcomed the news of the rollout, it was disappointing the local region would not be included.”

Dunkeld, Victoria:

“Dunkeld Primary School principal Pat Gleeson said the lack of a roll out would affect his students in the long term.”

Kimberley, Western Australia:

“I don’t know whether we’re in the mix for later, but it’s disgusting that we’ve been left off. They need to revisit what they’re doing. In our Shire, there’d be over 10,000 people and that’s Derby and Fitzroy Crossing and surrounds. It was supposed to make things faster and better.”

Casey/Cardinia, Victoria:

“I want the ministers to come and hear for themselves about what residents in Berwick, Narre Warren and right across my electorate need. Our area is one of the fastest-growing parts of Melbourne.”

So, does Australia really want the NBN?

From this cross sections of articles – (which were gathered together over only about 30 minutes of searching) – the message is loud and clear.

Yes.

When you subtract all the “tasty soundbites” from each of the government, the opposition, and the various slants of the major news outlets, and actually listen to Australians, it is wanted and it is needed.

And listening to what people want sounds like a reasonable idea to me.

NBN: Me First! Me First!

Michael Wyres — Fri, 11 May 2012 01:42:10 +0000

Ever since the announcement of NBN's highly anticipated three-year-rollout plan in March, there has been much jumping up and down from political leaders in various areas not listed within the three-year plan.

Here’s another from Latrobe City councillor, Sharon Gibson, after Moe was left out:

“Cr Gibson will lobby her fellow councillors to support a motion at Monday night’s council meeting calling for the Mayor to write to the Federal Minister for Broadband, Senator Stephen Conroy and urge him to include the Moe-Newborough district in the initial rollout schedule.”

Exactly why should Moe be bumped up the list? What about all the other locations that want to be bumped up the list?

Remember, when you walk into a busy bank at lunchtime, and there’s 30 people waiting for service, and only 5 tellers operating, you have to wait.

A complicated construction project like the NBN simply can’t all be completed at once, as construction resources are limited. Like when there’s only 5 tellers operating in the bank.

Or a house that might be built in one day, if there were enough contractors available to do all the work in one day – generally of course, there’s not.

Writing to Stephen Conroy isn’t going to help either – NBN Co determines the rollout plan, not the minister.

Neither he, nor NBN Co are going to change things to suit everyone’s wishes, even if they could and/or wanted to. Bumping a location up the order sets the precedent, then everyone will want their area bumped up.

“We really don’t need to be isolated from the rest of the Valley.”

Isolated? Really?

It’s not as if existing broadband in Moe is going to stop working when Morwell is connected to the NBN. You’re not going to be “isolated”. Moe is in the fibre footprint.

You just have to be patient.

Like everyone else.

Andrew Laming: No Criticism Please

Michael Wyres — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:00:13 +0000

Federal Liberal MP Andrew Laming went on a trolling warpath earlier this month in regards to his perception that the National Broadband Network (NBN) was being rolled out in the Brisbane area on a politico-geographic agenda.

“The cold, hard reality in Brisbane is that households in Labor seats are eight times more likely to get the NBN than those in Coalition seats.”

“Worse, the odds are around 50 per cent better if your Labor MP is a minister. This is a save-the-political-furniture strategy. They are not targeting marginal seats here. They are just trying to survive.”

Of course, there are many reasons why his position was completely wrong, as I highlighted in my article last week on how the Coalition – (deliberately or otherwise) – manage to get their facts on the NBN completely wrong.

Constantly.

At the time of his rant – (spread throughout the media over several days) – myself, @CameronWatt and @Gwyntaglaw engaged in a terse dialogue on Twitter with Laming, pointing out clear, well documented facts in regards to the NBN and its rollout schedule, that were contrary to Laming’s own beliefs on the matter.

He ably demonstrated his inability to grasp even the basic concepts of how the NBN works, how it connects together, and how technical matters – (in most cases) – dictate which parts of the network are rolled out first.

He clearly didn’t like being shown up as being wrong about it.

In fact, he hated it.

How much did he hate it? Well, he blocked me on Twitter, a fact I discovered when putting together the aforementioned article last week.

The dialogue centers around this tweet, but as he has blocked me, I can’t see the entire conversation any more.

So what’s wrong Andrew? Why don’t you want to hear the facts?

Shouldn’t you be listening to the people?

Of course, all of this goes against his own “social media guide” on how a politician should be dealing with their communities on social media networks, where he declares:

“Politicians reaching out to their communities via social media should avoid getting into public slanging matches with critics.”

You got yourself into a very public slanging match on Twitter, didn’t you Andrew?

Further, he also declares that:

“…disconnecting or blocking constituents is ‘the most damaging thing a candidate can do’…”

Oh dear, really?

Politics will always come with attached criticism – that’s a given – but if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!

Especially when you break your own social media rules.

Coalition NBN Propaganda Allegations Blasted

Michael Wyres — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 09:16:14 +0000

Well, it would seem that the Coalition are continuing to muck rake against the National Broadband Network (NBN) project, apparently running to the relevant umpire – (in this case, the ACCC) – in regards to a “promotional supplement” in appearing in a newspaper local to my past sparring partner, Paul Fletcher.

Fletcher goes on the front foot, claiming that NBN advertising was being disguised as news and that it “blurs the boundary between news content and advertorials”, stating:

“I have written to the ACCC to ask it to investigate whether these statements are misleading and deceptive.”

NBN Co was, of course, quick to retort, blasting Fletcher with a series of tweets:

“NBN Co did not pay for or solicit the supplement that appeared in The Age/SMH. Nor did we have any influence over the editorial content.”

“We responded to queries from journalists writing the supplement as we would every legitimate journalistic query.”

“And we receive on average 100 queries a week from media.”

“Nor did we pay for or dictate the editorial content in the article in News Community newspapers. The editorial space was negotiated after NBN Co took out advertisements in the titles to inform people of the rollout. We were asked to contribute information and check facts. But the article was written by a News Limited journalist.”

My only question is, did Fletcher seek comment from NBN Co before running to the ACCC, which would thereby give them a right of reply?

Given the recent lack of facts from the Coalition in regards to this entire project, one must question their motives, and answer “probably not”.

As it stands, NBN Co will now have to deal with an ACCC matter, when Fletcher could have saved the time and effort by just picking up the phone to NBN Co.

It will be interesting to see how this attempt at muck raking plays out.

(UPDATE: It has now been confirmed to me here by NBN Co that Mr Fletcher did NOT seek comment from NBN Co before making contact with the ACCC.)

(FURTHER UPDATE: It has become known of the advertising features in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, that Optus "sponsored the supplement exclusively", and that they had nothing to do with NBN Co.)

(FOOTNOTE: The series of six tweets from NBN CO are here, here, here, here, here, and
here.)

Can We Have A Little Truth Please?

Michael Wyres — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 04:31:58 +0000

Whether you believe in the National Broadband Network (NBN) project or not, it is fair to say that it has created a lot of discussion and political discourse, particularly in recent months.

The Federal Opposition has vowed to stop the project should they win the 2013 Federal Election, with many seeing this as a good thing, and many seeing it as a bad thing.

They try and justify this position in many ways, mainly with “it’s too expensive”, but also with “the government are doing it wrong”, and “they are pork-barrelling” towards their own interests.

If they are going to attack the project on these factors, you’d want to hope their facts back up their case.

In recent weeks, they’ve shown that not only do their facts fall down heavily, in many instances, they don’t even know what they are talking about.

In late March, NBN Co released its three-year rollout plan for the fibre portion of the network, detailing how 3.5 million premises will have work commenced or completed in their areas over the next three years.

Inevitably, there were many people who were happy their local areas were included, and many people disappointed when their area was not included. The unfortunate fact is that with a project of this magnitude, not everyone can be first in line, and some people will have to wait.

Liberal MP Andrew Laming went on a ferocious and ill-informed rage on Twitter over the areas selected in the Brisbane region within the three-year plans. He accuses the ALP of “pork-barrelling” the rollout into ALP-held seats, commenting to The Australian newspaper:

“The cold, hard reality in Brisbane is that households in Labor seats are eight times more likely to get the NBN than those in Coalition seats. Worse, the odds are around 50 per cent better if your Labor MP is a minister. This is a save-the-political-furniture strategy. They are not targeting marginal seats here. They are just trying to survive.”

He also bleated on Twitter – amongst other ill-informed comments:

“Not just NBN pork barrelling for Labor in Qld, but the bigger Labor man you are, the more fibre you get.”

Laming accuses the government, via the NBN Co developed rollout plan, of carefully selecting Point of Interconnect (POI) locations to suit ALP political interests. At first glance, as suggested by his tweet above, that there might be some basis to such an assertion.

The problem with his assertion however, is that the Government did not choose the POI locations.

The initial plan was for 14 POIs, as supported by the government and NBN Co, but ACCC intervention eventually saw the number of POIs increased to 120, and later to 121. The ACCC also stipulated the location of the POIs, based on the existing fibre backhaul infrastructure within Australia:

“The revised list represents the agreed number and location of initial POI to the NBN. It follows a public confirmation process into the 120 initial POI that was developed by NBN Co in consultation with the ACCC and published in December last year.”

“The availability of competing fibre infrastructure was a key element of the ACCC’s competition criteria. The ACCC has therefore also released today information about the number of competing fibre infrastructure owners across the country.”

Far from pork-barrelling, the ALP had little or no influence on the chosen POI locations, as it was based on the location of existing fibre, layed out over the years, based on market needs.

The network is being built out from these logical central network locations. For the record, the POI locations in the Brisbane area are Ipswich, Woolloongabba, Goodna, Aspley, Bundamba, Camp Hill, Petrie, Slacks Creek, Salisbury, Eight Mile Plains and Chermside.

If you built in outer locations first, there would be nothing to connect those locations to. It would be like building the middle 30 kilometres of a 90 kilometre road first – those 30 kilometres would be useless, as you can’t get onto it.

Further, the majority of the metropolitan Brisbane area is covered by ALP seats, so even if you spread the rollout in a perfectly even fashion across the region, you’re still going to be covering mainly ALP-held seats.

All of Laming’s claims simply appear to be wrong and ill-considered, and made for no other reason than to create some anti-NBN noise. Others have examined the claims also, and drawn similar conclusions.

During a hearing convened by the joint parlimentary committee overseeing the rollout of the NBN on April 16th 2012, opposition communications spokesperson, Malcolm Turnbull tried to nail NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley down on the recently signed contracts to build and launch two Ka-band satellites to cover the final three percent of the population not reached by the fibre and wireless components of the network.

A somewhat tense conversation ensued between Turnbull and Quigley, in which Turnbull tried to enforce the notion that NBN Co was taking a massive risk in ordering the satellites, and thereby committing $660M towards them, without the process to confirm orbital slots for satellites being complete.

Quigley shot his arguments down at every turn, explaining that there was almost no risk at all, and that the current status of the process was quite normal three years out from a planned launch date. Even so, Turnbull tweeted a few minutes later:

“#nbn. Quigley & Gvt happy to take risk of building and launching $660 million satellites without having the orbital slot allocated.”

Quigley promptly retorted:

“Chair, I have just noticed that we have had a tweet from Mr Turnbull who says, ‘Quigley and the government happy to take risk of building and launching $660 million satellites without having the orbital slots allocated.’ I thought that, just five minutes ago, I had made it absolutely and abundantly clear that we did not say we would be launching without the orbital slots.”

In the days following, the ITU, the United Nations body tasked with the management of orbital slots also shot down Turnbull's assertion that there was a massive risk being taken:

“The ITU statement refutes utterly the suggestion that NBN Co is taking ‘highly unusual risks’ by signing contracts to build and launch satellites ‘without securing their orbital parking spots first’. Anyone suggesting otherwise either does not understand the process or is being disingenuous.”

Turnbull was just wrong, and still refuses to admit it, making even more noise about it on his personal blog, despite being shown to be completely wrong. He clearly knows very little about what he was trying to catch Quigley out on.

Of course, even Turnbull admitted as much, stating to Mr Quigley “so you know a lot more
about it than, I guess, any of the rest of us”.

At least he got that bit right.

I have recently spoken on other reasons not to believe the Coalition in regards to their position on the NBN.

They have even tried to claim that areas outside of the fibre footprint, which currently enjoy ADSL2+ speeds higher than the 12Mbps stipulated for the wireless and satellite portions of the network, would be worse off, since some people in those areas would be enjoying higher speeds on ADSL2+.

This of course is wrong too.

Turnbull in particular – as the man who would be in charge of what happens should the Coalition win the next election – should have a better idea of what he is talking about than he has been showing of late. He has copped it from many directions.

And rightly so – if you’re hoping to form the next government, it would be nice to have you know what the hell you’re on about.

Once again, the Coalition have shown that they don’t.

Bob Baldwin: Respect Is A Load Of Rubbish

Michael Wyres — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 15:31:15 +0000

I found myself in a most astonishing Twitter exchange with the Federal Member for Paterson yesterday evening, Bob Baldwin. An exchange in which he asserted that “respect for people” is in fact “a load of rubbish”.

It started with Baldwin accusing @HyperBrendan of being an “ALP hack” after being called out on his position in regards to the National Broadband Network (NBN), something that Baldwin is passionately against.

Now, it’s is perfectly fine for Baldwin to be against the NBN – (after all, this is a democracy) – but labelling someone who does believe in the NBN an “ALP hack” simply for having a different view is just disrespectful.

I tried to point this out with a fairly – (at least I thought) – honest statement in regards to politicians showing respect for the public they serve. I wasn’t necessarily singling Baldwin out in my tweet, but it was his tweet that prompted mine:

“Politicians would serve themselves better to not be so disrespectful to people too, public or not!”

This seemed to get the irk of Baldwin, who labelled it a “load of rubbish“:

Apparently, the “honourable member” feels that showing respect to people is not a priority, and is in fact “rubbish”.

Say what?

There were a number of tweets fired back and forth between myself, Baldwin, HyperBrendan and @bernietb – (and a number of others who joined in) – calling him out on his declaration that showing respect was a “load of rubbish”, with the eventual retort:

“If you don’t like it, then don’t serve it. Simple as that!”

Seems Baldwin is of the opinion that we shouldn’t “serve it” if we don’t like the response, yet if he “serves it”, we should just accept it.

You know what Bob?

Respect should be a core value in our society, and you shouldn’t disrespect people and unfairly label them, just because your views are different to theirs.

Such unfettered attack comes only from those with a position of weakness.

Your behaviour last night was a disgrace – and you should be man enough to admit it.

How Does The NBN Rollout Workout?

Michael Wyres — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 08:16:23 +0000

With today’s release of the much anticipated NBN 3-Year Rollout Plan, there have inevitably been some people who are excited, and some who are disappointed.

While so many people would all love to be first, as reiterated by NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley at today’s announcement, it is simply not possible to build the fibre out to all twelve million locations in just three years.

Someone has to be first, and someone has to be last – an unfortunate consequence of a project of this magnitude.

But what of the areas that were announced today?

How were those boundaries defined? As someone who has worked in the telco space for many years, it is quite simple to see that they have drawn those boundaries based on existing exchange boundaries of the copper network.

This makes perfect sense.

The just completed Telstra deal allows NBN Co to use all of Telstra’s existing underground infrastructure to haul the new fibre through – logically, that means the areas are based on the old exchange boundaries, and the individual modules of the network are based on the old copper concept of the “DA”, or distribution area.

Within the copper network, a DA services about 3000 premises. Lo and behold, in NBN land, a network module services about 3000 premises. This pretty clearly defines that the fibre goes exactly where the copper is now, with very few exceptions.

In deciding where to build in any given 12 month period, it seems NBN Co are covering two existing exchange areas at a time.

For example, in my local Geelong area, there are two areas listed in the 3-year plan. The first covers:

“Bell Park, Bell Post Hill, Breakwater, Drumcondra, East Geelong, Geelong, Geelong West, Hamlyn Heights, Herne Hill, Manifold Heights, Newtown, Norlane, North Geelong, North Shore, Rippleside, South Geelong, Thomson”.

If you look at the maps of the two exchange areas – (Geelong [GEEM] and North Geelong [NGLG]) – serving those suburbs, they exactly match the above group of suburbs:

The same happens when you look at the second area to be covered:

“Batesford, Bell Post Hill, Corio, Lara, Lovely Banks, Norlane”

…and then look at the maps of those two existing exchange areas – (Corio [CORI] and Lara [LARA]):

While the southern areas of Geelong have been left out so far, if they stick to the “two exchanges areas at a time” methodology, at the next update, the adjacent Belmont [BELM] and Grovedale [GROX] exchanges are pretty likely to be included.

So if your area missed out today, take heart that if a nearby area was included today, your area is not likely to be too far behind.

There is a method in the madness. Just try and control your madness if you did miss out today.

We all want it, and it will come.

Three-Year NBN Rollout Plan Released

Michael Wyres — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:58:54 +0000

NBN Co, the government business entity (GBE) responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network (NBN), has today released its long awaited three-year rollout plan.

I’ve not had the time to go through it fully as yet, but follow the link below and find out whether or not your area is included in the latest plan. Even if it is not, fret not, as the plan will be regularly updated to include new areas.

Once I have a chance to look through it completely, I’ll come back and have more to say about it. At first glance however, it is a mightily impressive plan, and this is great news.

Stay tuned!

(UPDATE: Here is the suburb by suburb listing as part of the 3-year-rollout plan.)
(UPDATE: I’ve now had a closer look at the finer details of how the network will be rolled out, based on today’s information!)