NBN Rollout Scrapped

sptrawler said:

That is debatable, whether you like it or not everything (other than electronic data) is transported.

We move it by road, air, sea or rail. The shortest way from Asia to Adelaide is through Darwin.

If carbon taxing becomes a norm and as you are pro carbon reduction, the Darwin Adelaide rail link becomes essential.
The Adelaide freight movement study, forecasts a threefold increase in freight from WA - Darwin via Adelaide by 2030.

My guess is that is conservative, if weather extremes change as per the greenies, much more freight will be transported overland. Sea transport,especially to Asia will be kept to a minimum distance, just my guess.

As far as the NBN goes, I'm getting a box on the wall.

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sydboy007 said:

So your argument seems to be to build the capacity before it's actually required? Sounds rather like the NBN, only on current take up rates for the NBN it seems most are quite happy to pay the small increase to have the highest speed plans compared to the low speed ones. You can survey people to see what they will do, but when they actually part with the $$ you get to see the true demand for a product. People making a conscious decision to use the NBN has been far higher than comparable rollouts around the world. There's plenty of demand for fast reliable broadband.

I dare say the money spend for the ADE DRW rail link would have provided a pay back by now if it had been spent on straightening the rail line linking BNE SYD MEL to allow faster freight transport.

I wasn't able to find the tripling forecast you mention. The only tripling I could see was for freight into and out from Adelaide which includes the fright to MEL and PER along with DRW:

One key reason for forecasting the rail freight task was to understand the future importance of Adelaide as distinct from Perth (and to a much lesser extent Darwin) as a destination and origin market for railed freight.

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NBN Co board member Kerry Schott has acknowledged the network’s board “struggled” with the rollout of the telecommunications project, arguing that former NBN head Mike Quigley was “not the right person” to run it.

Ms Schott’s criticism was backed by long-serving Leighton Holdings construction chief executive and potential NBN Co board director Wal King, who slammed the national broadband network’s rollout as “chaotic”.

The comments from insiders provide a rare insight into the politics and schisms at the highest levels of Australia’s biggest infrastructure project since the Snowy River Dam Scheme.

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drsmith said:

In a broad context, the following article from the AFR isn't a bad read.

http://www.afr.com/p/technology/turnbull_pre_election_nbn_rhetoric_WrF7fbrSdu3VDPfb5RxuvO

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sydboy007 said:

Considering the targets MT has set I 'd say they're just as impossible, if not more so.

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sydboy007 said:

I had to laugh at this complaint

Senior analyst at Informa Telecoms and Media, Tony Brown, says that the outgoing NBN Co board deserves some sympathy, as it had been saddled with an almost impossible task by the previous government’s overly ambitious targets.

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Calliope said:

sydboy's Malcolm Turnbull voodoo doll.

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drsmith said:

It's been proven to be true.

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sydboy007 said:

Yet no mention of the impossible expectations of the new board from MT.

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drsmith said:

He won't be asking his board to don red underpants.

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drsmith said:

In a broad context, the following article from the AFR isn't a bad read.

http://www.afr.com/p/technology/turnbull_pre_election_nbn_rhetoric_WrF7fbrSdu3VDPfb5RxuvO

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Aside from restocking NBN Co’s leadership ranks, in fairly short order, he will need to have a clear plan for unwinding Labor’s fibre to the home (FTTH) plans, make headway on high stakes negotiations with Telstra and explain how his NBN will make enough money to remain off-budget with more *competition introduced.

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In short, by cleaning out the remnants of Labor’s project so quickly, he has taken an approach that will leave him nowhere to hide in a very short space of time.

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THE National Broadband Network can be built more quickly and at less cost to taxpayers using the Coalition model, outgoing NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley conceded as the Abbott government signed off on a radical shake up of the company's board and management.

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The review will investigate the cost of completing the project under Labor's model of laying fibre to the home and under the Coalition's preferred model of making greater use of fibre-to-the-node in brownfield, or established, areas, and then Telstra's copper network.

Mr Quigley said in his email that the fibre-to-the-premises rollout was "behind where we would like it to be".

"However, as a matter of principle I have never believed that the solution to this problem was to spend more taxpayers' money than is required for an efficient network build, even if doing so may have made life a bit easier for management and myself," Mr Quigley wrote.

"Rather, I would prefer that we take the time to calmly establish sustainable new construction models to add the construction capacity that we need."

Overall, the outgoing chief executive wrote, the broadband network was "still largely on budget".

There were hard-working contractors and subcontractors "who are prepared to work for a reasonable rate" and "we have been bringing more of these companies on board in recent months".

Telstra chief executive David Thodey said last year that fibre-to-the-node was faster and cheaper to deliver but cautioned that in some areas the copper had been there a long time "and there could be issues".

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drsmith said:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...o-head-new-board/story-e6frgaif-1226732614762

Also in the article,



It will be interesting to see what the strategic review due to be handed to government on December 2 reveals.

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sydboy007 said:

Not really interesting at all. The Govt controls the scope and extent of the review, and will control the release of information.

If MT was truly for the transparency he claims, we wouldn't have needed over $2K for a FoI request to get the Telecommunications Blue Book.

Lets see how many "issues" the Telstra copper will provide. You'd think MT would have ordered some sort of audit, though no report of this as yet.

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drsmith said:

Regardless of how the politics plays out from here, it's clear from Mike Quigley himself that Labor's full FTTP rollout was a political objective rather than a practical one.

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NBN Co director Brad Orgill has slammed interference in the national broadband network from both sides of politics, claiming the rollout was dysfunctional under Labor and lashing new minister Malcolm Turnbull over his purge of the board.

Mr Orgill said that when he joined the board in September 2012 parts of NBN Co were dysfunctional and that delays in the rollout were unacceptable.

Mr Orgill was the only director who refused to voluntarily resign from the board last week.

“I chose not to resign with all other board members . . . [because of] my weariness at politics overshadowing fair process,” he said in an exclusive opinion piece in Friday’s Australian Financial Review. “That [Mr Turnbull] declined to even meet with the board before demanding all to resign was disappointing.”

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THE Coalition's National Broadband Network will focus on areas that can "get more dollars in sooner" and where the existing services are poorest.

The vow, from Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, is part of a push to put an end to claims of political interference that have dogged the project.

It comes as a former NBN Co deputy chair, Diane Smith-Gander, said she was "hugely encouraged" by the approach Mr Turnbull had taken towards NBN Co.

Ms Smith-Gander -- who quit the NBN Co board to take up a board seat with NBN construction contractor Transfield Services in early September -- said there was a great difference in approach between Mr Turnbull and his predecessor Stephen Conroy, but it was not about fibre to the home (Labor's model) versus fibre to the node (the Coalition's preferred model).

"It's to do with how the company's run," she said. "I'm hugely encouraged by what Turnbull's doing."

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