[LINK] The PLAN, and broadband speeds?

[Karl Auer]

There is an elephant in the room with this whole "broadband" thing.

It is that the ONLY thing stopping even the remotest Australian resident
(let alone urban dwellers) having truly fast Internet access with no
compromises is lack of political will to take the time and spend the
money to do it right. There are NO technical barriers. If we can get
gigabits across the trackless ocean between continents, we can get it
anywhere.

We are so focussed on NOT spending money, on getting someone else to
spend the money, that we faff about with small-timers like Telstra and
Optus. If we were serious, this would be a Federal issue, it would be
done with Federal money, and it would be owned by the Australian
people. 

If we wanted to put fibre into the red centre, we could. But we are not
prepared to spend money on that. Instead we spend millions on
advertising questionable Government programs, and more millions on
second-hand US military toys and so on. We agonise about what Telstra
says it will or will not do. We give money to foreign companies to build
something that we then don't own.

Much has been spoken of "vision". If there was any "vision" out there it
would be talking many tens of megabits if not gigabits. It would be
looking ten years and twenty years into the future, not two. It would
not be even *suggesting* satellite links, with their horrific latency
and low bandwidth. It would be talking glass fibre, massive amounts of
it, laid everywhere we can possibly imagine. We would be building stuff
and opening it up to all comers - yes, even Telstra and Optus, but on
terms that suit the Australian people and that do not transfer any kind
of ownership or control. We would not be wringing our hands and moaning.

Vision would be understanding how the payoff would be enormous. Vision
would be seeing how this would get people *out* of our congested cities,
how it would open up new markets all over the country, how it would
inspire people to create undreamed of products for export and internal
consumption, how it would change this century as rail once changed a
century.

The funny thing is, it's  *not hard*. It just takes someone with the
balls (or ovaries) to say it, stick by it, and do it. Right over the top
of talentless, visionless, money-grubbing zeroes like Telstra.

Regards, K.

-- 
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)                   +61-2-64957160 (h)
http://www.biplane.com.au/~kauer/                  +61-428-957160 (mob)