[LINK] The PLAN, and broadband speeds?

[Adam Todd]

At 09:34 AM 23/06/2007, Jan Whitaker wrote:
>BUT if Jamie Packer wants to buy an outback property and run a fibre 
>link to it -- and PAY for that -- he should be allowed, right?

No, he doesn't have a carrier licence.  (We'll he probably does 
somewhere in the empire.)

>Or if xx telco can see a way to make a buck out of running fibre off 
>a backbone to a cluster with microwave line of sight to get to the 
>town, they should be allowed, right?

No, because Telstra doesn't want the competition and lets face it, if 
xx telco does that, no one is going to know the name "Telstra" in 
those 20 homes across those 5000 kms are they.  Why would you want a 
telstra service and xx telcos!

>At one time, the educational institution I worked for in metro 
>Phoenix was the largest 'phone company' in the state because of the 
>microwave system we owned. Yes, we licensed the frequencies, but we 
>owned the gear, bypassing all but the need for a few trunk lines to 
>make outgoing calles. Ran highspeed (at that time) data and video 
>across it as well. Saved heaps of money, too, merely from replacing 
>the leased data/voice lines which were often only needed for 
>internal communication.

AARNET was like this for a long time, until the new laws came to be 
in the mid 90's.  I'm sure Glenn will be happy to explain what 
happened.  I only know the story from the AVCC and a little from the 
poor people who had to clean up the mess.

>Is any of that possible in Australia or is it so tightly regulated 
>that we're stuck in quagmires of "plans" that never see the light of 
>day? Isn't that the area of competition that we should be looking at?

Plans are good.  Aussies are good at posing plans, talking about them 
year after year, then requiring to modify them because politicians 
have changed, technology has changed, the world has moved on.  So you 
need to make new plans.

Whilst everyone is talking, there is progress.  It's when people stop 
talking that all the attention vanishes from those who started the 
talk and have the status as the New Super Being Savior, and that's 
not good.  So plans are great.

Talk, get the community talking, share the concepts, have people bid 
in, get RFI's under way so people spend months writing HOW TO and WE 
CAN documents, then tell them that something has changed, and there 
needs to be variations, because once something is done, people forget 
who started it all, and thats a really horrible thing for a person 
who likes attention.

Now if a second group start up and decide to actually implement the 
plan, then you have to change your focus from what you are doing to 
why the other group will fail and it won't be worth anything.

This assists in distracting the second group because they either need 
to employ additional PR spin doctors or the "brains trust" finds 
itself in a major distraction from it's business plan, which is the 
plan in the first place.

If course some people establish secondary groups to distract the 
first group from actually deploying.  Talking about revolutionary new 
proprietary technologies that are better and why waste money on out 
dates technologies that won't be compatible.

And so the cycle goes.

And the plans and talks continue and the plans and talks continue, 
and the plans and talks continue and the plans and talks continue ...

(I didn't cut and paste that!  I typed every word!)