[LINK] NBN got what it paid for—will now cost almost half as much again to fix it

Frank O'Connor francisoconnor3 at bigpond.com
Fri Nov 27 15:20:02 AEDT 2015


Mmmm,

> On 27 Nov 2015, at 10:47 AM, Bernard Robertson-Dunn <brd at iimetro.com.au> wrote:
> 
> “The nbn board are political hacks. They are incompetent. They did not 
> know what they were doing,” the former communications minister raged. 

I have to admit that as soon as I saw Ziggy Switowski appointed to the NBN, I pretty much wrote off all the NBN Executive. Morrow and the like haven’t exactly inspired confidence either - but Switowski (and Mansfield) presided over Telstra during a period in which Telstra distinguished itself by dropping the ball domestically, letting the local network infrastructure die in the ass, failing to take advantage of Telstra’s market position and plan for the and invest for the future, alternatively investing their humungous short term profits in money losing overseas bit player telcos in SE Asia (that they more often than not subsequently took billion dollar baths on), a huge customer churn … and a share price drop from about $8.50 to $4.

By any measure, his tenure there was a complete failure.

Then he became a nuclear industry lobbyist … which he also performed pretty badly, and then Turnbull appointed him to the NBN. Another terrific decision … dare I say ‘Captain’s Pick’ … by ‘Mr Broadband’.

Ziggy doesn’t have a sparkling record with anything he’s touched … but he seems to retain the confidence of our LNP politicians for one reason or another. I think of him like I think of Henry Ergas - another LNP stalwart who carries a lot of the blame for the current state of the NBN - an unimaginative hack who will do as he’s told and say what he’s told to say ...

As for the HFC … well, that puppy was never gonna be in the most pristine condition - irrespective of whether it was FoxTel or Optus’s network … and was already showing it age when they proposed buying it.

For mine … the HFC network was only an interim solution anyway, as it would have in no way compared to fibre on speed, scalability and reliability measures.

But now we have ‘Mr Broadband’s’ MTM model … of which it is an integral part. 

Thankfully there’s no HFC where I live … but there’s a hell of a lot of old Telstra copper.

Just my 2 cents worth ..
---




More information about the Link mailing list