Only two weeks to go until the NBN Co review report. The big money is betting on Australia aiming to buck the trend against FTTP and aim low by proceeding down the UK BT FTTN approach. Can we do it? Can we really achieve the world's first brass medal for the worst new broadband network? What should NBN Co be really doing? Here are five things that could be done immediately.
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The new NBN Co executive chairman Ziggy Switkowski has quickly fallen into line with Coalition policy and his statements at last Mondays Senate estimates committee confirm this. This was one of the more remarkable performances for all the wrong reasons. Switkowski actually asked rhetorical questions about the nations future telecommunication needs that he should have been fully appraised of before his appearance - or was he deliberately playing with the committee?
Five years ago Telstra began the process of embracing a competitive fixed access market based on a new fibre access network. Sometimes change is forced on us and the end result is positive. But what would you do if you had the opportunity to slide back into old habits before you really understood the benefits of moving forward? Telstra's Thodey has a hard decision to make in the coming months. Will Telstra move forward or slide back?
Turnbull's second rate NBN is in need of rescuing and if necessary we can adopt a technique normally used as a network reaches obsolescence or to provide redundancy for business. Connection Bonding is described in Business Spectator including how it might be used to provide a better connection than what will be provided by Turnbull's multi-technology mix (MTM) NBN.
The NBN review and the myriad of backflips and summersaults by the Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull prompted me to revisit what I said in April about the Coalition NBN proposal - do you remember this?
2014 has been a difficult year for the NBN and there’s no doubt that Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull will be revelling in the pyrrhic victories he has secured this year. In Business Spectator the year that was 2014 for the NBN is discussed and outcomes identified. NBN Co's engineers have been working hard to prepare for the beginning of the multi-technology mix rollout.
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The NBN review report has been prepared to justify the Coalition's NBN approach, though it is not standing up to scrutiny. The new NBN Co management team is struggling to stay on message with the Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull. The new NBN 2.0 is to be built using a multi-technology approach and today in Technology Spectator the NBN house of cards highlights the extent of the problems with NBN 2.0 and the multitude of ways the project can fail.
In the interim, the senate continues to spotlight the NBN and of the 35 submissions to the senate inquiry on the NBN to date the government will be struggling to find any support for NBN 2.0.
Australian telecommunications policy has been a failure for 30 years and the move to introduce even more cherry picking will be bad for Australia. Today on Technology Spectator NBN cherry picking is discussed in light of the government's NBN reviews and audits. It appears the regional and remote Australia will be the big losers. Do you want cherry picking to be enshrined in telecommunications competition policy?
Recently we learned that telcos including iiNet, its subsidiaries and other small telcos have delayed signing NBN Co's new wholesale agreement due to delays provisioning services, fixing faults and attending customer meetings. The house of cards created by NBN Co's outsourced construction model is now the communication minister Malcolm Turnbulls problem and he is under pressure to get the problem fixed.