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Subject: WTF - $43 billion bucks spent to improve porn download rates?!?!
Aussiegunneragain    4/7/2009 3:26:13 AM
So now that we are heading towards a recession with the prospect of a $100 billion dollar deficit over the next 4 years, our Dear Leader has decided to quadtriple the size of the National Broadband Network project to $43 billion bucks. Originally the project was "only" going to cost $9b, with $4.5b coming from the Government, but now the $4.5b will just be an initial payment. How much is the taxpayer going to end up paying for this monsterous white elephant of a project, $20b plus? WTF are people going to use all that bandwidth for anyway ... surely if the demand was really there then business would build it of its own accord? I don't know about you lot but don't want my taxes being flushed down the toilet by a Government making the old mistake of trying to pick winners. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Broadband price rise tipped under $43b plan Posted 2 hours 50 minutes ago Updated 2 hours 17 minutes ago Massive project: analysts are astonished at the upfront cost. (Reuters: Hannibal Hanschke, file photo) Video: PM announces broadband scheme (ABC News) Audio: Market rocked by Government announcement (The World Today) Audio: Press conference: Kevin Rudd unveils broadband plan (ABC News) Audio: Opposition slams Government plan (The World Today) Audio: Federal Government ditches broadband policy (The World Today) Audio: Tanner takes critics to task (The World Today) Audio: Dr Bill Glasson on the Government's national broadband network plan (ABC News) Related Story: Broadband plan 'a massive broken promise' Related Story: Rudd redraws broadband landscape Related Story: Tas gets first 'byte' at new broadband Related Story: Broadband network 'must accommodate rural needs' Related Story: Telstra defies downward market trend Related Story: Phone lines restored in NT Related Story: Disappointment over national broadband plan Related Link: Factbox: Key points about national broadband network Market analysts say broadband prices are likely to rise, after the Government unveiled an amibitious new $43 billion plan to build a national fibre-to-the-home broadband network. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has scrapped the broadband tender process in favour of forming a public/private company to build and operate a network which will cost over four times the amount of the original $9.4b proposal. Mr Rudd says the network will take eight years to build and give 90 per cent of Australian households download speeds 100 times faster than they currently experience. The 10 per cent of homes not covered by fibre-to-the-home will get upgraded wireless access. But analysts are astonished at the upfront cost and say they have concerns about the network's commercial viability. "I've got no idea what's driving the Government to do this," Ivor Ries, an analyst with EL and C Baillieu Stockbroking, says. "They're saying a network that will deliver 100 megabits per second, that would exceed current household consumption by a factor of 100 times. "[That] allows you to download several channels of television at the same time. "[So] what it will do is create a market for people selling downloads to homes - people selling movies for downloads to homes will obviously be big winners from this. "But is it going to provide some sort of magic shot in the arm to productivity? Probably not." Mr Ries says the new network is only financially viable if 80 per cent of Australians choose the access provided by the new cables rather than wireless internet access. "If they get only 60 per cent of the population using it, and people preferring wireless over this new cable, then the monthly access fee they're going to have to charge people will be prohibitive," he warned. "At the moment the average Australian household is spending about $40 a month on accessing the internet. "Whereas this proposal will require the average household to be paying somewhere round about $75-85 a month. "So you're talking there about a $35 to $45 a month increase in the cost of basic access for the average household." BBY Stockbroking senior analyst Mark McDonnell says it is hard to see how the private sector could make a return on such an expensive project, unless broadband prices rise significantly. "It's both audacious and paradoxical," he said. "The paradox being that if you can't find private sector support for a proposition around building a fibre-to-the-node network which might have cost $10 to $15 billion, let's up the ante and make it $43 billion and still ask for private sector support. "How's that going to happen?" But telecommunications analyst Paul Budde says Australians are getting top-level technology without waiting for a commercial company to provide it, even if home use will only be part of the new network. "You have to look at it in a totally different situation," he said. "You talk about the use of the infrastructure; not just for internet. You talk ab
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Volkodav - Question   4/10/2009 4:15:36 AM

I am honestly looking forward to VOIP, IPTV, hiring cheap movies online instead of driving to the DVD shop. It will also be great to stream lectures as part of my external studies, while the other half works from home and Miss Muppet live streams Tokio Hotel into her bedroom at 3000000db.

After all this I could set my son up in from of a webcam to chat to his Nanna in Darwin and take one of the dogs for a run (something I don't have much time for at the moment).
 
The other possibility is I could use CITRIX from home for the unclassified part of my job for a more family friendly work life balance.

For all this I would happily pay $200 a month. Don't forget with broad band of this speed you will be able to get rid of many other services and items you currently have to pay for.

Well I'm quite happy to use the telephone to talk to my parernts in Brisbane, drive to the DVD shop once a week to hire a movie and when I study or work I prefer to do it on-site away from the distractions from home. I deliberately haven't got pay TV because I don't want to waste time watcing "Dukes of Hazard" reruns, like I know I would if I had it. The only things that I use the internet for is participating here, email, online banking and the occasional bit of shopping around for whatever I want to buy. There is no possibility that I would pay $200 per week for an internet service. If you and enough others want the service enough to pay that much for it then the service should be commercially viable of its own accord.
As such my question to you is, why should I even be subject to the (very significant) risk that this thing is going to cost me money to subsidise your lifestyle with more middle-class welfare?
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Mandate   4/10/2009 4:19:08 AM
The other point is, where is the Rudd Government's mandate to build this monstrosity? They went to the election promising four and a half billion dollar spend on a broadband network, not a twenty billion plus one. Its a frickin' disgrace.
 
 
 
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Aussiegunneragain       4/10/2009 4:33:12 AM

 I would rather see the government building infra structure that private enterprise lacks the foresight to build than giving tax breaks to companies to fail to provide second or third best.

I appreciate your faith on those of us working for the Government but I have a bit more of a cynical view. While there are some things that need Government involvement such as providing public policy advice to Ministers (which is why I work for them, because that happens to corrospond with what I like doing) and providing law enforcement, defence etc, Governments are not good at making commercial decisions. Think about it, if the public servants running this thing were really commercially savey, do you think they would be working for us on low six figures or a telco for high six or low seven? Private enterprise will build the network that is justified by the conditions in the market and there heaps of instances where that is done well, for example gas and electricity networks. The only reason we don't see more of it in Australia is because Government's have traditionally provided infrastructure (and much of it that we don't need).  
 
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DropBear    AG   4/10/2009 5:52:03 AM
Good for you, pay for it yourself and stop expecting to be able to reach into my pocket to fund your video calls to your auntie in Gympie. .

Well AG, like everyting in my life to date I have paid my way. Never received welfare payments, never received Austudy, paid my way through education, self insure my medical requirements etc, so I am more than happy to pay for any associated costs my private internet may use 9or subsequently burden my fellow citizen). Infact, I am quite happy to take back the three compulsary ambulance subscriptions and the double hit I contribute on medicare (the levy and then additional surcharge) to fund a few hundred metres of fibre optics. 
 
We live in a capitalist economy with fundamental socialist underpinnings and this means that both you and I pay for things that we may not use or agree with. Let's face it, many people may not appreciate the direct benefit to their lives of the Snowy Scheme, however, we all eat produce that has benefited downstream from this program.
 
As to the video calls to Gympie, well I may just get VOIP down the track so I can be able to give Telstra the double finger salute.

Each to their own.
 
 
 
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Volkodav       4/10/2009 6:46:57 AM
As an interesting aside I started downloading a series of patches for some software I use just on 3 hours ago, it has just hit 11% so I hope its finished by the morning.
 
As for the comment about studying onsite AG, I would if I could. Unfortunately my employer is not prepared to give me the 320 hours a year I would require to attend the on campus lectures, tutorials and prac's. There are no after hours classes so if it was not for external delivery I would not be able to participate in the program at all.
 
Like DB I am happy to pay extra for this service, so long as I am given the option to get it at all. What I can currently access does not dothe job and I like many Australians want the right to choose.
 
Also I am seriously in need of the chance to give Telstra the Bird.
 
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Volkodav       4/10/2009 8:35:01 AM
As an interesting aside I started downloading a series of patches for some software I use just on 3 hours ago, it has just hit 11% so I hope its finished by the morning.
 
As for the comment about studying onsite AG, I would if I could. Unfortunately my employer is not prepared to give me the 320 hours a year I would require to attend the on campus lectures, tutorials and prac's. There are no after hours classes so if it was not for external delivery I would not be able to participate in the program at all.
 
Like DB I am happy to pay extra for this service, so long as I am given the option to get it at all. What I can currently access does not dothe job and I like many Australians want the right to choose.
 
Also I am seriously in need of the chance to give Telstra the Bird.
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Dropbear   4/10/2009 9:57:09 PM
Well AG, like everyting in my life to date I have paid my way. Never received welfare payments, never received Austudy, paid my way through education, self insure my medical requirements etc, so I am more than happy to pay for any associated costs my private internet may use 9or subsequently burden my fellow citizen).

Yeah, I know you have said that on here before which is why I stuck up for you with Buzzard but you've now gone and declared yourself a socialist I guess that is moot.

Infact, I am quite happy to take back the three compulsary ambulance subscriptions and the double hit I contribute on medicare (the levy and then additional surcharge) to fund a few hundred metres of fibre optics. 
 
What, so if you were ill or injured you wouldn't use the ambulance or go to a public hospital? Let me tell you, healthcare is expensive enough that nobody working in fisheries protection for the Queensland Government is going to be self insuring for major medical interventions.  We socialise parts of the healthcare system because it is considered by the vast majority of the population to be a basic service that everybody needs. I don't agree entirely with the current policy settings but the best way to provide healthcare is a hard moral and social question that goes beyond whether or not Governments are the best organisations to run businesses.
 
This in contrast this amounts to the Government robbing some Australian's to support the lifestyle choices of others, much like happens with higher education funding, ABC funding, arts funding, sports funding, industry funding, pork barrel infrastructure projects etc, etc. The stupid thing is that we all probably use one or another of those services so all the Government is doing is circulating our money to each other at great expense to economic efficiency and at a great administrative cost, with the only real winners being the buisnesses getting Government contracts and the army of program management public servants who co-habitate Canberra with me. It would be far better just to leave the money in people own hands for all but the basic social needs such as primary and secondary education, and adequate healthcare. I know the temptation is to say "well everybody else has their nose in the trough so why shouldn't a measure that benefits me get up?". However, if we all adopt that attitude and don't make a stand on this sort of stupidity, then we will all continue to suffer as a consequence.
 
We live in a capitalist economy with fundamental socialist underpinnings and this means that both you and I pay for things that we may not use or agree with. Let's face it, many people may not appreciate the direct benefit to their lives of the Snowy Scheme, however, we all eat produce that has benefited downstream from this program.
 
Who said the Snowy Scheme was the best way to use all of those resources and if it was, who say's that it wouldn't have been built by private investors anyway, like so much of post war Australia was? The thing that people don't realise is that Government ownership of what should have been private assets, along with protectionism, took Australia from being one of the wealthiest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century to being down around the 20th wealthiest until the 1980's when Hawke, Keating and Howard started to unwind those "fundamental socialist underpinnings" that we USED to have. In fact, Government borrowing to build railroads into non-viable areas of farmland directly contributed to the severity of the economic downturns in Australia in the 1890's and 1920's/30's. Its not a matter of looking at a big impressive scheme like the Snowy and saying "isn't that great, look at what it has done for us". Its a matter of assessing whether we could have done better by allowing resources to go to other more valuable uses. I find it extraordinary that on the brink of a recession where we are never the less in one of the strongest economic positions of all the OECD countries to deal with itbecause of 25 years of pro-market reform, that people would want to wind the clock back to the bad old days.
 As to the video calls to Gympie, well I may just get VOIP down the track so I can be able to give Telstra the double finger salute.

Each to their own.
 
But what you are saying isn't "each to their own". It's "give me your own and screw you if you don't like it".
 
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Aussiegunneragain    Volkodav   4/10/2009 10:04:14 PM

As an interesting aside I started downloading a series of patches for some software I use just on 3 hours ago, it has just hit 11% so I hope its finished by the morning.

 As for the comment about studying onsite AG, I would if I could. Unfortunately my employer is not prepared to give me the 320 hours a year I would require to attend the on campus lectures, tutorials and prac's. There are no after hours classes so if it was not for external delivery I would not be able to participate in the program at all.

 Like DB I am happy to pay extra for this service, so long as I am given the option to get it at all. What I can currently access does not dothe job and I like many Australians want the right to choose.

 Also I am seriously in need of the chance to give Telstra the Bird.

So you are getting external delivery now without the network? It doesn't look like this network is a pressing need for you to me.
 
Anyway, in demanding your "right to choose" you clearly don't give a damn about anybody elses right to choose not be lumbered with the expense of this thing if it is commercially unviable, as it looks to me that it will. What you are really demanding is the right to spend everbody elses money and I think that stinks.
 
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DropBear    AG   4/10/2009 10:35:14 PM

Yeah, I know you have said that on here before which is why I stuck up for you with Buzzard but you've now gone and declared yourself a socialist I guess that is moot.

You need not feel the need to defend me as I am quite capable, thanks all the same. As to the socialist point, well not really. I believe people should pay their own way in life, however, I realise that Oz has many socialist frameworks underpinning society and as I choose to live in this country, then I accept that my money will go to uses I may not agree with. Not sure how that maketh a person a socialist.

 
What, so if you were ill or injured you wouldn't use the ambulance or go to a public hospital?


I don't remember saying I wouldn't call an ambulance. My point is that instead of paying one ambo subscription, I am required by State law to have three (we pay via electricity bills and if you have more than one property/account you are paying an ambo fee for each one!). My quibble is with the fairness and brings me back to the point that we (you and I ) pay for things we may not agree with.

Let me tell you, healthcare is expensive enough that nobody working in fisheries protection for the Queensland Government is going to be self insuring for major medical interventions.  

Not sure how you come to the conclusion that a public servant can't save money aside for rainy days. Not all of us spend every penny we get or have debts. If I incur a major medical intervention and it is outside of my workcover agreements, then I will happily pay what the public system does not cover me for.


We socialise parts of the healthcare system because it is considered by the vast majority of the population to be a basic service that everybody needs. I don't agree entirely with the current policy settings but the best way to provide healthcare is a hard moral and social question that goes beyond whether or not Governments are the best organisations to run businesses.
 
I agree.
 
This in contrast this amounts to the Government robbing some Australian's to support the lifestyle choices of others, much like happens with higher education funding, ABC funding, arts funding, sports funding, industry funding, pork barrel infrastructure projects etc, etc. 
 
Agreed. However, why would a nationally funded internet scheme be any different than having to pay for these choices you mentioned. I couldn't care less about most sports or arts funding, but one just accepts it. Not like we can do much about it.
 
 
Who said the Snowy Scheme was the best way to use all of those resources and if it was, who say's that it wouldn't have been built by private investors anyway, like so much of post war Australia was?
 
I wasn't suggesting it was the best way. I am not suggesting either, that the Ruddernet will be the best way of funding or commercially operating such a system either. I actually think the notion of Telstra being required to allow access of current users to its exchanges, but not new market entrants to be an inhibitor as far as this new scheme goes. I think it has not been fully thought out by Stephen Conroy and the other Members, however, it doesn't stop my enthusiasm for the project as a whole. My main gripe would be that they seem to be going with fibre and not modular fibre as the preferred method of transmission. To use yestertech for a project of a decade or so in duration seems pointless.
 
 
But what you are saying isn't "each to their own". It's "give me your own and screw you if you don't like it".
 
You still have the choice as to whether you want to use the end product though. I'm sure your Gympie Aunty will be more than happy for you to continue calling via phone.
 
 
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Aussiegunneragain       4/11/2009 2:33:13 AM


















We socialise parts of the healthcare system because it is considered by the vast majority of the population to be a basic service that everybody needs. I don't agree entirely with the current policy settings but the best way to provide healthcare is a hard moral and social question that goes beyond whether or not Governments are the best organisations to run businesses.

 

I agree.

 

This in contrast this amounts to the Government robbing some Australian's to support the lifestyle choices of others, much like happens with higher education funding, ABC funding, arts funding, sports funding, industry funding, pork barrel infrastructure projects etc, etc. 
 

 

 

 

Who said the Snowy Scheme was the best way to use all of those resources and if it was, who say's that it wouldn't have been built by private investors anyway, like so much of post war Australia was?
 

I wasn't suggesting it was the best way. I am not suggesting either, that the Ruddernet will be the best way of funding or commercially operating such a system either. I actually think the notion of Telstra being required to allow access of current users to its exchanges, but not new market entrants to be an inhibitor as far as this new scheme goes. I think it has not been fully thought out by Stephen Conroy and the other Members, however, it doesn't stop my enthusiasm for the project as a whole. My main gripe would be that they seem to be going with fibre and not modular fibre as the preferred method of transmission. To use yestertech for a project of a decade or so in duration seems pointless.


 

 

But what you are saying isn't "each to their own". It's "give me your own and screw you if you don't like it".
 

 

 
 



Not sure how you come to the conclusion that a public servant can't save money aside for rainy days. Not all of us spend every penny we get or have debts. If I incur a major medical intervention and it is outside of my workcover agreements, then I will happily pay what the public system does not cover me for.
 
Have you ever looked into what a lot of major medical interventions cost? When I worked at Prince Charles Hospital the insertion of a cardiac stent (for example) and associated care was in the order of $18000 and that was over 10 years ago. With healthcare inflation running at 7 or so percent per cent per annum you would probably be looking at a bill of over 30 grand and if you get complications you are looking at running up a bill of much, much more than that. If you can put aside enough cash to cover that sort of sting then my hat is off to you.
 
Agreed. However, why would a nationally funded internet scheme be any different than having to pay for these choices you mentioned. I couldn't care less about most sports or arts funding, but one just accepts it. Not like we can do much about it.
 
You can at least not vote for them at the next election and if you feel so incline
 
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