Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry backs National Broadband Network

I find it hard to believe and understand that Peter Anderson can endorse the NBN without a cost benefit analysis; try pulling this stunt in the corporate world. Anyone who thinks the NBN will change the world needs to wake up because it wont, and hasn`t; just ask the corporte world who already have it. With the rollout now to start in rural areas this will just make it that much harder to justify. Rural residents will need to spend up big to have the fiber brought to their homes

The ACCI have not fully endorsed NBN - read the communique. They are much against writing a blank cheque, and the proposed $43 B will at the end of the Day cost us $86 B all up, and take 20 years.\. There has never been a Govt sponsored program that has not escalated in leaps and bounds, simply because they haven't the expertise to manage such a mammoth enterprise. The Snowy Mountain Project cost Aust 3 times it's original estimates.Telstra haven't the staff - Engineers, cable layers,excavators, crews etc to lay out the firbre-optics, and it will take years and many pay rises to get the crew they ultimately seek. We are a huge Continent - only the Capital cities will be targeted. If you live in Kakadu - forget it. If you live in Kalgoolie or Lighten Ridge, McQuarie Fields etc, it will take another half a century, if ever. By then, we might stick to the faithful carrier-pigeon. At least it's dependable.

My heavens what a lot of experts have come out of the wood work.

Uncle Tony says" We will destroy the NBN", so all the "boat people experts" suddenly switch to broadband.

How do these people think cable is laid for normal phone lines?
The infrastructure is already in place to achieve this, and folks, there are/will be more than a couple back hoes and cable gangs doing the work.
The NBN will recover its investment many times over and form the structural base for all the other emerging technologies to be implemented.
These emerging technologies are only just that and will not form the answer to our needs for many years and represent an unknown.
We can not risk the loss of business efficacy and relative loss in productivity with the rest of the world for 6 months let alone 6 years.
Get real guys!

Bruce, you say the investment will be a great benefit. That is it. That is what you say! Who are you? Your opinion doesn't make it so. You then say..Oh the doubters must be stupid. But Bruce we are not stupid. We run our own businesses or lives and we do quite well thank you. We don't have other "experts" telling us how to spend our money. You saying it is so, doesn't make it so, in the same way and me saying it won't. Lets have the proper independent analysis. The reason you don't want it is because you are frightened we may be right, and it looks like a disaster and you don't get ther NBN. Go on change sides, call for the analysis.

Bruce, good to see that you support a cost benefit analysis. Could you put that sentence at the front of future comments and any other supporters reading these articles or comments, also call for the costs benefit analysis as their opening comments. Then the fence sitters will have more confidence in supporting what may be possible. Then the next mental hurdle for the NBN supporters, is what if Abbott is right and really good Broadband can be achieved at a fraction of the cost and the rest spent on Hospitals etc. Before you close your mind, note the premise..really good Broadband. Are you still locked into the NBN. I would expect so. You want others to be reasonable but not yourself.

Funny how all these NBN nay-sayers all sound the same and sing the same hollow, all that matters is $, tune.

A cynic would suggest these are simply 1 or 2 people posting the same BS, under many different names as we seem to have had an influx of likeminded, anti-NBN n00bs here of late!

Ohh, I can see that RS is our resident intellectual.

Bruce, so thats a yes, you are locked into the NBN no matter what the cost. That is where you lose the fence sitters. The fence sitters have seen where a cult mentality leads. You are a member of a cult. You are in denial. I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss these issues in a direct manner, and I appreciate you letting me know in plain definite terms. You are committed to the NBN no matter what. There are no circumstances in which you would question your decision. Anyone who questions the decision will in some way be shouted down. Defining your position as a cult is probably right. You are like the Taliban or other fundamentalists.

@4, the NBN is a very good thing. As a nation, we should build it. We must build it. Even if it costs much more than $43Bn.

However, the rollout is in real trouble. The target was 10 million premises over 8 years, but with 10% of the schedule gone less than 0.01% of those premises are connected.

While the $37 NBN Tasmania number is waved around a lot, actually $662M has gone to the NBN - most to the non-Tasmanian portion which has yet to connect a single subscriber.

Overall it has cost nearly $2M per paying subscriber connected. The money clearly isn't being spent effectively. pointless pontification and long-lunch meetings in Melbourne is my guess.

A review of the managment of the NBN is deperately needed if this project is going to go anywhere. At the moment it looks like the country will fork out the money but not get the network.

@19, I agree connectivity both domestic (NBN) and International (lots of cables under the sea) will not be the constraint. The Servers and personal computers, poorly written applications will be the next bottleneck. This is where the focus should swing.

@13 wow Stephen, what an intelligent comment [sic] from an obviously intelligent specimen [sic]...!

Reading yor incoherent rubbish, is most humorous...!

Ooh and remember who made it "personal" first...!

Luke, If Rudd had his way with the ETS and Copenhagen had pushed through the Third world agenda, there would have been a budget item in our budget of $6B to pay criminal gangs in Africa, compensation for fraudulent certificates about their farming practices. Yes, last budget $6B. Your wonderful Labor party. Abbott has saved us $6B this year and the next and the next, just by rolling Malcolm Turnbull. Labor supporters now have the Greens around their neck trying to revisit the issue. Mate the younger crowd has got to get hip. I had fire in the eyes when I was young, and I didn't appreciate my parents leaving me a debt with unfounded Commonwealth and State Super. The younger generation has got to start calling for their parents not to pass them a huge debt. Not much going on in the eyes of the young these days, too many days sitting in front of a computer eating junk food. There is a new species being borne..just say nice things to me and rub my tummy.

@22 RS - it looks like you were incorrect about almost everything.. You look like a complete fool.
Today we read the ACCC ruling the NBN under labor is unviable. (RS go read the findings and try to make some intelligent comment in response if you can).
The $11b Telstra deal has to come off the table and there is yet another example of Conroy and Quigely's ineptness in handling our money or the public's interest.
People like you RS are the reason why this waste and ineptness exists. Complete fools we have to pay for and carry. Perhaps NBN access design should include a speed based on value and contribution and a filter for IQ.
RS would be on dialup, if he ever go thru the IQ filter.

Hi been reading this. This @RS guy is at least 5 different people on these forums supporting the NBN. The giveaway is the same old phrases and cliches in sticking up for it.
RS personal style is never based on any facts and quickly shifts to negative and personal rudeness as we see here.
=>Is the NBN paying people like RS to provide these comments ? (probably through an agency i am guessing)Another waste of our taxes no doubt.
For the geniune comments, the NBN is clearly off the rails and needs a halt and public enquiry regardless of what side of politics you are on. It doesnt matter if its 4b or 48b, the evidence is it is out of control, has no plan and the public have lost confidence in it.

The NBN will be another iconic labor party reform. And if it costs more so be it.

Clearly RS only ever plays the man, and never the ball...

The debate needs to move on. The NBN is to be installed like it or not. I would like to read about innovation and creative ideas to use this resource. This is a technical forum, not the high level stuff. I would like to hear from our younger folks who will be the users of this network.

@2 - When Australia connects to overseas, the internet speed becomes slower. Also you stated that 70% of internet use is to overseas sites and that's quite a majority. This NBN network is therefore not of little use.

@3 - Good point. Let me say the same things (facts) but from an opposite viewpoint. Liberals are just tax tax tax and that's what feeds their salary pockets and not the rest of the economy during their 12 year reign. Labor invests and all you can say is waste and white elephants. $4 billion a year on the NBN is where your $86 billion over 20 years are coming to (if it does go on for 20 years instead of 10).

@6 - First thing people think about broadband benefits. They base it on their homes. They forget about businesses who have to download much more and especially with overseas. You should note that wireless unlike fibre has a capacity problem.

@12 - Yeah and so does most politicians. From adding to the Labor list put in the Liberals. Yeah you got the majority now as hiders. One thing about Liberals is that they can criticize but they cannot come up with ideas or better alternatives.

@23 - I'm 20 years old. You speak of Labor selling off the white elephant but then again you should remember who sold off Telstra.

@26 - Conroy did state that the filter will have to go through a consensus. Donna, you very well know that the majority of Australia don't like the filter. Secondly, the house is no longer dominated by Labor. So here's a fact, that won't be passed along to the NBN.

@28 - Harry, very strong words and views there. The NBN is undergoing a trial for that reason and it succeeded in Tasmania. The NBN was announced in 2007 and trialled this year and to me that's a damn long delay so halting would be a jerk. If it's further halted then your government is just all talk and that's called doing nothing and then the public will definitely lose confidence. I don't think it has no plan. The money's going somewhere (to those engineers, contractors) as government investment and it'll eventually come around the economy in all industry sectors in due time. You might hang around with NBN naysayers and call them the public but I hang around with people who wants it (and definitely not the filter).

What I think the majority of anti NBN people are forgetting is the pace technology is moving. In only 20 years we have moved from dial-up on a 56kbps modem to ADSL 2+ at 24,000kbps. I would consider that given in the past 20 years we have increased our speed requirements by over 400 times, that in the next 20 years, technology will have moved ahead in a similar pattern.

People are getting hung up on the newish wireless technology which may be capable of reaching 100Mbps, and since it can deliver the same speeds fibre is touted at, then why lay all the cables.

Fibre optic's are currently at 100Mbps but are truly capable of much much faster speeds. Imagine the fibre as a 1 metre pipe. Currently at 100Mbps the water would be trickling along the bottom of the pipe, it cannot go faster because the pump at the end can only pump at 100Mbps. By the time we have finished laying the full network, there will be better pumps, perhaps 1000Mbps, but that would still be maybe 5cm in the bottom of the pipe. The thing is, as technology advances, we only have to upgrade each end but the 'pipe' remains adequate.

Imagine if we didn't have rail networks to deliver goods when we were developing as a country in the industrial age, we wouldn't and couldn't move ahead. We crossed that bridge and steamed ahead. Now in the technology age, we much provide the intellectual super highways so we can move ahead.

I am not a labor supporter, far from it in all honesty. I run my own business and currently have no personal need for faster internet than I currently have, but, in 10 years time, when we measure files in terabytes, I will be glad we have a network capable of delivering it to us at workable speeds.

But there are still many questions.

Perhaps first and foremost is, why does a market economy need the intervention of government for seemingly so beneficial and clear a product and service?

Surely as a country that has marched our boys off to a number of world wars, and a few other international interventions post the last WW in defense of the market mechanism - that country needs to apply use the fruits of those victories. This to vindicate and substantiate our strongly held belief of the optimum inherent in our market?

If we are obliged to create an artificial monopoly to create the size of scale benefits our tiny country demands. I believe this is the usual interventionist argument. Then how can we ensure that all sub-components to the industry are freely and equitably parsed into the private market sector.

Clearly the opposite thinking has triumphed in the recent past, where the private sector has twisted government's hand into creating the too numerous monopolies in the bridge and toll industries. Contrary to the true theoretical underpinning of government's role - which is to break apart the failed economics that arise in a monopoly - government walked along with many of the major institutions, into a Helter Skelter of these despicable things.

The market is left to pay. Australia continues to pay for the inefficiencies implicit in these market aberrations, and you'll continue to pay for them for many long, long years. A big national blunder - and we can thank the likes of Macquarie Bank for this.

Government must not be allowed to make this huge mistake twice. Government's primary role is to uphold the mechanics of the free market - and not intentionally and actively destroy the free market. Obviously a consequence totally unintended in the micro-monopolies scattered throughout the nation. The Ancient Roman Empire fully understood this, but modern Australia failed to grasp the logic and economics implicit! The economics of the price-quality consumed in public goods.

Two : - we are in the age of information overload. We have way too much information and the value of the information packet we continue to create, use, receive and disperse suffers a clear inverse relationship of its worth against the quantity of data available. The pool of data is awash and overflowing with relentless data already pouring in at speeds and quantities we currently cannot master.

Our data age, is an age of data noise... We haven't the usable tools to appropriately understand and gauge the totality.

We have neither the math, nor the academic underpinning, hence we walked straight into the Global Financial Crisis under the direct nose of the world's best and greatest risk actuaries. Genius, upon genius in some of the planets highest paying positions tasked to quantify the risks of billions economic data sources - failed to model or embrace the full ambit. These guys were woefully struck down by noise.

Hi Brett, I don't think you are quite grasping the concept of an OF network.

The volume of data and the speed of transmission that every analysis done, shows us, that to increase the transmission rate you have to have a high speed bulk carrier. Wireless, simply put, is not in the ballpark, and the energy required to boost speeds even marginally in this manner would be humongous (if that is a word). In other words, the capacity of a wireless reliant system will be overwhelmed in very quick time.

This is not to say that wireless doesn't have a part to play but in the long run the optic fibre network will reduce cost to consumers by:
> Cutting out network price gouging
>Reducing end user expense for wireless equipment (someone has to pay for it) and unending upgrades.
>By providing really fast (not just quickish) transmission speeds that is energy efficient and saves heaps of man-hours ($s)
By the way the statement by Ken @2 that 70% of our internet volume is overseas is absolute BS. If you are talking site hits mmm.. may be........ but in volume terms nowhere near it, it is the business usage that chews up the band width and the vast bulk of that is domestic.

cheers

Bruce

Perhaps the NBN is French?.........they appear to be the only one's in step!

@ Ken

I look forward to the day when a ubiquitous access to news and information will provide the platform on which people become more sceptical of everything and learn to research back to authoritative sources the rumours they hear and read and no longer say things like: "I have heard that because 70% of internet use is to overseas sites, that this network will be of little use." in support of their contribution in public debate. After all, does the statement even sound as if it might be true? Even a little bit? If so, I have a bridge over Sydney Harbour going cheaply.

Try Checking out http://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/NBN_Explained

@75% of the comments here, LOL...

Now… are you finished your latest little brattish tantrums Raymond? How typically profound, up-lifting and topical…NOT!

Will you ever grow up?

I have never encountered such a burned and spiteful child…! For a man of 60, who swears he’s a successful businessman and claims to sit on company’s boards, to act so… is laughable!

Go back and read today’s comments, then if you actually believe you are a rational, intelligent human being, (let alone an actual businessman/board member) offering opinions to be heeded, well, you are even sillier and more narcissistic than anyone could ever have imagined!

You really just can’t let it go can you… you actually take all of this seriously, don’t you, LOL…???????

As such, you are compelled to say my name (as you did Newman) with every comment. So, post your address and I’ll send you a poster sized, autographed glossy pic for you to fantasize over, since you are so infatuated…!

You know, even I didn’t realise how much I have actually burned and offended you and that trumped up ego of your’s, by simply proving you FOS!

That was until you naively and spinelessly, posted under half a dozen different names, mentioning me (and hypocritically, how” I” play the man not the ball, LOL!) yesterday... refer above...!

That was the icing on the satisfaction cake for me…!

Seriously, your ridiculous play the man… RS this and RS that, today under Raymond and also yesterday under all those other names, in response to your daily humiliation at my hands/every whim (even though you are simply too dumb to see it) is an ongoing embarrassment to you and your already lost cause!

Oh Ray, I am simply taking the ***s out of you, can't you see even now that I spell it out for you A G A I N, LOL! I do this simply because you are such a pompous w***er!

How reassuring for me (to see you bite and bite) to know that my work here is having the desired affect…!

However, in all my time of ***t stirring self proclaimed, but non-existent heroes/experts, like you, I have never had one of my “lab monkeys” react as childishly and erratically as you…its truly wonderful!

I am literally laughing out loud at YOU Raymond…!

So cya soon… perhaps for another limerick, eh! You know you must! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Talking to yourself again Raymond (crayfish as you seem to prefer)... Anyway, yes all for you, seems you just admitted to being my "lab monkey"...lol

Ooh also, you already got your explanation sometime ago, via a limerick di****ad.

Go search…LOL!

For now, here’s another… #7

There once a priZe idiot named Ray
Demonstrates his childishness, each day
A mere puppet Liberal
FOS and talks drivel
Too dumb to even see he’s being played

@51Raymond - How about you, through your various personas, stop faffing about and get back on topic?

Otherwise those of us here who want to deal with tech issues and have little interest in politics might come to the conclusion that you are just trying to troll. Very trying.

Limerick #8...

There once was a simpleton, named Ray
Compelled to reply to me, everyday
Just dangle the bait
Then have a short wait
That priZe idiot, won’t be too far away