Monday, December 9, 2013

Mainstream media: Failure to report NBN Issues

The one or two journalists I write to, usually 'business' focussed, dismiss my emails as soon as I mention physics or chemistry with "that's technical".  Nor do they pass those emails onto their "technical" writers.

I recently suggested Thodey's statement "copper doesn't decompose" isn't just disingenuous in the extreme, but is deliberately misleading the market and investors, a serious ASX and ASIC infringement. While I was talking about probity and criminal offences and the evidence is deep and easy to find, they declined to muddy their brains with anything "technical".

While I'd like some points on the public record by someone authoritative like Mike Quigley, based in fact, not just my calculations supported by public information, I haven't been able to make that happen.

George Maltby, the outspoken CEO of O.T.C. fired by Bob Hawke, would also have been an appropriate source.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Turnbull's New NBN: A prediction

The Coalition's NBN report is due in tomorrow, I believe, 2nd Dec, 2013.
This is an incomplete prediction for what will be released.

Update Sun 8-Dec: Unsurprisingly, the report wasn't released to the public last week and we're told large slabs will be kept secret. Most. Secret. Government. Ever. Bizarrely, Abbott claimed "we're on a Unity Ticket" supporting Gonski was not an "actual" promise, but a misinterpretation by the public & press. Does the Liberal Party have a list of their actual promises? Not publicly. Their election materials are consistently like their "fully costed budget": "summaries", vague statements, platitudes and slogans.
The Liberal costings were not given to the Parliamentary Budget Office until the last minute [and then only fully divulged to their own hand-picked 'Independent' review group].

Update: I missed the obvious change: as little as possible buried cable, maximum use of aerial cable.
So get used to a mess of cables in the sky in your suburb. This neatly devalues the Telstra "pits, pipes and lead-ins" to zero... They wouldn't be used, so wouldn't have to be paid for. A good bargaining chip? Telstra has never lost in commercial negotiations - I'd say they won't this time either. NBN Co Mark 1 didn't come lightly to settle on the most expensive "buried cable" as its preferred network model. It's a longer-life, more reliable, lower maintenance model: lower Total Cost of Ownership. You can pay more now and a lot less later, or save a few pennies up front and regret it for a very long time.