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Why Murdoch's media is gunning for your NBN (2013)

nofibs.com.au

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Re: Why Murdoch's media is gunning for your NBN (2013)

#6
post #5

NBN(fiber to the premise) is already killed off. The new government is adopting Fiber to the node for future installations.

The former government (centre-right Labor party) promised FTTH or FTTP (Fibre To The Home/Premises) but that was scrapped when the slightly-less-centre-and-more-far-right Liberal party got in and proposed FTTN (Fibre To The Node). The "Node" is a box at the end of every street, from which the existing (and rotting) copper network would theoretically connect to each home. Needless to say the idea is profoundly stupid.

FTTH is still available if you want to pay thousands of dollars for your connection, of course. We call this FTTR: Fibre To The Rich.

Re: Why Murdoch's media is gunning for your NBN (2013)

#8
Interesting but it doesn’t get past the a priori objection to the NBN having been adopted without any economic or commercial assessment to justify it as a political fix when the election promise to provide better broadband at one tenth the cost of the NBN was shown to be hopeless and an embarrassing shambles. And it doesn’t demonstrate that the a priori probability that a proven entrepreneur in the field of Internet based services would be able to do the essential job more cost effectively.

Re: Why Murdoch's media is gunning for your NBN (2013)

#9
post #5

NBN(fiber to the premise) is already killed off. The new government is adopting Fiber to the node for future installations.

Not even purely fiber to the node any more, they are going with a "multi-technology mix"[1]

So by the end of 2020, 98% to 100% of the population would have at least 25Mbps[2]. Which is maybe twice as fast as what we have now on average (as a guess).

It is also way behind schedule and over budget[3], when being quicker and cheaper were its main selling points against the FTTP solution proposed by the Labor government.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/10/malcolm-turnbul...

[2]http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/17/nbn-chairm...

[3]http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/12/coalitions...

Re: Why Murdoch's media is gunning for your NBN (2013)

#10
post #3
post #2

NBN? Anyone know what that is?

Australia's National Broadband Network. The gist of the article seems to be that Murdoch wants to kill off fibre in Australia because it's a threat to traditional TV.

Not traditional TV, just Foxtel which is the biggest pay TV provider in Australia. Pay TV has much lower penetration in Australia than the US or UK, but if we had universal fibre access to every home, Foxtel would die pretty quickly. Foxtel is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and so is the Daily Telegraph which runs ridiculously overt front page articles against the Labor government and in favour of the Liberal government (for example, during the lead up to the last election the Tele had a cover that read, in very big letters "KICK THIS MOB OUT" referring to the encumbent government).
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