John Linton ......and continues to look ever more irrelevant.
The recent 'decision' by one part of the Federal Government reported here:
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24920990-15306,00.html
makes even more nonsense of another part of the Federal Government currently considering the nonsensical joke called the NBN "tender" - for all the reasons I, and anyone else with half a brain cell, have been saying since the "NBN" became Labor election winning sound bite major policy in October 2007 - that the only cost-effective, and rapid, way of addressing rural and regional broad band issues was not to spend years laying cable but to accelerate the implementation of HSPA services already being rolled out by the four current mobile carriers (and by making the spectrum cost disappear via long term no charge licenses in rural areas thus possibly making it cheaper for a rural user to get LTE than the users in the main cities - now there's a turnaround with a lot of political mileage!).
So, actually Labor have now honoured their election commitment of providing 'equality of broadband' to 98% of Australians' and they have done it in record time. (who could ever have expressed doubt that the current Labor cabinet and the Prime Minister represented the worst dross ever to have held those positions since Federation?). Not only have they honoured their promise and done it in record time they not only haven't had to spend any more tax payer dollars they have actually reduced the expenditure they were already making on communications in rural and regional Australia!!
Just how brilliant are these political and infrastructure creating genii???
All they have to do now is to reduce the current spectrum licence charges for mobile GSM in rural and regional areas (based on number of base stations deployed in those areas) and run an effective tender for LTE mobile spectrum and the process of providing high speed broadband to 99.99% of all Australians will be complete in record time and without the expenditure of a single tax payer's dollar.
You just have to stand back in stunned amazement at the sheer intellectual genius and demonstrable in depth knowledge of the technical and logistical issues they have grasped so quickly and realise that we finally have a Federal government we deserve (or those of you who voted for it deserve - I personally cannot share any of your credit).
One thing that may be puzzling to the casual reader of the referenced article is why the credit for this break through in government thinking is being given to Optus and not to Telstra who have loudly self proclaimed, ad nauseam, in every available media outlet that ONLY TELSTRA has wide HSPA rural coverage and great rural HSPA speeds.
Simple answer.
They were the first and they may well still be the best - but (and it's the usual 'but' associated with everything Telstra does) the cost just isn't affordable because Telstra, as usual, bases its user gouging end user pricing on "you'll pay whatever price we choose to charge because you have no option".
I guess we can all count ourselves very lucky that, at least at this point in time, Telstra isn't being granted a continuation of their Australian communications monopoly (via the NBN) to ensure that fast broadband is always out of reach of a lot of Australian users.
Having four carriers offering HSPA/LTE services in rural Australia makes competitive common sense for both now and the future as well as economic comon sense in obviating the need to lay cables in areas of sparse usage.
Vive la difference!! (between wireless and cable - not the original meaning)