John Linton ......attributed to Henry Ford when asked had he considered asking current users what they wanted for their future transport needs. I am irresistibly reminded of that almost forgotten, by me, quote when I was reading Stupid Stephen's latest comments on the benefit's of tax payer's funding a 'nation wide' fibre network. I think it would be fair to say that we only have Ms Faustus as prime minister because the 2010 equivalent of the people Henry Ford apparently commented on voted for an NBN and therefore Labor and two pig ignorant dummies in mid/Northern NSW also sold their souls based on their stupid decisions to back that woman for the same reason. So pig ignorance, a common characteristic of universal suffrage and a voting age of 18, has consigned Australia to spending money it doesn't have on the 21st century's version of "faster horses". (It's ironic that this folly was only made possible by a couple of hayseed MPs whose electorates have more horses than most other places in Australia).
I was only reminded of this because I re-read the draft information provided by NBNCo regarding the conditions of signing up to use the new service and the issues, yet to be decided, regarding the eventual number of POIs that could be connected to. Now, I am no genius when it comes to understanding viable network topologies but I am sort of getting the impression, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that if there were a very few POI's (basically in the State capital cities) then a lot more companies could afford to connect to the 'NBN2' than if there were 200 or so POIs - the vast majority of the additional POIs requiring the company to put in place its own back haul from places like Alice Springs, Broken Hill, Mt Isa etc. Now again, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it only Telstra that has those sort of back hauls in place? What is it I'm missing in this scenario? Not that I care one way or the other - if I'm still alive when this network is finally commissioned it seems to me that just connecting to the capital city POIs gives access to 90% of the market for fibre services anyway - doesn't it?
An unfortunate side effect of universal suffrage which also have an amazingly low age entitlement is that the populations of such States are ruled based on the opinions of the stupid. As a very bright person - James Rogers - once wrote:
“It’s a basic fact of life that many things ‘everybody knows’ turn out to be wrong.” Certainly Ms Faustus and co continue to parrot the nonsense that no analysis of the 'NBN2' is required because "everybody know it is going to be amazingly beneficial and essential".
I suppose it's the Christmas Season that is producing a dearth of real news and therefore more space/time for the silliness to be reported - hence the "silly season". However it's very hard to find anything of interest in the usually reliable sources I read each day; now the Arsenal/ManU game has started it is even harder to try and find anything of interest so I gave up trying. After 27 minutes the game is as bereft of interest as today's on line media was. So we will spend the majority of another day puzzling over how/if we can offer suitable residential ADSL services and then trying to find a real reason why we should do that. So far there appears to be no real reason to offer residential services to new users when, at least at first sight, there are companies that offer lower cost services and that is the major reason that differentiates selection of supplier when making a decision.
The work on the other services is progressing more positively with a lot of new ideas and a lot of progress in sourcing new 'pricing' and new additions to the service offerings. In some ways the business and corporate communications services markets are reminiscent of the residential ADSL markets of 2002 in that the majority of users are paying ludicrously high prices for not very much speed or content and only conservatism of view point needs to be overcome. Of course these marketplaces are changing but they are still constrained by the supplier's needs to maintain very, very high end user pricing to pay for the immensely expensive overheads that 500% plus mark ups over two decades have allowed them to believe are necessary. It is a major issue to try and assess how fast some of these companies (Telstra, Maquarie Telecom, Optus etc) can, or are willing, to change.
A goal to Park just before half time has, deservedly, punished Arsenal for a pretty pathetic display and in the stupidest of manners - oh well - it seems to always be the same in this fixture.
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2010
ABN 350 979 865 46