John Linton .....replacing the wet, cold and very windy weather that seems to have been with us since the beginning of May. We always used to enjoy sailing in winter in Sydney because although there was never much wind the sky was almost always bright pale blue and cloudless and the cooler temperatures made the harbour far less crowded and outside the heads completely devoid of any other craft. So a pleasant day to celebrate my youngest son's 25th birthday and have a pleasant family lunch. It's days like these that remind you why you live in Sydney and forgo the attractions of so many other places around the globe. Then you turn on the TV news and are confronted by that nasal snarl from Ms Faustus and remember the massive downsides. I wonder whether some aide has explained to her the difference between "dungeon" and "dudgeon" yet? Did that woman never get an English language "ejjikation"? She is a real embarrassment being head of the, as she pronounces it, Strylyun gubmant.
So back to prosaics. I caught up with my industry reading among which was this brief piece:
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/former-telstra-executive-phil-burgess-slams-nbn/story-e6frede3-1226077276035
unremarkable apart from the re-iteration that the government has mandated ripping up a faster fibre network already in use that has two competitors and the analogy he used to describe the government monopoly building the 'NBN2': "It's essentially a start-up company like the Snowy River Scheme...without knowing the difference between snow and water,". Despite the pleasant winter weather a combination of a Labor government and a ultra dumb electorate tends to lessen the value of a temperate climate that, despite claims to the contrary, has, is and always be beyond the ability of venal politicians to affect....irrespective of how Ms Faustus et alia plans to bankrupt the country to accomplish less than nothing.
One of the issues we have had to deal with in finalising next year's business plan is how we cope with the 'NBN2' trials that are now beginning to take place. I am not 'across' all the details of what will happen over the next twelve months or so but part of the capex for the coming year is to pay for the various cross connects in the various locations so that Exetel can connect a small number of customers to the 'NBN2'. We have just completed the cross connects for the Armidale and Kiama trials in NSW and are in the process of connecting the cross connects for the SA trials. Victorian and Queensland cross connects have been broadly planned but I am not sure about WA. We have had Tasmanian/'NBN2' cross connects for some time.
While any serious delivery of 'NBN2' services is an unknown time in to the future we are now planning to spend increasing amounts of 'real money' to try and ensure we fully understand what could be offered at some future time. I am still of the opinion that the best future solution for our needs will be to buy any 'NBN2' services that actually are delivered from Optus or, perhaps, some other aggregator. It is far too early for any real consideration of that scenario so in the mean time, and providing the cost burden is not too onerous, we will continue with a 'direct' relationship with the 'NBN2'. That premise is not based on thinking that the NBN2' will actually deliver anything better than current ADSL2 within the next five years, nor even delver anything more useful in more places than ADSL2 and wireless will do over the next few years....it is based on the possibility that Telstra really will be forced to decommission the PSTN in various areas.
I have never believed a word spoken about the 'NBN' and now the 'NBN2' in terms of engineering capabilities or commercial pricing - and I still don't. However I do believe that any version of an 'NBN1/2' future depends on having no competitors/ripping up the PSTN. If I think about, which I do constantly, Exetel's future then we have a need to be able to offer services to one or two market sectors that need a broadband bearer as the method of delivery. If there is no PSTN in an increasing number of locations in the future then we will need whatever replaces it if wireless does not provide that service in those future times. With the limited information available to us today it would seem to me that we would either wholesale the unadorned bearer service from an 'NBN2' reseller or confine our offerings to capital cities - or even subsets of capital cities in some distant future time.
So "what to do about the 'NBN2'" is slightly more immediate in the coming year which does mean we will have to spend money on it with zero financial return. How things develop and whether the next election will happen sooner rather than later and what that may then mean is as abstruse as it always has been.
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38 - the most popular calibre of handguns since the 1890s when it replaced the .45.