John Linton
...because "we" can deliver high speed broadband to remote rural Australia within "weeks" using HSPA:
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/22155/127/
....or maybe not.....I'm not sure what is actually being said.
So....what I read in to this is that Telstra have somehow finally got the message that they have erred in their "Only Telstra can build an NBN" anti-government/anti-Optus/anti-Axia/anti-the tooth fairy/ anti- uncle Tom Cobley and all campaigns and are now on Plan B - "It isn't necessary to build out the NBN to rural areas because HSPA is just fine for those users and "we" can deliver it tomorrow. The 'flip side' of this being: "so give us the monopoly of building the NBN in the capital cities and a few regional centres just as we have always wanted to do to obsolete all the competitors DLSAM builds and force them to also use our HSPA in the country and, well, then we will have got you idiots to pay for us re-establishing our monopoly - because you're really dumb and only Telstra is really smart".
"In the mean time we've been good little corporate citizens because we have persuaded the dumber of the 'independent' ISPs to use our ADSL2 network (at exorbitantly high cost to both them and the end users) so you can see that everyone but Stupid Stephen agrees that only Telstra should be allowed to build anything and then charge everyone else sky high prices to use whatever "WE" decide is best for everyone and what makes "a sensible return for our shareholders".
Or have I mis-read Telstra's volte face(s) over the past three months as it became increasingly more obvious that their bullying/blustering/threatening attitudes were not working out quite as they had planned them? It must be my intransigent anti-Telstra attitudes because it all can't be this transparently blatant - can it?
I had previously read this:
http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Wireless_And_Networking/Broadband/S4S2S7J4
where Telstra have simply taken the 'guts' of the Opel bid to provide broadband to rural Australia and then asked the government to fund it via the Australian Broadband Guarantee scheme!!
Now, as someone who pointed out a year ago that HSPA could be delivering broadband to rural Australia before the Labor Morons even got around to even writing their NBN 'tender', with four way competition already in place to keep the prices down, a key 'strategy' for Exetel in developing an HSPA service was to do exactly what the Opel bid proposed and Telstra is now claiming as their own initiative. We also (and claim no authorship other than understanding some common sense opportunities) planned to offer HSPA via Yaggi (or similar) antennae in the new year and have even got as far as planning the ad campaign based on a better version of the picture Steve published on his Blog of his friend's pre-fab residence in the remote South of WA a few weeks back:
"The first stop for the day was my friends block at Napier - a small
community 25km north of Albany along Chester Pass Road. We could get a
40% signal from the farm gate. Using a standard car mobile antenna on
the top of his shed, it is possible to get a useable signal from there
as well."
..together with a google maps reference to pin point its location and isolation.
Of course we weren't planning for the Federal Government to fund this project - we were going to find a way of financing it ourselves or persuade Optus to kick in either via their own ABG certification or simply financing the equipment and installation.
It shouldn't be that hard to provide a 1 mbps+/384 HSPA to many rural areas now for $30 to $40 less than Telstra will almost certainly charge. Depending on Optus' implementation time frames the speeds should continue to increase throughout 2009 and 2010 so, as Telstra quite rightly now suggests, broadband for the bush can be a reality within a 'few weeks' and without the Federal Morons having to pony up one red cent of their 'scarce financial resources' or alternatively they now have another $A5 million for Krudd to fritter away on his next grandstanding piece of nonsense.
Our initial costings were that we could provide a 1 mbps/384 kbps service to a rural user (where there was Optus coverage) for around $65.00 a month including 3 gb of data. This would include the rental of the antenna and the router but not installation if that was required. We were thinking of a two year contract but we have yet to finalise the financing. We hadn't considered getting Federal Funding via the ABG but if that were to be available then it could all be done at a lower cost to the end user. I will be interested to see what 'final' figure Telstra comes up with for a rural HSPA service including router and antenna - my current bet is it is unlikely to be less than their favourite $A99.99.
Having maintained for over twelve months (before we actually had our own HSPA contract so there was no self serving motivation in our views) that the best, easiest and lowest cost way of providing 'broadband' to 'rural' Australia was via HSPA (and I realise that many other companies have been using various wireless implementations for many years already) I'm delighted that Telstra now endorses this view (or do they only endorse it if they get ABG funding?) which means that a fully commercialized rural wireless broadband service can now be 'rolled out' without the need to spend one cent of the ABG funds or the NBN 'tender' money or impossibly long delivery times.
Perhaps the Federal Morons can now restore the $A10 million to the fauna/flora support they have just axed (refer to yesterday's 'rant') and scrap the ABG because, according to Telstra, it is no longer necessary.
There you go Whine - an immediate saving of $A227 million from your future budget's ever growing black holes and you can put your $A4.7 billion back in your pocket as well. Geez - maybe I should run for PM - solving these budget blow outs is a piece of cake and doesn't require $A100,000 a month in air travel.
PS: While explaining to La Gillard the sensible and widely accepted way of pronouncing "education" perhaps you could also explain that Australia has a Federal Government (three syllables per word) not a two syllables per word "Fedrawl Gummant".