John Linton ......too expensive for connecting a single house to the 'NBN2'
While it doesn't concern me or Exetel in any way (at least I don't think it does unless they rip up my telephone line too soon) I do wonder why 'press releases' that fostered this article:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/households-clamour-for-test-broadband-20101017-16p5r.html
continue to clutter up my morning newspaper scanning. Just how desperate do you have to be about the progress and 'acceptance' of a project based on giving away tens of billions of tax payer's money and foreign loans to actually try to convince the readers of the SMH that there is something positive in people accepting your offer of giving them something for nothing in the undetermined future? I can only think that it is because your first attempt at giving something away in three small villages in an economically depressed area of Tasmania got you some bad publicity for your ineptitude in 'selling' your story to a few thousand householders many of whom were tenants and were unqualified to reply to your 'flyers'. OK, so no big deal - a new government department lacks commercial 'marketing skills' - hardly surprising.
It wasn't the fact that someone who is very unsure of themselves goes to the trouble and expense of putting out a press release (of unsubstantiated figures of no meaning) about some future event that should 'trouble' anyone who reads it. It is the 'fact' that these same people haven't put out a similarly glowing press release about how many of the 50% of the 4,000 households in Tasmania who have the luxury of having the choice of an ADSL service on their old fashioned telephone line have actually signed up for the new fibre service - a choice that Ms Faustus is not proposing to give the rest of us in the future. Personally, I can only think of one likely reason for that - the take up has been of a level that doesn't make for any form of press release other than a very negative one.
Not that either scenario has any significance at this time (whether a good number of people actually have signed up in Tasmania or whether a good number of people who have accepted something free will eventually pay for something else). But what struck me as significant was that the people trying to force the 'NBN2' down Australian's throats (so to speak) are sufficiently scared of their likelihood of success in doing that that they are indulging in these sorts of dishonest tactics so early in the roll out. I can only assume that Ms Faustus and co are receiving information that is negative and are beginning to panic about the concept of spending tens of billions on an Ord River Scheme rather than the assumption that it was being spent on A Snowy River project.
I would have thought that a Federal Government that had given $500 million (or whatever it really was) to a State Government to build a specific piece of infrastructure would have been required by Treasury to publish an accounting of the usefulness of that donation. Apparently not. Perhaps someone should ask for an accounting in Parliament in the not too distant future. My, absolutely not auditable/back of the bus ticket arithmetic says it has cost $5,000,000 per customer connected so far. Doubtless that number will fall over time but just how far will it fall and just how much will you and I and other taxpayers have to kick in to ensure that the non-taxpayers in this country (over 2,000,000 people on 'pensions') get to play their internet games at higher speeds? Is the current government and the two country traitors ever going to spell out just what this stupidity is going to cost us?
I will lay a bet at any odds that, if the 'NBN2' proceeds, only the wealthy and the stupid will be able to afford to pay a commercial price for it.....everyone else will have to get a 'pension' to be able to afford Krudd's/Ms Faustus' lunatic self obsession.
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