John Linton We had a pleasant day spending the morning talking ourselves in to an operational RAF base to visit the memorial to Annette's father's WWII Lancaster squadron (463) which took some doing but all turned out well with a very nice female Flight/Lt escorting us 'through the wire' and with whom we had a nice chat. She flies Nimrods and has just returned from active duty in Afghanistan and is a tiny blonde haired woman in her late 20s/early 30s of very obvious authority and bearing. After doing our duty we drove to another, this time unused, air base and looked at an almost complete range of British military aircraft from 1948 to 2000. We completed our day by visiting Belvoir Castle owned by the umpteenth Duke of Rutland and a Welsh farmer's daughter (and let me hasten to add there is absolutely nothing wrong with Welsh farmer's daughters per se) who now glories in styling herself the Duchess of Rutland and refers to the 1,000 years of continuous owners of the castle as "my family". The English do the class system better than any other people in the world.
I thought about the recent Telstra decision to enter into a heads of agreement with NBNCo while I was flicking through the Australian media a few minutes ago and found this:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/opinion/well-pay-dearly-for-this-nbn-folly/story-e6frgd0x-1225884951797
whose writer is either plagiarising my own comments made over the past twelve months or is setting his own out so much more succinctly and far more cogently argued than I have ever been able to do as I agree with them completely. The real problem is that with no Telstra there is, yet again in Australia, no competition and therefore no pressure of any sort on keeping pricing for base residential communication facilities low. Not only is this in the shorter term but, if you believe anything the current Labor government says after the last 30 months of lies and flip flops, then the end result is to sell the NBNCo to a 'private investor' and just how is that going to benefit any residential end user? Beats me.
The other major fear as constantly articulated by Optus' CEO to anyone who will listen is what intrinsic discounts did Telstra get given in return for accepting the $A11 billion pay off? Don't try and tell me "none" because even common sense would say that couldn't be the case. So my concerns (when I take the time to consider them at the moment) is just what advantage Telstra will have over every other provider that buys NBNCo services? While it doesn't concern me that much I am sure it will concern Optus quite considerably and they are in a much better position to 'fight Exetel''s corner' than anyone else and I am more than happy for that to happen. What other comms companies now do will be interesting to watch over the coming eighteen months.
The ABS figures will be interesting to see when they are available in late August as they will give a guide to the trends for ADSL and wireless broadband. It will also be interesting to see what Telstra's and Optus' LTE imminent trials show in terms of new speeds for wireless broadband and more importantly when LTE speeds will become available in Australia. My tests so far on this trip seem to show that actual end user speeds in mainly rural England have more than doubled since last year and I will be interested to see what speeds are achievable in central London when we eventually get there. From what I can see and interpret from the various UK advertisements prices are one third lower than last year and modems are effectively free for any length contract. So it seems that wireless broadband continues to make inroads in to the ADSL market in the UK based on the pricing of both services and the even 'shriller' ads for ADSL that appear in the papers and magazines.
A very pleasant day - Annette's birthday - and I'm looking forward to a very pleasant dinner with a sensational bottle of wine that costs 'almost nothing' in this hotel compared to any Sydney restaurant that might offer it - one fifth of the price at a minimum.
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