John Linton ......so they killed Caesar and precipitated the beginning of the end of the greatest civisation the planet had seen to that time.....which in turn precipitated the 600 or so years of the 'dark ages' of European history.
Many things change in any marketplace/industry as time elapses but things can, and often do, change more quickly in most parts of the technology industries than in any other that I'm aware of. This is because changes are not subject to the laws of physics in the same ways as the aircraft, automotive or other manufacturing industries are - they are simply based on how densely you can etch silicone, how finely you can tune a laser gun or how innovatively you can write code for the most part. In other words changes in the technology based industries are only constrained by the thinking capacities of a very large number of the brightest minds on the planet.
Changes in the Australian communications industry, perhaps because we are situated in the 'reverse' hemisphere of the planet, are also subject to the 'output' of the stupidest minds on the planet as in the current case of the 'NBN2' which continues to destroy the Australian communications industry without any cogent plan to replace it with something better. My Rome analogy is apposite, only in the broadest sense, but it does pretty much describe daily life in today's Australian communications industry where a tiny group of people have taken a precipitate and completely un-thought out action for all the wrong reasons that has released chaos on the rest of the community in pursuit of their own self interest. "Panem et circenses" has been replaced with "100 mpbs broadband for all at affordable prices" to gull the dumbest of the peasantry and burning Rome to the ground will be replaced with the equivalent destruction of something much more important.
It doesn't matter whether federal governments of any political persuasion borrow tens of billions of dollars to waste on useless military hardware (F111's that never saw unfriendly action for 25 years, Collins class submarines "built in Australia" that simply didn't work and crews couldn't be found for them, even army uniforms that endangered the wearer's lives because their ammunition 'pouches' wouldn't 'release' the ammunition easily). Apart from the uniform fiasco the stupid, and often venal, decisions by people who have zero knowledge of matters military (on any side of politics) don't usually destroy anything much except the financial well being of Australia. If you were not very bright you could even argue that rather than enriching the US military manufacturers the 'NBN2' borrowings will be spent within Australia (that would be partially true but if you ever saw a cost analysis you would almost certainly find that most of the borrowings will go to EU and Korean communications equipment manufacturers).
The problem with Krudd's cover up for the ludicrosity of the 'NBN1' and its subsequent enthusiastic adoption by the screech owl is the damage, quite possibly irretrievable damage, that a few stupid people have let loose on the Australian communications industry which has already begun to change inexorably the supply of services to the residential communications marketplaces for the worse and the changes aren't even yet noticeable to anyone but the people directly affected and won't be until it is all too late...which, in my view, it could already be.
As everyone who has some sort of minor understandings of business knows - significant changes provide significant opportunities - almost always for the 'carpet baggers' but also for less rapacious people and entities. It would be extremely foolish to believe that the death of Caesar would have restored the mythical visions of the old Republic (history tells us that all you do is replace Caesar with Augustus who was Caesar without the remaining political and social restraints). So,not being part of the large sections of the industry that will be destroyed by one intensely egotistic man's caprice it only remains to work out how best to weather the storm that has been engendered and determine what to do once the new circumstances are in place....which we have pretty much done over the past two years. It wasn't hard to do and I would have little doubt that every other company in the industry would have done the same by now. There can't be that many alternatives as things stand today.
Exetel has one problem to make the most of the post Julius world wished on us by that grubby little man. To take most advantage of new Rome we need more money than we can provide from our own financial resources. To date we have been more than content to take our time building the capabilities needed to do a lot more than we have managed to do to date. All of those capabilities, with the exception of the last phase of the network build out, are now in place and it has taken almost seven years of unremittingly hard work to reach this position.
There are two ways to resolve this issue - one conventional, one conventional with a major 'twist'. Either would allow Exetel to take most advantage of the changed circumstances every Australian communications company finds itself in.
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