Today was the day I was expecting to tear apart G9’s FTTN proposal, after reports earlier on in the week suggested it’d be released within ‘days’.
I suppose days could go all the way to 365 days, but I doubt anyone would be THAT patient.
I’m anxious to see the secret that lies around how they plan to get copper from the node to the premises. I just don’t see Telstra saying, here you go, have it all for $5/mth.
I do see them saying, you can build and pay for the network and have the copper wires going to the home for $82/mth, but that’s expected, and wouldn’t be the proposal from the G9 for their own network.
In news about Telstra, this campaign against the government might almost certainly will backfire against them.
Obviously, they can’t expect to be attacking the government and getting reduced regulations and so forth as a result. Aside from that, the government still has ministerial powers, and if they keep upping the pressure on the government, you can just see a different apporach coming back against them.
Removal of the USO comes to mind as one possible way of hitting them back hard.
And if they were to lose the USO, they would stop servicing regional areas right? Well, that works fine too, because they can indeed approach things differently. The government could find the USO be sorted by an infrastructure body.
Telstra want to up the campaign, paying for newspaper advertisements attacking the government about Broadband.
The government have had planned for months now to do a leaflet drop in many regional areas, obviously to sooth and provide a fair idea behind it all about the broadband debate, and the path forward, think of it as a election softener, I’d say.
Telstra’s attacks like the above against the government would get a negative impact for them, if paying for newspaper ads, attacking the government, Australian consumers voted in, is where they think funds best spent on broadband should go, they really need to think again. Those newspapers would only lead to the spread of more misinformation by Telstra, and cause more users to get more informed about the issue, and who best to service their internet connections, and that person in a lot of cases, isn’t Telstra (for obvious expensive reasons).
One thing here is certain, we all need faster broadband, and we don’t really need the government paying for it, however, a public private partnership with funds from the Future Fund work well, considering the return is at least 8%, so that would provide some income for the Future Fund, for money that is basically, sitting there. It could go to enhancing the economy, and bringing more income in, which overall makes sense.
I am also keen to hear what happened with the $600 million flying Optus’s way. Competition in Regional Areas (even more so mine) is a good thing :).