It’s amazing, the number of products you can get a guarantee on. For example, through the USO, a basic telephone service is guaranteed to any fixed residence.
And, there’s those “guaranteed, or your money back” style marketing done by various services and products providers in various industries.
But, one thing regional and rural Australia can’t count on, is the continuation of the Australian Broadband Guarantee, at least, that’s Bruce Billson’s (shadow comms minister, replacing Coonan) claim.
It could very well be true however, among the axeing, they silently could pull the guarantee of Broadband to Australians, to make room for OPEL and it’s FTTN network, which as a whole combined, will still leave many of the rural areas of Australia without any guaranteed service.
The main objective of the programme, bought in under Coonan’s reign of fantastic service, was that any Australian, regardless of where they live could have access to a broadband service).
The Rudd government, set to axe that plan perhaps should now cough up an explanation, why they believe that farmers can’t have a guaranteed service, and they think that people should be able to not fulfill their responsibilities as parents and check on what the kids are viewing on the internet?
Why on earth would you put a ISP filter in place, and take internet guarantees away from farmers and other rural and regional areas, which the ABG helped to provide services to?
It’ll be interesting to see the responses from Conroy, in relation to Billson’s comments, because the silence is simply a means to quietly get rid of the ABG program, according to Billson.
They really wouldn’t remain silent on something like this, because it’s a vote buyer from regional australians, who should by now understand that broadband can be very helpful in their day to day lives.
OPEL won’t reach very remote areas, or even some of the lesser remote areas, that’s a easily seen fact from the maps provided, and also the claim itself that it would reach 98%, the remaining 2% will have ABG services (well, would have).
FTTN won’t reach anywhere near the areas that OPEL will cover, mainly because Fibre doesn’t actually get installed cheaply, and those nodes mean that the dollars will be flowing fast, and before they hit the 75% mark, they’ll be trying to pony up some more dough.
And OPEL, well, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that $2 billion only goes $2 billion far, so there will certainly need to be a new programme put in place to push investment in infrastructure further, or someone has to explain to Farmer Joe why he can’t check the current prices of Wheat in a timely fashion.
Enjoy!