The NBN Cost Benefit Analysis and Review of Regulation should be released before the end of the month. Yesterday in Business Spectator the ins and outs of the review is discussed. The question is what will the CBA bring to the debate and will it be a complete study or only focus on elements of the telecommunications market that will lend support to the Coalition's mult-technology mix NBN? What do you think the CBA will contain?
The Australian telecommunications industry has sunk into chaos and dragged the NBN into the mire with it. Yesterday on Business Spectator the slanging and punches being thrown are discussed to highlight the need for a industry commission with a broad membership. What is the alternative? More chaos that ultimately harms the industry and all Australians?
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NBN Co has slowed down the rollout whilst the new Telstra agreement is finalised. During the lull NBN Co is trying to sort out some of the issues found during the start-up years. In Business Spectator read about the baby steps taken by NBN Co to fix the construction process and pricing structure are welcome news for the telecommunications industry.
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The assumptions underlying the NBN Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) just don't stack up and no amount of justification will bring the CBA anything more than criticism. The speeches made by NBN Co chairman Ziggy Switkowski and Professor Henry Ergas at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) business luncheon held in Melbourne provided a valuable insight into the NBN’s new direction and raised a few eyebrows as well.
In Business Spectator the focus turns to Turnbull's NBN headache and how it has grown. Turnbull's effort to doggedly stick to the Coalition's NBN plan in the face of overwhelming evidence that it will harm the nation's interests has brought him back to earth and even his staunchest allies must now see Turnbull as a fall guy for a government with a broadband plan that is increasingly becoming a focus for protest.
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A key aspect of the NBN has been the Senates ongoing inquiries into what is happening at NBN Co and the latest appearances by NBN Co executives at the Senate Select Committee has provided valuable information that is generating debate around why NBN Co has shifted to the multi-technology mix NBN without due justification for a life-time cost analysis of the current renewal of existing broadband infrastructure.
You're either a fibre zealot, an economic rationalist zealot competition zealot or simply missing the point of the NBN, which is to provide a refresh of broadband infrastructure that will have a lifetime of 50-80 years and not a short-term injection of funds to get to the next iteration of an obsolete technology.
This week in Business Spectator the end of the NBN phony war is cause for celebration. The telecommunications industry has finally shifted to ask the hard questions of a government policy for a second best broadband network that will do nothing for Australia's economy when compared with countries that have adopted a fibre to the premises rollout.
The great Hybrid-Fibre Coax gamble is well underway at NBN Co and what this will mean for consumers is discussed in Business Spectator. The promises of future upgrades and black spot remediation are under the microscope as there is increasing evidence that the short term promise of a quick boost in NBN customer numbers provided by existing HFC customers is too big a cherry for the government and the communications minister Malcolm Turnbull to overlook.
The Communication Minister Malcolm Turnbull gave a speech recently at the inaugural Ovum 2020 Summit and, whether you listened to the speech or read the transcript later, there was a distinct touch of deja vu.