To be honest I think that paper starts on a flawed premise: "A decade ago telcos wasted billions of shareholders’ money on telecoms infrastructure that was well ahead of its time – governments are now in danger of doing the same with taxpayers’ money."
We've had this argument thrown up by Malcolm Turbull as well, that the expenditure of the late 90's in building capacity was a waste of money because it lacked short term gain potential. Only a decade later we are hitting the limits of that capacity build (having had very little build in the intervening years until recently). The Just In Time model for physical capacity building doesn't work, I don't know if everyone here on the list has seen what happens to a data rack when it grows "organically" but I sure as hell don't want to have our telecomms networks resemble one. Govts have advantages over business when it comes to infrastructure building, the ability to look beyond the next quarterly report. With regards to the 12Mb/s minimum, right now the minimum account you can get is still 256/64. This means that even the slowest account will be able to access a huge range of new services. 12Mb/s is enough for an SD stream, voice channel and browsing. Thats media, phone and internet to everyone in the country. In terms of new services, this is a list for tech entrepenuers yes? Whether we agree with it or not, the NBN is going to be rolling out (and there is going to be a tipping point where it becomes more expensive for the Govt to close it down than keep rolling it out). The people who get in on the ground floor and offer new and innovative services and content are going to be the ones who win in the end. Speaking of content, I'm struggling to understand why the concept of the NBN being a media distribution network is actually a bad thing. People are shifting away from the broadcast model to "when I want to consume" instead. Content producers who can take advantage of that to cut out the middle men in the broadcast networks are going to gain a huge amount of control over their product. If the old players don't move fast enough they're going to find themselves left far behind. Anyway that's my 2 cents worth, I'm sure there are people that disagree with me. But for me, I'm going to run with the idea that the NBN is going to be built and that it's going to offer a whole new vista of market opportunities. James On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 10:28 AM, Matthew Griffiths < matthew.griffi...@mail.com> wrote: > Guys, > > I'm sure we all love the principle of super fast broadband... > > However, this is the most complete analysis I've seen on the economic > benefits (or lack thereof) > > > http://charleskenny.blogs.com/weblog/2010/11/superfast-is-it-really-worth-a-subsidy.html > > M > > On Dec 25, 5:11 am, Andrew Dever <andrew.de...@gmail.com> wrote: > > I'm glad this discussion has been brought up in this community. > > > > At the time NBN was first mentioned the cost was quoted at ~$39B, and > > google had ~$30B in cash. > > > > The IIF & IIFF, that help VC's invest in the AU space is ~$192M over 4 > > years. And they have to match it dollar for dollar and work hard to > > get it. > > > > Please pull me up if my figures are wrong. > > > > Further, as far as I know there's not been any explicit discussion > > about investment in education around how to turn 'fast' internet into > > economic/cultural benefit for AU. > > > > Nor any explicit discussion or investment in making sure we have > > infrastructure bringing bandwidth into the country (as far as I > knowhttp://www.vocus.com.aulaid the 3rd cable in). > > > > My point is, fast internet anywhere only matters if we a) have > > capacity and willingness to invest and b) have the ability to teach > > old and new how to turn that connection into cultural/economic > > benefit, and that is what the debate should be about. > > > > This year Obama met with Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs and ~20 other US > > tech CEO's. Julia/the AU govt. should be engaging with Atlassian etc. > > especially before they spend that much on infrastructure they don't > > completely understand. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach > Australia mailing list. > > Guidelines on discussion: > http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/msg/351e183e1303508d?hl=en%3Fhl%3Den > > No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. > > To post to this group, send email to > silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<silicon-beach-australia%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/msg/351e183e1303508d?hl=en%3Fhl%3Den No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
