A variety of reasons have meant it’s been a while since the last NBN roundup. Fortunately, there’s still plenty to talk about this week.
• Remember how Tony Abbott took almost a week before he turned the Queensland floods into a political battleground over the NBN? Well, the fallout continues, with ABC News reporting that the Unions representing NBN workers aren’t happy with the argument. Unsurprising, really. But the article does have a great quote from NBNCo CEO Mike Quigley:
“Fibre doesn’t carry an electrical current. It’s not metallic, it’s glass which means that if it is submerged for a period of time it will just continue to work,”
“So as long as the two ends, which is would what be in an exchange and in what would be in a premise are still above the water line, the communication service would remain up.”
He then goes on to say that engineers are rethinking just how high those end points should be. In other words, they’re learning from the disaster and using that to improve their rollout. Nice.
• Over the weekend, Tasmanian Premier David Bartlett resigned for personal reasons. He was a big supporter of the NBN, and the move has raised some questions about the NBN’s rollout in Tassie. Ultimately, it probably won’t effect it too much.
• Telstra seems to be struggling to get everything done on time for their June deadline, when shareholders will vote on their deal with NBN Co, according to the SMH. The Herald quotes analysts from Goldman Sachs who say the June timeframe is optimistic, given that there still needs to be an ACCC review of fixed line pricing, although there’s no mention of what happens if they fail to meet the deadline. I’m guessing a world where we all have to watch 2012 everyday on Telstra mobiles.
• Despite Abbott’s continued attempts to derail it, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has continued to defend the NBN this week, claiming that “2011 remains a year when I will be delivering the National Broadband Network” according to Computerworld. I can’t wait to see her personally installing the cable.
• A report from research frim Market Clarity found that despite broadband caps growing more than 20 times since 2006, the amount of data consumed has only multiplied by 5.3. But as the GGG points out, that’s not an indication the NBN is a waste of money, as it “overlooks the complex relationship between user behaviour, the volume of data downloaded and the speed of the connection”.
• Tasmanian NBN customers have received a bit of a boost this week, with ITNews pointing out that NBN Co has upgraded the uplink speed of residential plans from 8Mbps to 40Mbps on all 100Mbps download plans. Just imagine how quickly you could upload that video of your cat dancing to Britney Spears with that kind of upload speed, would you?