NBN Co announced new satellite contracts, and Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t happy one single bit about it.
• NBN Co announced that it had awarded a $620 million contract to Space Systems/Loral to build two satellites for provisioning 12/1Mbps broadband to remote communities, although the tenders for launch and maintenance are still up for consideration [Gizmodo]
• Malcolm Turnbull wasn’t happy with the costs of the satellite tender, decrying it as the most expensive option. He stated that the approach was akin to buying yourself a Rolls-Royce when a Camry would do. [ZDNet]
• The costing of the NBN — and the recurring theme/motif of the opposition, in that it claims NBN pricing will be higher for end consumers — was also the topic of a lengthy article written by Malcolm Turnbull at Delimiter. He’s staunchly holding to the view that the NBN, as a monopoly, will inevitably attract higher prices. [Delimiter]
• Optus’ NBN customer plans for consumers were already in the open; this week it announced its plans for small business NBN customers [IT Wire]
• The Queensland government released its plan for NBN usage if it’s returned to power in the upcoming state election. Amongst its aims is to align NBN construction with flood recovery rebuilding. [ZDNet]
• The late John Linton of Exetel was never the NBN’s biggest fan, but this week Exetel cut its NBN plan prices, as well as removing the top tier of its NBN download quotas altogether; clearly it’s still following the Exetel mantra of not chasing the download-heavy customers. Gus at Lifehacker’s got the updated plans in Planhacker. [Lifehacker]
• Telstra announced its half-year results, and along the way, mentioned it was hopeful that the ACCC’s review of its structural separation agreements would be concluded soon. [Herald Sun]
• The government announced a three year trial of virtual English classes delivered via the NBN to new migrants in rural areas at a projected cost of $5.1 million. [Computerworld]
Lance Royce
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 3:02 PMThe uncontrolled spending is never ending! Why not buy satellites, instead of leasing space on existing satellites? I guess no need to build this system and save taxpayer dollars, just spend, spend, spend and more spending! Pink bates anyone?
Fred
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 3:28 PMI think the NBN is worth the money, i just dont think anyone trusts Labor to manage it properly because they are a useless bunch of idiots.
Gizmodo, instead of bagging out Malcolm Turnbull and the Libs views, why not put together a cohesive argument to get them on side. People want the NBN, the NBN is a great project, we just need to convince the Libs to change their mind.
Save the NBN campaign!
Ozoneocean
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 3:52 PMThat will never happen.
If the Libs actually do win the next election then they could very well change their tune on the NBN, but that will never, ever happen while they’re in opposition.
The entire point of their criticism of it is to try and make the ruling party look bad in order to improve their own chance of election, therefore you can criticise Turnbul with impunity because most of his harping is just rhetoric, some of it really quite silly. Outright silly.
It’s just politics as usual.
Fred
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 4:22 PMYeah turnbul is a tool, but the libs dont need to criticise the NBN to improve their chances. They could say ‘hey, the NBN is the one thing labor got right.’ and still win in a landslide. But all they actually need to say is ‘We will keep the NBN, but do it within budget.’ and they wouldnt lose a vote.
Prometheus
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 8:36 AMIsn’t it funny how in this country “liberal” really equals the crazy “republican” from America & Labor == “democrat”. Spineless cowards, probably one of the only things I like about them is what won them their election, NBN!
It’s funny that people call Labor useless. Would you rather sexist, greedy, racist, dottering old fools? Our celebrity politics are identical to America, it’s not a good thing.
Bill
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 3:42 PMI’m not sure if it is possible for us to just “lease” space on existing satellites. But even if we could. It wouldn’t be ours. So what happens when they company that owns it say’s it’s too old, and they’re going to just burn it up? A lot of people suddenly have no internet… what then? NBN builds and owns one? NBN then controls the usage and positioning of the satellites.
David Shears
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 5:17 PMAustralia doesn’t have enough Geostationary communications satellites operating at the moment to provide enough bandwidth to remote users
Optus owns/operates the 2 operational geo stationary satellites currently in operation. One B and one D series. Its not like we live in the USA (which I think has around 55-60 geo stationary satellites).
Feel some pride man, once these baby’s go up we will finally have a space presence that will put the likes of Mexico and Egypt to shame (both of whom have 3 Satellites each)
David Shears
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 5:18 PMMeanwhile, could I use the word operate anymore? Chalk that one up to not reading before I submit…
Sorry for the word abuse people…
David Shears
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 4:57 PM“buying yourself a Rolls-Royce when a Camry would do”
What technology is the Camry in this situation? Dialup? Existing Satellites? This is why no one likes your broadband plan Mr Turnbull. Its because you sound like you have no idea what the heck your talking about…
Meanwhile, does anyone else get the image of Tony Abbott thinking to himself “Wow, we can put camry’s in space now… Brilliant!”
Antonia
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 7:24 PMI thank [enter you deity's name here] that Tony Abbot was not PM when the GFC hit. With him we would’ve seen:
- no schools project
- no, albeit partly botched, insulation project
- no NBN
- no patrolling of our marine resources to keep out international corporate fishing vessels
- and Work Choices legislation that sees most of us as indentured labour. (I know he sees nothing wrong with how Foxconn operates.)
Kroo
Friday, February 10, 2012 at 11:57 PMNice labor troll. Under coalition, we had money in the bank. Under labor, we have a massive $46 billion (and growing) debt. A debt that has to be paid. The government borrow massive amounts of money to cover expenditure. Money sourced from the same places the banks source money to cover borrowings. In effect, our government is competing against our own banks for loans (which forces up the cost of said money) thus forcing the banks to keep their interest rates above the RBA official rates. Thanks Juliar. The cost of living here just keeps going up.
BTW antonia, the coalition had a plan for broadband upgrade. It just wasn’t as unnecessarily extravagant as labors.
Old saying. Labor pollies have big hearts and small brains. Another, People vote liberal as long as they can stand them, and people vote labor as long as they can afford them. Their time is up, next election they’re gone. Nobody can trust a thing they say or do. Get over it. You lose, again. Time to give it over to the ones who can responsibly manage our economy.
kEITHY
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 6:50 PMWeren’t John Howards surplus’s BUILT IN CHINA??
kEITHY
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 6:53 PMAlso, don’t all silver spooners love the power of ‘leverage’ including Tony Abbott??
kEITHY
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 7:16 PMOne more thing: aren’t we building China? They will stop buying one day, …you know that don’t you!??! You know there are alternatives to coking-coal coming don’t you!???! HOW EMBARASSMENT JOE HOCKEY DOESN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT PRODUCTIVITY IS…. YET THE SILVER SPOONERS THINK THEY WERE BORN TO RULE! LOL, just so lol!!
Prometheus
Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 5:33 PMDid you heard about 2008 when the bubble collapsed in America, yeah that happened. Did you know more people are buying overseas than ever? Yeah that’s why we’re having more trouble earning more. Did you hear how China’s bought more than a 1/3 of our farms? Yeah, we losing Australian OWNED companies by the minute.
This isn’t our governments fault, it’s the private sector’s ruling class which are being greedy sell-out fucks. Down with the system, etc etc.
Daemos
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 5:01 AMSeriously…how can anyone defend any of the two major parties? They both SUCK. It’s worse than watching the US elections.
Australians deserve another viable option that can go up against Labour and Libs. Until then it’s the lesser of two evils who can never seem to come to an agreement on anything…which isn’t helping anyone.
Governments should be serving the people, not their private political agendas, and when a good idea comes to the table, they should WORK with each other to find a happy medium instead of “oh because the other party likes that…I automatically hate it” type mentality.
Prometheus
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 8:42 AMI’m not sure whether this is true or not but didn’t Gillard propose to open up campaign donations (so it is like America)? If that’s the case, our politics won’t be like America, it WILL be American politics…
Corruption of the highest order is due to greedy/selling out.
“Governments should be serving the people” which is why I voted Labor, they actually wanted NBN happen. I just couldn’t stand listening to those retards tell Australia that “I’m not a ‘computologist’ or anything but I know satellite is good enough, derp.”
It confounds me that there’s a party called Liberals & yet it’s a far, far right leaning conservative party for sell outs and wacko dinosaurs!
Prometheus
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 8:47 AM“‘Governments should be serving the people’ which is why I DIDN’T vote Labor” I voted for the idea of NBN not Labor.
Daemos
Saturday, February 11, 2012 at 9:11 AMWell to be honest…based on what was protrayed on the media during the last election it really seemed like the NBN was really the major distinctive factor.
All I saw in the media was “No big Australia” “Blame the refugees aka boat people (but of course in the media they were not refugees just boat people)” and “NBN”
I’m a Canadian of Asian ethnicity, who is working in Australia and who will have permanent residency soon…but because of the last election you wouldn’t believe how many people asked me if I came on a boat just because I look asian and don’t have an aussie accent.
Prometheus
Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 5:27 PMDon’t be surprised by Australian’s inability to be socially acceptable towards foreigners. We are quite literally where America was about 20 years ago. Selecting what they consider “big government” whilst they deregulate our food/water & banks. It’s only a matter of time before we experience what they’ve been feeling for years.
P.S. Welcome to the country, I hope you like it here. I can’t personally enjoy the beaches because I burn like a whitey covered in butter… deep fried.
My friend just got married to Chinese girl, which has military parents. Yeah, it’s sounds like an awfully racist sitcom.