Opposition communications spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull usually pops up on Gizmodo saying things about the NBN which we have trouble convincing ourselves he actually believes. But today he’s in the headlines for a different reason: he’s one of the 30,000 people whose credit card details were leaked online after being stolen from the computer systems of global intelligence company Stratfor.
That’s a big statement, but Steve Perlman has the chops: he lead dev of QuickTime at Apple in the ’80s, co-founded WebTV in the ’90s, and more recently launched the OnLive game streaming service. Now his company has published a white paper for a new wireless tech claiming to flip current Wi-Fi, 3G and LTE limitations by getting faster (not slower) with more users. It supposedly allows users to access the full spectrum bandwidth and has been tested at speeds up to 100Mbps. Is the NBN in trouble?
After Internode previewed its NBN pricing last week, I cautioned that pricing from one single ISP isn’t reflective of what all providers will charge, see: NBN Prices: Why Is Everyone Already Freaking Out? Further proof: Exetel’s high-end 100Mbps/200GB plan will be $100 per month ($20 cheaper than Internode), and 12Mbps/20GB will be just $34.50. And they’re not the only low-cost option now in the mix…
So Internode previewed its proposed NBN prices yesterday, and as I said then, it’s a possible view at how the competitive landscape may unfold. But Internode is just one medium ISP — and a premium priced one at that. So the ensuing cries of “NBN fail!” from Malcolm Turnbull and some quarters of the media are entirely way too premature.
The coalition has been campaigning pretty hard against the NBN since they didn’t win the election last year, but they’ve typically been pretty quiet about what they’d do instead. In an interview with David Ramli at ARN, Opposition Communications spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull has admitted that they will stop the NBN rollout in its tracks should they get into power.
In case you missed it yesterday, Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has agreed to talk to Giz about the NBN. And we want you guys to ask the questions!
Yesterday, shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull was quoted by Clancy Yeates in the SMH as saying NBN access was likely to cost Australians between $65 and $70 a month, yet that price is “extraordinary”. What the hell?
After the high drama that was the 2010 Australian Federal Election, things are starting to settle down into a sense of normality. Well, as normal as you can get with a minority government, anyway. But the news relevant to technogeeks like yourselves is that filter-loving and NBN-dishwasher creator Senator Stephen Conroy still has his BCDE portfolio, while across the floor on the opposition side, Malcolm Turnbull has risen up as his new political nemesis.
Over the weekend, Liberal MP Malcolm Turnbull held an anti-filter event in his electorate, where he promised that the filter is now, “dead, buried and cremated, and if it shows any signs of revival it will then be exorcised”. Let’s hope he’s right.
