It was a big week for fibre, cables, and acronyms using the letters “N” and “B”. Let’s have a look at what happened with the NBN this week:
A big part of the government’s plan to roll out a national broadband network is the splitting of Telstra’s wholesale and retail business. That hurdle got lowered this week when Senator Steve Fielding agreed to support Telco reform legislation, according to International Business Times.
Tony Abbott may not be Bill Gates, but he’s not completely stupid either. Addressing the Tasmanian Liberal party, he admitted that he wouldn’t roll back the NBN in Tasmania if he comes to power. “Now, I understand that before the election there was a bit of enthusiasm for this policy here in Tasmania and the last thing I would want to do is damage or detract from any new infrastructure that might actually have been rolled out here in Tasmania,” he said.
Malcolm Turnbull, meanwhile has claimed that the NBN rollout will strand all the current fibre infrastructure thanks to the NBN’s plan to limit the number of Points of Interconnect. ARN had the story, as well as a response from Conroy, which quickly devolved into a politician wankfest, but if it’s true, it is an issue NBNCo will need to address. Because there’s no point having fibre if it isn’t actually connected to everyone else’s fibre…
The PoI issue got even more heated later this week, with Telstra, Optus and AAPT criticising the NBN’s plan to limit the number of PoIs, thereby leaving the current backhaul infrastructure useless. The Telcos think this decision by NBNCo could end up with a lack of service to rural Australians, which is kind of one of the major reason’s we’re building an NBN in the first place, isn’t it?
Apparently in Tasmania the NBN was meant to be a joint venture between the federal and state government, but now the federal government is going it alone. Heaps of people are wondering why, but ultimately this will have little impact on the network’s rollout in Tassie.
Once again, David Braue at ZDNet has a brilliantly insightful piece on the NBN, this week arguing about the strength of the coalition’s argument that copper is good enough. Even with some nips and tucks to the network, the chances of you getting that 12Mbps speed the opposition thinks is all you need is next to zero unless you live on top of your local exchange.
Finally, Alcatel Lucent has sent members of the media a glossary of NBN-relevant terms. Yres, that’s hardly exciting, but they’re planning on launching an online version which should help you guys redirect those tedious questions from non-tech savvy relatives over the coming months…