Another week goes by, and the NBN rollout continues. Here’s what happened over the past seven days in Australia’s quest for superfast internet.
• Hey Tasmanians! You’re not signing up to NBN plans quickly enough! The reason, according to Robert Wallace of Tasmania’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry, is that NBN Co is too secretive. There’s not enough explanation for mum and dad Tassie as to why they should get an NBN plan. So in other words – sell your message better NBNCo (and ISPs selling NBN services!) [ABCNews]
• According to an analyst at Ovum, the NBN is going to be a threat to smaller ISPs, with larger ISPs being able to access services to rural and quasi rural Australians using NBN infrastructure. Of course, this is nothing new – if you run a remote ISP, you might want to branch out into different territory, or think about how you can compete on a national scale… [StartupSmart]
• There was a bit of debate this week about some of the rules in the NBN Companies Bill, which essentially stopped anyone else from laying high speed cable before NBN Co could do the job. The same bill was criticised for being vague enough to allow the NBN to venture past the “wholesale only” mandate and sell services directly to utilities. It’s still being argued, and it’s no doubt a complex issue, but it only seems fair that if the NBN is supposed to be wholesale only, then the thing needs to be wholesale only, with no exceptions. [Delimiter]
• They may have spent a heap of cash on Austar’s wireless spectrum, but the CSIRO is on the verge of showcasing their Ngara wireless tech, capable of delivering 12Mbps symmetrically to six simultaneous users. At this point, I think it’s only fair to add that the CSIRO is awesome. [Gizmodo]
• According to Alcatel Lucent, who are pitching for the job, they can deliver 100Gbps speeds to the NZ NBN. If I was a competitor, I’d claim I could deliver ONE BILLION Gbps and call it a day. [The Register]
• The Telstra shareholder vote on the NBN deal has been delayed – it was always going to be a tough deadline to meet, but Telstra have called it early and said they won’t meet it. No replacement date has been set yet. [Gizmodo]