The big news this week was NBN Co announcing it had passed the 4000 connected users mark. I wonder how the opposition reacted to that bit of news?
• NBN Co announced this week that it had surpassed 4000 connected homes and businesses. Yay NBN! Or is it? Of the 4000 premises, 2315 were fibre connections and 1700 were wireless connections. But the NBN has been rolled out past 18,200 premises, which means about a 22 per cent take up rate. That’s the kind of figure critics of the project will pounce upon… [Government News]
• …And no surprise that Tony Abbott began decrying the figure as a pathetic effort given the expense. “The billion dollars that they have spent so far on the rollout works out at $250,000 per connection” the anti-Bill Gates told media during the week. Of course, Abbott doesn’t even consider the fact that many people are on broadband contracts and can’t sign up yet (like schools all over the country), not to mention the fact that only four ISPs have NBN plans on offer at the moment. Not surprising, really. [SMH]
• Given that the country’s copper network is going to be decommissioned over the next few years, it’s a bit of a surprise that a Greenfield estate near Lismore is getting copper installed instead of fibre. It comes because of a loophole in NBN legislation, which leaves Telstra responsible for connecting the estate because it was approved back in 2008. Naturally, residents aren’t too happy about it. [ZDNet]
• One of the reasons Internode agreed to sell out to iiNet just before Xmas was the threat of being too small to matter in an NBN world. Exetel boss John Linton has called shenanigans in his typical, abrupt style. [Delimiter]