Telstra went NBN crazy with agreements, bundles and SSUs, while the opposition ranted and raved against the NBN, although without much in the way of real concrete detail in this week’s NBN news wrap.
• Liberal MP for Bradfield and former Optus executive Paul Fletcher offered a detailed presentation on the Coalition’s view of why the NBN is a bad idea at the Kickstart forum. Lifehacker’s Angus Kidman attended the spectacle, which he described as “hopelessly contradictory” and one other journalist described as “more like the Sylvia Plath version of a keynote speech than an actual statement of how we could improve the status of broadband in Australia.” [Lifehacker]
• Telstra had an exceptionally busy NBN week. Firstly, it announced it was signing up as an NBN retailer. [Gizmodo]
• The ink was barely dry on that agreement when Telstra announced its own NBN bundles. [Gizmodo]
• Lifehacker examined Telstra’s NBN bundles, and to the surprise of pretty much nobody, they weren’t the greatest offerings you could get. [Lifehacker]
• However, Telstra may yet make changes to its plans, according to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy. [Delimiter]
• But Telstra wasn’t done yet! On Wednesday, the ACCC formally accepted Telstra’s structural separation undertaking. The SSU relates to the split of Telstra’s fixed line assets, and while there’s still a few matters to finalise, it’s an important step for rolling out the NBN [Gizmodo]
• “When’s the NBN coming to my neighbourhood?” is perhaps the most asked NBN question since the project was announced. NBN Co made it a little easier to work out when you’re likely to see fibre to your home, releasing a Google-maps based interactive map of its plans. [Gizmodo]
• Not all of the NBN will be delivered by fixed lines; those in the most remote areas will be provided for by satellite. iiNet this week released details of its NBN satellite plan. [Gizmodo]
• The Coalition’s alternative to the NBN is still something of a mystery in terms of absolute detail, but Malcolm Turnbull this week indicated that under a coalition government, the copper that makes up Telstra’s network would be purchased from Telstra — which isn’t particularly interested in selling it — and somehow, this would be “faster” than the NBN, where the approach is to let the rapidly degrading copper simply become obsolete [ZDNet]
• Still on Turnbull, his claims that rural wireless NBN customers would “not even get 4G/LTE — our approach would be better” were rather comprehensively called out as false. [Delimiter]