Space, spies and spats fill up this week’s NBN update as Huawei sets the record straight, NBN Co chooses more satellite ground stations and 7:30 discovers the physical lag behind the NBN roll-out.
• Huawei Australia’s chairman, John Lord, was given a soapbox this week at the National Press Club, and he didn’t waste any time in getting to his point. Lord used the speaking opportunity to rail against the Federal Government’s ban of his company from tendering for sweet, sweet NBN projects on spurious “national security” grounds. It took him less than a minute to start “setting the record straight”, and I recommend you read the speech in full (PDF) if you want to get a look into how Huawei sees the situation it has been backed into.
• ABC’s 7:30 program got into the trenches this week and discovered that NBN Co, by not keeping up with the installation timetable it promised, is building a new digital divide in Australia, leaving many new homes in greenfield estates without so much as a home phone line as they wait for the fibre to be run to their homes. Pretty poor effort.
• On the flipside of the installation coin, the NBN reached Brisbane this week. Congrats, Brisbanites!
• NBN Co chose a few new satellite base stations this week to ferry the network to those out of reach of fibre.
• And finally this week, the ex-head of the ACCC, Graeme Samuel, says that the Coalition’s NBN plan is already obsolete. Turnbull responded in kind by branding Samuel as the political equivalent of a fanboy, saying that he was an NBN “cheerleader”. Ouch.