The below interview was for an article I co-authored with iTnews’ Brett Winterford.
The interview was conducted with Professor Reginald Coutts, one of the six panel members for the National Broadband Network.
You can read the full story here: Minchin rebuked by Expert Panel ‘whistleblowers’
Apologies for any grammatical mistakes in advance.
Ben: Has there been a cost benefit analysis on the NBN?
The government made an announcement on April 7th.
In terms of the broad directions of the FTTP, the core back bone, broadband, wireless, and satellite backhaul et cetera,it is all consistent with what we recommended.
In terms of the broad capital costs the number forty-three billion dollars is the original costings that were certainly around in the industry for FTTN, which is fibre just going to a node in the street and not all the way to the home.
The numbers that were really being talked about, total cover costs, were about fifteen billion dollars, of which the Government obviously was talking about 4.7.
If you look at a number of quite comprehensive reports that have been done in the UK, the BSG reports, that are all in the public domain…(they suggest that) FTTN, all the way to the home, you sort of multiply on the amount of capital, it varies on many factors, anywhere between 3 and 5.
What contributes to about 80 percent of that capital cost is what we call civil engineering works.
For example if you decide, as they did in Tasmania, to use overhead (power lines) rather than bury, that makes a significant impact on that capital cost.
If you’ve got access to ducts of not only Telstra, but other utilities, that can make a significant difference.
Ben: To put your quote of Telstra having to be a part of the solution, what do you say to that?
For the proposed NBN, in my view, Telstra has to be part of the solution, not the solution.
I chose those words carefully because Telstra having not only significant infrastructure right around Australia in terms of the copper plants, the ducts et cetera, but also because it actually does have fibre connecting all the exchanges right around the country, but also because it’s such a significant market participant, so it has to be part of the solution.
That can range from them being an investor in the NBN….potentially leasing some of its infrastructure… a whole number of options.
You can’t do something like this (NBN) and pretend Telstra don’t exist.
Ben: Did the Rudd government dream up a figure of fourty-three billion dollars?
I’d dispute that.
My response is that there is a broad basis for the number.
That goes back to….the various economic modelling that has been done in the public domain, but also a number of key consultants around the world including Ovum…who’ve done various examples of both capital and operational costs of NBN vs. FTTH.
Ben: Was there further analysis after your report?
I’m not aware of what further analysis they did subsequent to our work since the 21st of January…and I know they did further analysis.
Certainly the government has been doing a lot of work.
Ben: You guys didn’t come up with the figure?
No.
This is was what annoyed me particularly in Minchin’s statement…that the panel were not asked to evaluate the governments proposal…we’d been disbanded, we’d done out job.
I’m saying that figure is consistent with the sort of number that I’m…aware of coming out of a whole number of studies.
He’s (Nick Minchin) being the minister for opposition…I mean I guess he’s doing his job, if that’s the job specification.
Late last night the ‘topic of the day’ segment on Tony Delroy’s ABC Night Life was all about the National Broadband Network (NBN). The show was in the format of talkback, enabling listeners to call in and voice their opinion. I’ve never called a radio station before so thought I’d give it a shot and voice my opinion. Attached is an MP3 of what I had to say.
Just letting you know that I’ve teamed up with the lovely Chloe Lake, Technology Editor of news.com.au, to break some great Australian tech stories.
Tech Wired will continue to run of course, but any major story I believe should be known to the masses will go to them.
You can see my first story about mobile coverage being overstated by Telstra, Optus, Vodafone, and Hutchison.
The stories will be aimed at the consumer, so you can expect in depth tech writing to continue here.
Queensland’s Premier, Anna Bligh, has been getting a little defensive on Twitter announcing this evening that the Greens are…
“…not an alternate govt.”
This was in response to a Twitter message I Tweeted to Kevin Rudd just moments before, in response to his meeting with Anna Bligh today.
Kevin Rudd said the following on his Twitter account:
“@anna4queensland was great today. Such a strong woman. She stands for jobs.”
So I decided to get a bit cheeky by asking Kevin in the public domain the following:
“@KevinRuddPM What about the Greens what are they? Are they “that other bloke” as well?”
To which I received the response from Anna Bligh stating:
You won’t be able to see the message on Anna Bligh’s Twitter profile page any more, because Anna Bligh deleted it!
But say you wanted evidence that this did indeed happen?
Well, Twitter offers a service that allows you to see Tweets regardless of whether they have been deleted, it’s called Twitter search. If you wish to see Anna’s reply head over to this link.
Below is an overview of how the conversation went:
Tech Wired Australia – Mini episode edition
Host: Ben Grubb
Guests: Laurel Papworth (Social media strategist) and Peter Black (Law lecturer at Queensland University of Technology)
Tech Wired today learned that the Australian Government will release its secret National Broadband Network Report if paid fees of up to $3,631.99.
Just yesterday we reported on the progress of a Freedom of Information application put forward by Tech Wired to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE). Today we received confirmation of certain costs to go forward. Read more
WITH the panel of experts’ report for the National Broadband Network tender complete; it’s crunch time. Read more
There’s a new Internet Service Provider joining the Australian Broadband scene that unashamedly admits in trying to ’shake up the industry’. What’s it doing differently that the others aren’t? Claiming Internet access with no download caps, rarely heard of in the Australia ISP landscape.
For $79.95 a month the Company behind it all, myKP, will provide unlimited Internet access at speeds that will vary depending on location. Read more
ANKODER, a white label web based video transcoding service is made from a website developers perspective. It allows you to easily integrate user generated video in to any website easily with it’s API, and is scalable says developer and CEO Rex Chung. Read more
THE PAST WEEK has been a nice week here @ Tech Wired Australia as we achieved a nice influx of traffic on this post about Nick Hac’s mobile phone being confiscated by police.
To this moment over 10,522 unique visitors have viewed the post via 96 referring sites.
Some of the top referring sites included:
Once I informed mainstream media of the event News Ltd’s David Earley reported about the event as well as Fairfax’s Asher Moses.
A big thanks to all the bloggers who spread the word as well!
In regards to what outcomes are developing from the story, it remains unclear, though Nick hopes to raise awareness of what our rights actually are as well as those of the police.
- Ben
