Adventure Ausrama Blog

Will Australia ever have a National Broadband Network? It seems it will only be partially completed before the Coalition wins the next election and puts a red line through it all. Telstra will remain the controlling body when NBN .com takes over. Not much will change in Australia's communication sector. Those who miss out will be terribly bitter about the mish -mash of a system we are left with. Just why the Coalition hates the NBN is hard to clarify. Why don't they want the nation to move forward with a world-class Internet network? Telstra is being criticized for being too competitive in price cutting. There is not much profit left for small telcos . Surely, this is the way of the market, but is Telstra trying to "grab" the market before it gains control over a market that will be opened up again with a coalition win? Telstra will survive a re-adjustment when smaller firms will fail. The Labor Government sees the deal "done" and a majority

Glenn Stevens the Governor of the Reserve bank says he supports a check on the National Broadband Network. You can't really take this man seriously. He obviously just said it to give a non-partisan, either party approach to government. Getting the Coalition off his back was his main aim. After all this time, he says this now. It is obviously late, very late indeed, with the legislation to change the structure of Telstra going through parliament at this very moment. The Labor Government wants to stop any further investigation into the full cost of the NBN, particularly now at the end of parliamentary sitting. It wants to go away and breath a sigh of satisfaction. All government projects end up costing more than was budgeted. The Coalition knows this and if it can keep the pressure for financial investigation going it is on a winner. Though, what it can achieve by this is unclear. Labor surely has support to pass anything that is needed to get this monster of a project up and running

It looks like Labor will lose the election. One thing is of great concern to me. That is the loss of the new national broadband network. Tony Abbot believes that private enterprise will fill the gap and make the leap. Without new technology this will not happen, particularly as Telecom still controls the copper wire network. The recent American CEO of Telecom did have one thing right about the Australian communication market - one company is shackled to the government but it still controls the whole market. Literally, when Telstra sneezes all the minor telcos don't just get a cold: they get the flu. Ironically, a public company holds the one and only key to Australia's hope of catching up to the rest of the developed world. CSIRO has developed a way of high-speed computer data transmission in the 6 gigabite range. It is not only superior to existing Wifi , developed in Australia, it is 99.9 per cent loss free, that is, it doesn't lose anything to a cable connection.

Access to the Internet prevents it from being a world levelling device. In Australia people will have to wait up to eight years to get broadband. South Africans living in "dangerous" areas will never get an Internet connection because telco companies fear theft of copper wire. India is too poor, so many regions will have to remain on dial up Internet. Those in remote places in Britain are still waiting for a method to be chosen for broadband distribution. Leading Western countries are the main source of software for all Internet users. Even Twitter and Facebook are based in the US. People also use these sites to interact with those of similar ilk. The world is segmenting into cliques and a broad world view is not materializing. This is despite more information being available for the average person than at any other time in human history. People are essentially parochial. They identify with the region and country they are in. Though international news is easily accessed, many

Tasmania turns the new broadband network on. Well the initial phase has been hooked up and is working. The project is going to be a vast enterprise with optical fiber being laid in place of copper. It will offer consumers video streaming that is 100 times faster than at present. The difference will seem magical to most people. Hopefully and I mean hopefully it will be no more expensive than existing services. The Government has promised that it will be cheaper, a miserly $29.95 a month. Time will tell on the price. The service is being set up as a virtual non-profit business, a public system aiming for only 6 percent profit. Apparently, e-health is coming to Australia. Patients will be monitored from home. In the Us such a system has resulted in hospital admissions being cut by 60 percent. Sick children will receive schooling direct to their sick bed. Buildings will become 'alive' with remote monitoring cutting power bills. Traffic lights will be synchronized. Mobile connectiv