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Raising Doubts About Australia's Broadband Upgrade Plan
RcK writes "In addition to the rising controversy of the possible Australian version of the Great Firewall Of China already mentioned several times of late here on Slashdot; the viability of the proposed AU$5Billion internet infrastructure upgrade promised by the Federal Government during their 2007 election campaign is under fire. The MD of arguably Australia's leading internet company, iinet, has branded the proposal a waste of taxpayers money. Steve Ballmer, during his current Australian visit, has also weighed in on the topic and diplomatically indicated that Australia should get on with the job. Much of the current criticism appears to surround the likelihood of people in remote areas being left out of the proposed plan. Ironically, where I lived previously (remote town in central Aus — nearest town over 400km away) everyone had, at the absolute least, subsidized satellite internet, and most had ADSL. In my case a flawless 512k connection for ~4years. However, I now live 5 minutes from the center of a capital city and due to archaic telephone infrastructure cannot get ADSL, and even line noise is too great for dialup!"
Today's front page at
Whirlpool Broadband News also features several articles relating to the saga.
I'm not sure which Australia you're living in, but I think the general public here has pretty good tech knowledge. The government, on the other hand, is made up of idiots like Conroy and Fielding - who, from their public comments, are puritan Luddite's.
The party's good intentions are there, it's just that those charged with delivering a product (Conroy) have no idea what they are doing. I think he's been so sidetracked with his little pet project of internet censorship, that he's forgotten what the "Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy" is actually supposed to do.
And none of this is helped by the resident monopoly Telstra who, following privatisation, have abused their monopoly on telecommunications infrastructure in an attempt to keep competition at a minimum. The Howard government simply didn't ensure healthy competition was possible following the transition of Telstra to private ownership.
Probably on a pair gain line.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."