Australia's National Broadband Network Downgraded

RobHart writes "Following election promises to create a 'better, cheaper, sooner' National Broadband Network (NBN), the new Australian government has reneged, announcing instead the NBN will cost $12bn more and take four years longer. The critical change is that the new network is based on Telstra's aging and unreliable copper network rather than fiber to the home, as has already been delivered during the NBN roll out to date."

Comments

Re:In between.

[Pav]

I know someone who works for an Australian company. They put in a tender for part of the NBN project but IBM won the contract at almost twice the price. IBM then subcontracted the work back to the Australian company. It's strange - Australians seem to underestimate the abilities of their own technical community, and as slaves to community perception Australian governments are particularly bad for this bias. It seems to be part of the national psyche that we're only about agriculture and mining, and local tech comes a poor second to overseas offerings. It's no wonder we're judged an easy mark and regularly overcharged for software.

Re:Not sure which is news...

[TubeSteak]

The whole point of the NBN is that it's a government chartered corporation that leases access to everyone.

It was never about the "free-market".
Instead, the idea was to create a competitive market, on a government built foundation instead of the existing private monopoly/oligopoly.

Infrastructure investments are almost always worth it, even if the price explodes.