TOCPCs – The Elite Geeks Blog

Yep, a lot of whinging has started since the OpEl announcement.

A heap of media news stories around it, so much so that the newsbar on Whirlpool has been moving faster than the ASX ticker!

News topics such all centered around flagging the proposal as a bad result, though, I’m yet to see one clear cut, obvious reason that sets the proposal bad.

It has the following features:

Innovation.
Competition.
Reliability.
Future proof.

They are the key aspects behind any telecommunications proposal, and the proposal they are offering does exactly all that.

So, having a poke around, we can see one clear reason why Telstra thinks its bad:
Shareholders lose out because they now have to compete for the dollars, rather than greedily leech from the wallets of Australian consumers (heh, did you notice my spin off Telstra’s leech off ‘our network’ – they leech out of our wallets too!).

- And for some reason, half of it being Optus owned, somehow, a NWAT comment says 80% of profits go to Singapore? Elders wouldn’t be too happy about that, they are partners! – And exactly, the person (and a lot of other persons) make very uninformed and quiet dumb comments on that site.

Graeme Samuel stands correct in stating that it’d take at least 1 day to correct all the misinformation, something the government doesn’t really want to be paying its ministers, senators and MPs to be reading up on.

What needs to be done in that area is setting all the facts straight by perhaps a leaflet mailout to all Australians? That’d be cheap, and certainly show all the correct facts?

Anyway, other points of whinging in the media (as incorrect as they sometimes can be (remembers CRN stuff up – they actually pulled that article on the Monday)), include:

The fact that a memo was leaked from the DCITA office showing that they were favouring a certain group of marginals.
- Who really cares? The proposed offering was drawn out months before that even happened.

Barnaby Joyce not happy, because its a proposal that doesn’t deliver FTTN.
- Well, Barnaby, when you get educated on Australia’s population statistics, as its evident you don’t seem to know much about it in saying FTTN is required in Regional areas, you can feel free to make comment, in the mean time, I suggest you simply Shut Up.
- The simple fact is, FTTN isn’t a technology for Rural Australia, it’s not easy running 10k’s of fibre to a 10000+ dollar node, that will service just one customer, because the other farms are still 10k out. WiMAX on the other hand, is best for servicing that. Because it offers speeds in Anywhere type conditions, where copper / fibre would need to be manually laid. One tower, and several farms online.

Telstra, whinging about duplication of services, leaving other areas out:
- Yet another Telstra started fib. Telstra’s NWAT site is so full of shit (sorry for the language, but its how you describe “it”). The governments proposal covers all Australians, right out to the bush, and for those that don’t get it, subsidised satelitte continues to be available.
- WiMAX is unsuitable for rural areas ? Really? Why ? It seems fine (and exactly the intended application) for regional areas. It’s also proven, as it is in use in many countries). And apparently, WiMAX is inferior to NextG (HSDPA) ? WiMAX kicks its arse in terms of distance and speed, as well as price. So, how its inferior I’d like to have clarification from NWAT on (and I’ve asked!).
- The government has created a second class system for regional areas and bush, whilst this might be in a sense correct, because Metro will have FTTN, which is able to support speeds of up to 50Mbps, the proposal is indeed upgradeable, and OpEl expect to have a profit in Year 3, which would likely pay for enhancing speeds, if required.

As well, the government have set funds aside for the future too, 2billion will earn 400 million in interest, that interest will be used to further communications where required.

The governments proposal takes a look at it from a “nobody gets left behind”. Labour’s 98% (or 75%) means at least 2%, with more likely, 25% get left the way things are. Not the ideal.

I know I was indeed encouraged by the Labour move, but the current government shines out again, in a move that sees me get metro comparable broadband inside a 2 year time frame, and Telstra getting a big kick in the arse to be forced to compete, well, it’s probably two birthday presents, and two christmas’s better than the Labour proposal!

The current government also have the thought of looking after its budget, they are indeed smart money managers, they make very smart calculated moves, and those moves indeed result in a better outcome for all of Australia.

I should add to this part that something I left out yesterday (not deliberately) was that the proposal includes building two links to Tasmania, to keep (in a “Media Matters” term) Tasmania strung to the mainland. This will indeed allow for faster speeds to Tasmania, where current industry members like Netspace, have limited speeds, or simply stopped supplying due to the poor prices on backhaul, which Telstra hold the monopoly on.

This round of spending is all in all a great outcome for Australia for the present and the future. I encourage anyone with comments to the opposite, to clearly state the reasons why they don’t believe its a great proposal for now and the future for Regional and Rural Australia, and if it can be done better, by all means, let’s look at that too!

Enjoy!