from Hacker News

The Australian National Broadband Network board have submitted resignations

by xelfer on 9/23/13, 12:20 AM with 28 comments

• by contingencies on 9/23/13, 2:15 AM

  Sad, really sad.

  Despite being an Australian, I rarely follow the news there, so if someone closer to the action could confirm and clarify here: the notion was put forward to build fiber to the home across the country (extremely costly), it was passed by a government courageously (for supporting any long term benefit at immediate expense is tantamount to severing a near-term political limb), the government changed, and the new one is likely appointing the current chairman of what used to be the state-owned telecommunications provider (sold off by the incoming government in a prior reign) to 'fix' it.

  Does it not appear then, on a macro scale, as if the government gave up its golden goose and wound up redistributing wealth to many private hands whilst reducing its actual capacity to get anything done or maintain a semblence of competitiveness with more successful but similar ventures elsewhere? (China, France and New Zealand come to mind)

  After spending much time living in China, I can only conclude that two party democracies are essentially incompetent structures for long term infrastructure.

  Perhaps my homeland could fix its NBN project with a pause to enforce transparency, issue public reports and a referendum. Of course, the government wouldn't do that ... the've just stolen the goose.

• by redact207 on 9/23/13, 3:05 AM

  What's the point of a FTTN network? You haven't removed the bottleneck which is the copper wire infrastructure. This was one thing that could have made Australia competitive in the years to come, but instead the people who make the decisions know nothing about it let alone able to spell NBN.

  IMO it's not all doom and gloom. By putting in the FTTN "backbone", it leaves the door open to rewire it to FTTH down the line when the government realises that commerce is being stiffed because of a slow network.

• by DigitalSea on 9/23/13, 3:48 AM

  This whole fiasco reminds me of a hilarious satire article I read recently on an Australian satire site called The Shovel: http://theshovel.com.au/2013/08/26/malcolm-turnbull-launches...

  Sadly, we all know this sub-par alternative will be a disaster that will go in the history books. In 40 years I'll tell my grandchildren, "I remember a time when you would have to wait 10 minutes to load a video on the Internet" and they'll laugh and call me crazy. But the sad fact of the matter is, the LNP party have outdated views on not only Internet access but gay marriage, the economy and way things work in the real world.

  It's going to be a bumpy 3 years, but LNP won't get another term after all of the crap they've pulled. If I were on the board I'd rather get out before the impending ship of failure sinks (and trust me, it will).

• by anthonyb on 9/23/13, 2:21 AM

  Disgraceful, IMO. The last Liberal government over here entrenched Telstra as a monopoly by selling it off in its entirety. They were kicked out of the process last time, due to not taking it seriously, now that their cronies are back in power, they're off the hook.

  http://abbotsinternet.com.au/ gives a good idea of just how bad the offerings over here are. And that doesn't show half of it. My internet drops on a regular basis, and if you call out a technician you will typically get slugged with a callout fee of $100 or so regardless. From... Telstra, because they run all of the phone lines, even though I want to get as far away from them as possible.

• by ajtaylor on 9/23/13, 3:32 AM

  One thing that always puzzled me about the NBN rollout was why they chose to do the least populated areas first? It seems that it would have helped to allay the cost concerns if they had brought it to more populated areas where the customer uptake would have been greater. By doing places like remote Tasmania (among other small customer base areas), they pretty much guaranteed disappointing numbers up front.

• by enneff on 9/23/13, 3:23 AM

  > Former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski is waiting in the wings to be appointed executive chairman.

  That's all that needs to be said, isn't it?