Tag: NBN

Once more into the fray …

Back from the Goldfields, with not a nugget to show for it.

But little grapes, tiny little fetal grapelets on every vine. If they can just survive the frost for another month … most promising. The trouble with Victorian country life, though, is the total absence of broadband in my little hamlet. The local telephone exchange is not equipped for ADSL, will not be equipped for ADSL, and even if it were the copper wire is too small and too old to cope and the house too far from the exchange. Mobile phone coverage? Not at my house. Oh for the NBN.

So home  to Melbourne and a rush for the news. Not good so far as the NBN goes …

EXECUTIVES at the company building the national broadband network pocketed more than $600,000 in bonuses in 2011-12 despite the project running a year behind schedule.

The NBN Co annual report shows the company is spending 25 times more on executive salaries than it earned from selling broadband to customers …

The opposition’s communications spokesman, Malcolm Turnbull, said the report, released on Friday night, showed the roll-out of the network was a year behind schedule with 24,000 homes and businesses connected to the national broadband network at the end of last month. <SMH>

Julia, meanwhile calls sexism wherever she finds it …

 

Maybe she went on a bit long about the uranium sales.

She probably yearns for the good old days when the law firm she was working for brought this defamation action …

Concerns among union officials about financial irregularities and the conduct of the then branch secretary were silenced by Mr Blewitt in the Supreme Court defamation action brought on his instructions in October 1993.

The action came six months after Mr Blewitt, who now admits to being involved in fraud, transferred about $100,000 from the slush fund to buy a $230,000 Melbourne terrace for the use of Ms Gillard’s then boyfriend, union boss Bruce Wilson.

Ms Gillard attended the auction for the Melbourne property, helped in the transaction, and witnessed a power of attorney giving Mr Wilson control over the asset.

The Prime Minister has repeatedly and strenuously denied any wrongdoing, and said she did not know about the workings of the slush fund. <The Australian ( paywall)>

Taking a leaf out of her book, one of the punters she relies on to stay in power has threatened to sue anyone that suggests he may have had sex with prostitutes …

But the allegations FWA has presented to the Federal Court are detailed and extensive, listing dates and times in which Mr Thomson allegedly called escort services and paid for them with his credit cards. In all, there are 10 occasions where FWA alleges Mr Thomson called prostitute services and then used $9603 of union money on them. <news.com>

and he did sue Fairfax last year … but dropped the matter at the court room door. The Labor Party shelled out to keep him from bankruptcy.

Bankruptcy, there’s a thought, how’s that budget coming Wayne?

 

NBN …

To the tune of a dimly remembered advert, all together now – Pink bats, school halls, subsidies for Holden cars …

The Australian August 07

Based on its original targets, NBN Co has achieved only 9 per cent of its rollout target for homes passed by fibre and 3 per cent of the planned connections where customers are hooked up to broadband. Based on its initial estimates, by June this year 317,000 households should have been passed with fibre and 137,000 homes actually connected to a broadband service. In reality, fewer than 25,000 homes had been passed and fewer than 4000 connected.

Those figures are for existing suburbs and fibre to new estates. When the figures are broken down, it is obvious this isn’t just a debacle but an abject failure by NBN Co, especially in new (greenfield) housing estates. In late May, Quigley told Senate estimates: “As of the last week or so a bit over 300 services have been turned on – activated – in greenfield areas … and there are probably three or four times that quantity of lots that have been passed.”

So less than 20 months after predicting that 172,000 greenfield premises would be passed and 132,000 connected, 0.6 per cent of the coverage target and less than 0.2 per cent of the active service target have been met.

Fairfax press today

NBN Co’s broadband network will cost more to construct and operate than first expected – about $4.6 billion over ten years – but rollout targets are being met, according to an update on its corporate plan.

Some one is bending the truth somewhere. Funnily enough Mr Oakeshott, himself not someone I would buy a used car from, has warned government that its national broadband network corporate plan must “start to really tell the truth” or risk a backlash from voters and Parliament.

I suspect the truth is a bit of this and a bit of that … over spending the budget,  under achieving in the rollout.