NBN or NBSN

So I decided to write this post because in some ways, Australia fucking shits me. Why? Well yes we are the lucky country. That phrase was coined back in the 1960's by Donald Horne. He thought he was experiencing the death of the lucky country at that time. You poor bastard, look at us now! Frankly, in many ways I feel that we have not developed one fucking iota since then. What a slow, painful, managed-by-fuckwits-of-the-Bill-Shortern-mold kind of death. We are run by either old-money conservatives or left-wing don't-live-in-reality-and-don't-give-a-fuck lefties, who only care about votes and spending money to look good. We had a period, during the 90's when John Howard's Liberal government, actually gave this country a fighting chance of being at the pointy end of the stick, and for its inhabitants to become comfortable, if not necessarily wealthy. This followed on by great work done by Hawke and Keating - the only Labor government in my opinion to not be shit. Sadly, as usual for Australia and many democracies, the voters wanted a change, they liked funky Kevin Rudd more than ageing John Howard, and voted - mainly unknowingly - for economic disaster. Due to the now in-vogue practice of political-infighting and leader-ousting, we have not recovered since. I do, as a footnote, have some hope for ScoMo though. Time will tell.

One of Mr Rudd's numerous actions - and yes some of them were pretty good, particularly the apology - was to propose and put into action, The National Broadband Network, or NBN. What he should have done was to announce a public burning of $20 billion in cash and sell tickets to the event. I reckon the nation would have been better off financially as a result.

So my saving grace for this blog is that nobody at all reads it. So I am saved the hate mail. I will likely say a few things here that piss a few people off, maybe everyone at some point! Fuck it, it's my blog!

Australia is the 55th largest country in the world in terms of population, and we are currently the 61st country in the world in terms of broadband speed. This is a ranking that has changed little over the last 10 years. And let me tell you, after visiting a number of the countries higher on the list, Australia's internet performance is noticeably poorer.

The NBN was put forward as Australia's modern solution to integrating to 21st Century connectivity in 2007. I do understand that Australia is a massive country, with a relatively small population, so these kinds of nation-wide ambitions for development are not easy. The cost of infrastructure is high, particularly the labour component, because trade unions have and continue to try and play Robin Hood without a care for the economic consequences, and our viability to compete in global markets.

The real problem is though, that due to our size and our inability to complete major projects at the speed of someone like Hong Kong, by the time this NBN is completely rolled out, it's going to be obsolete technology. They are now talking that the new 5G networks are going to be able to provide world's-best internet speeds at cheap prices. If those prices can compete with NBN prices - and for me that's all about unlimited data, then goodbye me ever having a broadband account again. So given we've really only just started seeing the NBN get to any decent stage of completion, we have missed the boat. And our strategists should have seen this coming - this project should not have happened, not to this degree anyway. It's another case of buying votes by giving the average mug punter what at face value appears to be a huge investment in the future. Ok, maybe nobody could have predicted 5G and the like, but there are a lot more smarter people than me out there, so I'm betting that they did.

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. The National Bullshit Network. Take your $20 billion and run!