I must admit to being very cynical about the Government’s announcement today that the National Broadband Network (NBN) will deliver speeds much higher than the originally promised 100 mbps. Talk about pulling rabbits out of hats. How convenient, a week and a bit before the election when the government is desperately trying to differentiate itself from the much less ambitious and cheaper network the opposition proposes.
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy revealed today that he’d only been made aware of the new turbo-charged capacity by NBN co-chief executive Mike Quigley yesterday. Yeah, sure, I believe him. The timing enabled the government to further mock the opposition’s $6 billion broadband plan which will deliver speeds of 12 megabits per second using a patchwork of technologies.
I find myself having a lot of sympathy for Tony Abbott’s view on this announcement:
“This idea that ‘hey presto’ we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn’t even built yet I find utterly implausible.”
Wonder when they’ve suddenly discovered the higher speeds? Done a test from one side of a lab to the other? Maybe over-designed the network all along and saved this news up for a rainy day when the government needed it? The whole thing has the smell of vapourware about it – lets promise the world now and figure out how to deliver it when we have to.
