Continuity chaos The lead-up to a federal election made matters even more extreme. The NBN predictably became the political football we all knew it would, with each party blaming the other for design shortcomings, budget blowouts and delays. During campaigning, both major parties assured the Australian public that they would deliver a better product once elected and would somehow achieve what their opposition could not. With every statement to the media came a slew of analyst reports and opinion pieces that picked apart the content
and highlighted the pros and cons, perceived truths and lies. It was a full-time job to keep up to date with every new development. By the time this issue of ECD goes to print, the Australian public will have decided one way or the other who’ll be running the show. Whether this truly affects a final decision on a fibre-to-the-node or fibre-tothe-home architecture and its subsequent rollout is anybody’s guess. As befits an infrastructure project of this scale, the NBN has been scrutinised, dissected and probed from every angle. It’s taken up more column inches than anything else in recent memory and has been praised or blamed for any number of effects including: job creation; job losses; being too slow to roll out and being rolled out before its ready; of raising the rate of educational dropout; of putting lives at risk; of not adequately servicing regional areas (or doing so at the expense of metropolitan centres); of being too expensive; of not being fast enough; of being under-designed, over-designed and completely lacking the facility to effectively handle future demand... the list goes on. Then there’s the company created to oversee the project in the first place. nbn, previously NBN Co, has endured more board shuffling than the Lido Deck on the Pacific Princess. Every change in government or shift in the economic landscape seemingly calls for a reorder, making relative continuity even more difficult to achieve.
Warts on the wall What seems to have remained consistent, however, is that overall ugliness of an NBN install from the perspective of the occupant. It’s a two-fold problem, being both ugly in terms of unsightly and ugly in terms of a smooth transition. Don’t take our word for it, peruse the letters section of any local media servicing areas where the rollout has already occurred. There are thousands of tales from disgruntled consumers — the reasons for complaints vary wildly, but a consistent grievance appears to be the installation of multiple hardware devices in seemingly random locations, as chosen by a designated contractor, along with less-than-stellar cabling installs. There are even Facebook
This issue is sponsored by — Schneider Electric — www.schneider-electric.com.au/en/work/campaign/wholesaler/motor-protection.jsp
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s the pinnacle of Australian engineering, it’s hard to imagine the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric scheme causing much of a commotion back in the day. In fact, the Snowy is so venerated that it is described as “an important symbol of Australia’s identity as an independent, multicultural and resourceful country” on the scheme’s official website. By contrast it was revealed in March this year that the Hybrid Fibre Co-Axial (HFC) rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) was referred to internally by nbn staff as “Operation Cluster***”. We’ll let you fill in the blanks but, suffice it to say, it’s not exactly engendering the same level of admiration. Of course, back in 1949 when construction of the Snowy commenced, the majority of the population probably just went about their business and continued to so for the 25 years it took to reach completion, happy in the knowledge that the end point was a world-class feat of engineering that would deliver a more efficient electricity supply system. Well, we now live in very different times. A ceaseless flow of information means that each and every turn of the torturous path to a national broadband network is reported on a daily basis, often with evident political bias. We’ve been talking about the NBN in one form or another for around a decade and it’s been in the headlines pretty much every day since inception. These headlines are rarely what could be called complimentary and it appears unlikely that everyone will be happy with the eventual outcome, no matter what form it takes.
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