back to article Construction industry outlook is bad news for Turnbull's alt.NBN plan

When Senator Stephen Conroy, Australia's former Communications Minister and the man who drove the early years of the nation's National Broadband Network (NBN) build, recently admitted that the rollout targets he signed off for the network's construction were too ambitious it was taken as further evidence his failings. Conroy …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. -tim
    Holmes

    Just who will be doing the hands on?

    In many parts of the world, it is easy to find and train new people to terminate fiber and put it in ditches. Australia has regulated the markets so much that you have about two years of apprenticeship to do the same thing and who wants to waste two years of their life obtaining a skill where there will be a glut when the project is finished? The skill also requires very good eyesight so the work becomes impossible for many people after their eyes start to change around age 40 so it isn't suitable for retraining older workers either.

  2. david 12 Silver badge

    Nobody twisted their arm

    Conroy had a quotation from Telstra for the cost involved. He didn't accept it, and went out into the market to get a cut-rate least-cost quotation.

    And he had a "draft" report that showed the NBN was never going to be financialy viable, so he needed to screw the costs right down to minimise the losses.

    This is what happens.

    1. Cpt Blue Bear

      There's no pleasig some people

      And if he'd accepted the Telstra quote unopposed you'd be crying foul at that.

  3. petrosy

    Typical Australia

    No we are entering the land of perpetual papers, research and more think tanks. .... just build the f'ing thing already. We waste more time talking about doing stuff than actually doing them!

  4. dan1980

    Interesting?

    "Just how Turnbull explains away the inevitable will be interesting to behold"

    In exactly what way will Turnbull blaming it on the previous government be 'interesting to behold'?

  5. G 14

    I wont be happy until i personally see Ziggy and Turnbull out there with a shovel getting the real work done.

    1. JamesTQuirk

      Still remember how bad it used to be, when our Phones, Electricity, Etc were not Privatised, look how our bills have gone down by having more fingers in the public area Pie .........

      1. mathew42

        Telecommunication bills have definitely gone down as the influence of Telstra has decreased.

        A large part of electricity and water bills have come from gold plated infrastructure projects.

        1. JamesTQuirk

          When Government owned Telephones, they layed copper, to everybody, if they still owned it, they should/would have layed it out to everybody again, duplicating the copper with fibre, this century, but no, look at how much we saved by no infrastructure rebuild or support, then broken into "networks", that sell us time on copper, Routing&SAT network we originally paid for ?

          Yes Confusing, but thats life, No real infrastructure planning, except for privately owned Telephone/Elec/Water/Transportation networks, it seems, bills are not really cheaper, before a percentage of my bill went back to PUBLIC purse, PUBLIC infrastructure, but now it buys Gold Plated Toilet Bowls with Ipod Dock for "investors", is also reason Governments have no money to spend on improving infrastructure ....

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like