NBN Co hoses down 'user pays' story

I would love to be able to pay

Pay a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars and actually be connected. Forget 25 megabits, 5 megabits would do. But just make it actually happen.

I am in a black spot. With essentially no internet at all. And there appears to be no intention to address black spots for many, many years. (The Notional Broadband Network actually prevents Telstra from addressing black spots.)

Have a look at the following if you are in a similar plight.

http://berglas.org/Articles/NBN/NBN.html

(But then you probably do not have access to the internet and so cannot read the wisdom contained in The Register.)

The Department's official risk assessment of the NBN before it began identified two over-riding factors upon which success or failure depended, both linked to the wholesale revenue stream:

- take-up rates

- delay to signup

In other words, the entire project is only appropriate as a government sponsored, off-budget infrastructure build if it drives early take-up of services. This is why Telstra and Optus were signed up as partners to secure prompt migration of their customers off legacy infrastructure, and why third party competition for fixed infrastructure was so vehemently opposed. It is why "flying squads" of technicians were brought in to resolve "class-zero" obstacles to service provision.

The sooner a customer can be brought onto the NBN, the sooner the government begins to receive monthly wholesale revenue. Charging customers even $50 for equipment will deter many customers from changing to fibre, perhaps by 12 months, all over a cost which is recovered after 2-3 months.

It is a revenue-positive choice to supply the equipment for free and bring them on board sooner.

The end game must remain that every premises in urban Australia (towns and cities) has a reliable and fast fibre broadband service with full retail competition, absolutely wherever this is possible to do.