Sign in / up

back to article Is NBN Co about to pay for 80 years of power pole access?

According to the NSW State Government, NBN Co is being completely unreasonable in declining to fork over in the order of $400 million for access to electricity poles in that state. In response, NBN Co is, as it warned it would in October 2012, invoking the Telecommunications Act and using the poles without electricity authority …

COMMENTS

House rules Send corrections
This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. tkioz
    FAIL

    Sounds like the NSW Liberals are trying to help out their Federal brethren by stalling the NBN as much as possible. Or it could just be plain greed, after all most of the massive price hikes in power bills over the last few years have been due to 'gold-plating' power infrastructure.

    2 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      No, most of the massive price hikes in power bills over the last few years have been due to subsidising middle class acquisition and installation of rooftop solar power panels. That and subsequent purchase at inflated prices of surplus electricity generated by them. "Gold plating" is a relatively minor consequence of government mandated uptime requirements, which is hardly the fault of the power companies.

      1 0
  2. Solanum

    Party politics

    Could there just possibly be a political angle to this? A state governed by the party that has opposed the NBN from the beginning demands many times the going rate for pole access, thus either delaying rollout ("look told you so, they can't do it on time") or causing a cost blowout ("look told you so, they can't do it on budget"). Nah, they wouldn't do that....

    1 1
    1. Mark 65
      Reply Icon

      Re: Party politics

      Don't attribute to malice etc etc. This is just your standard gouging of the Government on a large project. Telstra took them for $11bn so it's open season.

      0 0
  3. JohnJ
    Thumb Down

    Sensationally wrong analysis

    There is no story here - it is all based on a very elementary mistake.

    The original article quoting Stoner on news.com.au ,dated 29 October 2012, makes no reference to annual costs. It does refer to to dollars "over the life of the NBN". There is a difference which is rather significant.

    Perhaps the truth does not make such interesting reading Richard. Your effort is diminishing the credibility of El Reg.

    2 0
    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Big Brother

      Re: Sensationally wrong analysis

      True dat!

      Dat NBN is gonna run for A HUNDRED YEARS and we WANNA THAT MONEY NOW, UPFRONT, we will even discount it properly to HALF A BEELION.

      0 0
  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You learn something new every day ...

    I didn't know the Deputy Premier of NSW was A. Stoner.

    1 0
  5. -tim
    Pint

    That would explain the high cost of HFC

    Those calculations show an interesting figure when you turn their "pass" rate into connected customer rates. The Telstra HFC network will pass nearly all the same customers as does the phone network. Since 90+% of the homes will have phone service, that leaves the cable only connecting about one in 4 in areas with 50% HFC connections (which is very generous). That would imply that at least $40/mo for cable TV or cable Internet access is a result of pole rental.

    I wonder how this compares to Google's pole rental costs in Kansas City.

    0 0
  6. Tim Bates

    Standard practice...

    NSW Government departments trying to prop up their budgets using Federal money. They did it with DER, they did it with BER, and they regularly do it with health funding.

    The NSW government may have gone from Labor to Liberal 2 years ago, but the people employed in government departments are still the same greedy money spending people as they were under Labor.

    They catch a whiff of "free money" and start making strange demands, inventing extra costs, and claiming the Federal government is out to ruin the states.

    0 0
    1. tkioz
      Reply Icon
      Megaphone

      Re: Standard practice...

      Out to ruin the states? Hell they should be out to abolish and utterly destroy the damn useless things. Other than the occasional sporting match they serve zero purpose in this country any more.

      They made sense a century ago when communication over such vast distances could take time, but today? No, get rid of them, we've got three levels of government (local, state, federal) and could get along just fine with only two levels and say a hell of a lot of money.

      0 0
This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like