Kiama and the NBN

I had the great pleasure of driving down to Kiama last week for the NBN launch there (the thing about the NBN for politicians is its like school building programs - an endless series of openings).

It gave me a good hook for my iTnews column, in which I demonstrate that Turnbull is using the same strategy against the NBN that his leader uses against putting a price on carbon.

Meanwhile I had a letter published in the AFR this week - in response to an editorial trumpeting the idea that structural separation really solved everything without reflecting on the fact that it was only the NBN policy that achieved that (submitted text below).

I couldn't work into either article the other famous thing about Kiama - which was Alastair Mackerass' beach house. As Master of the Lower School (and Maths and Latin teacher to Form 1A - aka Year 7) at Sydney Grammar School he would invite groups of the Form 1 boys to spend a week of the summer holidays with him there. I certainly enjoyed my week.

I can only presume that Malcolm Turnbull had this opportunity. I don't know if the other big NBN protagonist - Paul Fletcher - did, only because I don't know if Mackerras kept it up after becoming headmaster.

I tried hard to work it in. To have had the opportunity you had to be bright - but they now act so dumb. Perhaps it is the fact that they both went on to be participants in the school debating team - a skill where you learn to argue any proposition convincingly, no matter how much you disbelieve what you are saying.

Meanwhile the other memorable part of the launch was the "big red button". When depressed all that technically happened is a video started that showed a map being "lit up".

Anyone got any better ideas on what should happen? To go back to the road and bridges analogies from the column - how would de Groot upstage the button pushing?

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AFR Letter

Your editorial today (NBN already looking costly for consumers AFR 1 Aug) asserts that the marketplace benefits being achieved through the NBN could have been achieved through the structural separation of Telstra.

You fail to mention that no Minister prior to Senator Conroy was interested in doing so. The Member for Bradfield in his book Wired Brown Land makes it clear that the coalition recognised that they had an option to separate Telstra before starting privatisation, but that his then boss, Senator Alston, elected not to do so.

Senator Alston subsequently commenced an inquiry into structural separation, which was subsequently abandoned when then Shadow Communications Minister Lindsay Tanner published a report indicating it could not be done.

Senator Conroy and Lindsay Tanner together then developed the plan for the NBN, one benefit of which was to be structural separation. NBN Mark 1 did not reach a satisfactory outcome in part because Telstra refused to make a full submission unless the requirement for separation was taken out of the policy.

To assert there is an alternative to something requires the alternative to be achievable. No one has ever devised an alternative strategy to secure the structural separation of Telstra.

Finally, so far all retail prices announced for the NBN have been the same as current copper based prices. What is also announced though are new services not previously available to the consumer market, and at prices ten times less than comparable business services.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

The NBN and Telstra

Hopefully my views on the Telstra/NBN deal will appear in iTnews today. So I won't repeat them here.

But the NBN as a whole is a continual exercise in different policy challenges and options.

Peter Gerrand outlined his view that the ACCC decision on POIs "saved Telstra" allowing it to "re-emerge as the dominant national wholesale and retail telecommunications carrier."

This and other issues will be aired at an ACS-TSA NBN Policy Forum next week. The link is to the Sydney Forum on 30 June, there is also a Melbourne one on 28 June.



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Copper thieves

One of the great tragedies of the 2005 (and ongoing) war in Iraq was the break-down in the power systems. The cause of the break-down was unrestrained theft of copper transmission lines following the collapse of any kind of civil authority.

It is the kind of thing you'd think wouldn't happen here, but apparently it does. The NSW Government is reported by iTnews to be preparing rules that will require the presentation of identity documents for certain sales of recovered copper.

This is entirely consistent with the kind of rules that apply to pawn brokers.

This case is more interesting because one of the direct beneficiaries is the telco sector. Though most of the nicked copper is electricity distribution the report included a case of a man allegedly he posing as a telephone technician to steal $110,000 worth of Telstra's old and active copper lines in December 2010, causing "major breaks in telecommunications for businesses and private residences" in the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie areas.

These are, of course, the self same telcos who think that any imposition on them as ISPs to participate in a scheme to identify theft of copyright material is an unreasonable burden.

There is a moral in this tale, we all have an obligation to support the principles of property rights, and enforcement may require us to create business practices that facilitate that.



Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Balance or what?

Mainstream media regularly gets a bagging for its mono-voice - be that criticism from Gerard Henderson about the left leaning Age and ABC, or the rest of the commentariat about the "conservative" agenda of the Oz.

So it was pretty intriguing to see "balance" from on-line media site iTWire. It carried two pieces by renai Le May that bagged the opposition's approach to attacking Quigley. It then had editor Stan Beer's own column defending the coalition's approach. He writes, in part;

It is both proper and desirable for Coalition members of the Senate Estimates committee to subject Mr Quigley to an intense and thorough grilling.

Mr Quigley is a big boy and there is no doubt he can defend himself in Senate Estimates. He doesn't need the media jumping to his defence. In fact, a supposedly impartial media should be asking many of the same questions as the questions being raised in Estimates. In a free country that's what the media and the Opposition are supposed to do.

Problem is that at least one commentator, me, has been saying that it is right to subject the NBN to intense scrutiny - but the scrutiny needs to be focussed on what NBN Co is doing now, not on the recruitment process for the CEO.

But full credit at least to Stan for running the syndicated column from Renai...unless they were just to give credibility to his own column.

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

An update on the iselect PR

In my post about PR I promised to update my readers when I heard back about my request for the research that iselect was claimed to have released.

This prompted a call to me by their Corporate Affairs Manager today who wanted to know what exactly I want and why I might want it. I advanced the proposition that while I was most interested in being able to interrogate the claimed "$141M overspend", how it had been estimated and its veracity, I was particularly seeking the "research" which the PR claimed had been "released".

I advanced the somewhat odd idea that you can't claim to have released something without actually having done so. The nice Corporate Affairs man has to consult with "other people" to see how he deals with my request.

The nice man also managed to completely deflate my ego by asking exactly who I am and what my company does. I explained that he can find out about the regulatory management services I offer at the Havyatt Associates website, that I am a blogger and that I write an occassional column for itNews. I further explained that my inquiry wasn't being made on behalf of anyone else, just my own interest.

It did provide an interesting insight though - they can't be tracking themselves too well. Googling the exact phrase "iselect" for the last 24 hours had yesterday's blogpost as the last item on the page.

Note: In case you think I'm being a little harsh, I can tell you that I have been responsible for very similar releases that want to refer to research data. I have in the past had to explain to my employers that if you say the research is released then you have to release it.


Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Nice to be part of a winning team

itNews, for whom I'm a columnist, won "Best Title" at the Microsoft IT Journalism Awards on Friday.


They are called Lizzies (I gather from 'lizards of the press') and this is one of the two "Gold Lizzies" though it is actually a hunk of glass or perspex.

Back row (L-R): Canberra correspondent John Hilvert (finalist for 'Best News Journalist'), Telecommunications expert David Havyatt (finalist for 'Best Columnist'), Haymarket B2B Editor-in-chief Nate Cochrane, iTnews advertising manager John Kovacevic.

Front Row (L-R): iTnews scribe Liz Tay (finalist for 'best business journalist' and 'best tech industry journalist'), fellow newshound Ry Crozier (finalist for Best News Journalist and Best Tech Industry Journalist), and iTnews editor Brett Winterford (finalist for 'Best Columnist' and 'Best Business Journalist'.)

Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est

Nice to be noticed

Sometimes it is the small things that count. I've been writing my columns for itNews since November.

This week I've been nominated fin the Best Columnist category for the Microsoft IT Journalism Awards 2010 (aka the Lizzies).

I'll let you know how I go!

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Self-publicity

My latest in my series of columns for itNews raises the prospect that NBN Co will have significant hurdles to cross in getting its Special Access ndertaking accepted by the ACCC.


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