like reading tealeaves

Ok, let me put this out there at first drop, I work for Telstra - from now on to be known as 'VBT'. I realised today I've been there for 12 months, so where did that go?

One of the things I'm not going to do is comment on VBT's policies and business decisions 0r anything related, but that isn't going to stop me commenting on items which are of interest to me which are tangentially or directly of interest to VBT as, in reality my ownership or input of VBT Regulated or Business Decisions center nowhere near these areas.

So to today's 'NBN 'Announcement. I have to say, I really am not surprised. I'm not sure anyone else should either.

I think my first input to the network 'debate' was probably about 5 or 6 years ago, sometime around or before the T3 float. I was FULLY SURE at the time that the Howard regime would bite the bullet and sell only the Retail arm of VBT retaining 51% of the Wholesale division in order to support other ISP's and potential Telco's have a more reasonable entry point into the Network. The fact they didn't is ancient History, just like Howard and his crew.
So tealeaves, eh? Though I have to point out I'm not a telco analyst in anyway shape or form (and even in the last 12 months I don't work in any way in either phone, mobile or broadband services) I am capable of spotting THE BLEEDING OBVIOUS and following THE LOGICAL PATH.

In addition to the above, I also (thought I) 'invented' the following analogy some years ago;
"The 19th Century was Rail
The 20th Century was Roads
The 21st Century is Broadband"
and didn't believe the correct options were being pursued, but the correct option was practically impossible due to Howard and his crews stupid decision around the time of T2 and T3.

So therefore today's announcement, even allowing for being alerted to 'something odd' during Glen Milne's regular politics interview on News Radio at 7.45am shouldn't really have come as a surprise.

Of course the irony is that VBT will probably get huge benefit out of this, despite the soul searching which may go on for the next few months, as things firm up. In the meantime, we have to listen to Malcolm Turnbull's negativity in this time of the requirement for Countries to invest in the infrastructure of their own country for OUR CHILDREN's commercial future.

Safe to say, I'm with Kevin Rudd on this one - and boy have I been hammering him (and his pony Mr. Conroy) recently. He said today (and I paraphrase) "We stand ready to take action which has been on hold for the last ten years" (an obvious dig at Howard's regimes failure to legislate effectively for telco's and to do this when it SHOULD have been done).

I wonder what the multiplier was by not starting to do this 3 or even 5 years ago? Now I go to watch Lateline and put up with Nick Minchin's commercial fluster around this - treating it like buying coffee rather than transporting goods around the world to creat commercial value.

UPDATE: (paraphrasing Nick Minchin): "They are building a telephone Company." Seriously, he knows his portfolio even less than Conroy. The Liberals are FOOKED.

All we can hope for it that the Clean Feed Rudd/Conroy want to deploy gets provisioned in a way which never affects the speeds promised (see previous post)