NBN: Turnbull's Hybrid NBN, Redux.

There's any number of good reports of the Coalition's slick policy launch out there. Congats to Abbott/Turnbull on a good effort. This is a tour of pieces I found interesting.

The ABC has a good overview. If you want the source documents, Renai Lemay of Delimiter has links, including a good image of a key graphic.
Someone has annotated this graphic with 'sources' rather well, worth a look.

The Libs documents:

• Executive Summary
• Full Plan
• Background documents, includes Turnbulls' spreadsheets disputing NBN Co plan.

In summary: The 2013 Coalition NBN Plan is far, far better than anything they've put out before. While it's flawed and "Second Best", most people could live with it - for a time. I don't think it will lose them the election... But Turnbull's media performance just might, not that Conroy is much better.


Alan Kohler on The Drum, "How Malcolm Turnbull saved the NBN",  sums it up, not great but good enough. He finishes with good points:

And the FTTP network would end up being be a great investment, in my view, because of the rapid increase in broadband traffic as the internet carries more and more video. ... 

Is carrying video into lounge rooms a worthwhile social purpose? No, but it's going to be a good business. 

Making the last bit of fibre user pays, as opposed to taxpayer funded, is a dumb, short-sighted decision in my view, but no big deal. It's certainly better than dismantling the whole thing, as would have happened if Malcolm Turnbull hadn't ensured that Tony Abbott WAS for turning.

Mark Colvin tweeted a SMH article, "Copper, fibre, nodes, how do we know best?" that continues this theme:

From a political perspective one has to question whether the public really cares. There is no ideology contained in choosing which network is better - it's just a matter of whether they accept the positives of being more financially prudent outweigh the detriment of an inferior network. 

In a general sense the public just wants a network that works.

Michelle Grattan joins this analysis: "Opposition broadband: is second best good enough?"

Stephanie Mcdonald provides a good historical analysis in "The long and winding road to a Coalition NBN policy".

Adam Bender provides a good perspective from inside the Telco industry: "Private sector couldn't build NBN: Vodafone CEO".

Josh Taylor reports another executive insider view: "Telstra will decide Coalition's NBN: Hackett", reporting on a keynote address at the CommsDay conference. Links to Simon Hackett talk.

Charis Palmer looked at "Missing data in Turnbull's second-best NBN"  raising questions about:

• striking a deal with Telstra and any other players
• Will Telstra and Optus 'play fair' (or get the best deal for their shareholders)
• "Greenfields" dilema (new housing estates. Do they get Fibre or Copper?), and
• Who does and pays for the maintenance of the Copper Customer Access Network?

Leigh Sales on 7:30 got Turnbull to clarify his assumptions on Telstra selling their copper network to him. Reported in detail on the ABC in "Coalition expects Telstra to hand over copper network".

If you want to hear very good reporting of the issues, I found these two interviews on Radio National Breakfast informative and very good examples of journalism and expert analysis, fed by probing well-constructed questions by the interviewer:

• Peter Marks
• Sheryle Bagwell

Now compare that to the complete bombastic & obnoxious fool Turnbull made of himself on Triple J's Hack. [14.3Mb MP3]. I thought Sophie McNeill performed superbly. If Mark Scott handed out awards, she should be in-line. Loved how she just cut-off the mikes when Turnbull got out of hand.

Turnbull showed a serious, potentially fatal, weakness: he would not, seemingly could not, allow the interviewer her reasonable position. "If we accept your costings then we have to accept their costings".

After that performance, Mr Turnbull is going to find himself interviewed less and less. Politicians rely on the media for their oxygen, to get their message out. Turnbull has shown he wants to play Barrister all the time, he has to win every point and destroy 'the opponent', at the expense of not selling his message to the public and producing more heat than light.

The public want information, give it to them cleanly, concisely and easily. Confine the harangues, diatribes, gratuitous attacks and bilious rhetoric to parliament or live debates. Be kind to interviewers and they'll be generous in return...

Leigh Sales showed superb skill in handling Mr Turnbull and in getting an important admission from him as well. It's worth watching or reading her interview, just to enjoy the calmness and clarity.

Bad Media Performances

If you want to see another crap performance by lawyer-turned-politician, Senator Conroy, he went at the brilliant Emma Alberici on Lateline the night before.

These two politicians deserve one another: they just love to argue, put others down and "win" arguments.
They seemingly have no concept of winning public sentiment or selling their message, only attack and vilification.

Major National Infrastructure debates deserve much, much better than this abominable and abusive approach. Both sides need to "take a good hard look at themselves" and start putting National Interest and the electorate before themselves and their party political platforms.

In 20 years, those awful videos will still be on-line and the the actual outcome of the election and NBN will be forgotten. The legacy of these two clowns will be painful for them. A shame as they are both very capable men with fine intellects, but seemingly not good emotional intelligence.

Finally, this piece from Angus Kidman, "Coalition NBN Policy: Six Things To Think About" provides some excellent discussion points. [I haven't read it closely]

• Previous Anti-NBN Arguments Are Now History
• How To We Identify Areas Of Need?
• How Will Cost Blowouts Be Controlled?
• What Speeds Are We Talking?
• What Happens With Multi-Dwelling Units?
• What Will Paying Per-Premises Cost?

Meanwhile, I have to take a few days grinding through the figures and trying to make sense of Turnbulls' spreadsheets.
$94 billion from an $11 billion Fibre project 50% over-schedule? It sounds preposterous, but where are the mistakes in logic?