I still don’t know what this bloke is playing at: I mean seriously, all the media attention and sucking in investors only to sell out at the 11th hour, but I love this line in response
The Age: Stunned investors vent fury at chairman
“He’s not going to get (the $4.5 million), I can promise you that,” Mr Byrnes said. “He’s just ruined his corporate life forever ?¢‚Ǩ¬¶ I’d trust Mr Bolton like I’d trust a rabbit with a lettuce leaf.”
TELSTRA will consider a voluntary separation of its wholesale and retail arms as well as the sale of some assets to the federal Government’s proposed $43 billion broadband network in a spectacular about-face that effectively dumps the aggressive four-year strategy championed by chairman Donald McGauchie and chief executive Sol Trujillo.
The radically different and more conciliatory approach is part of an attempt to ward off the threat of much greater government intervention in Telstra’s business. The company’s board has set up a special committee of directors and executives to come up with a new approach and to negotiate with the Government.
Even if the economics still don’t add up for the NBN, breaking Telstra up would be a massive win for the Government, and an even bigger win for consumers.
Now if only we could do something about censorship 🙂
Mark Day in the OZ (via Mumbrella)
IF we look through the increasingly clouded questions surrounding the Rudd Government?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s plans for a fibre-to-the-home high-speed broadband network, how it will be designed, who will build it, who will own it and what it will cost end users, one thing is crystal clear: this is a game-changer for media.
The $43 billion plan is a television killer. When it is built it will consign the Packer era of TV to the dustbin of history. Our future TV menu depends on new technologies and new paradigms.
It’s a nice theory. Will the internet kill TV? Yes, I believe it will, as I’ve argued time and time again. But will the NBN kill television?
No.
The problem isn’t one of lack of demand. You only have to look at the exceptionally high level of BitTorrent usage in Australia to know that Australians love their internet TV.
The problem is one of legal rights, and access to that content on a television set.
There’s no Hulu in Australia, and even Hulu in the US is trying its best to stay off of television sets. We have a mix of content now online from FTA providers, but it’s hit and miss, and not anywhere near consistent.
Lets say we’re 5 years behind the US (that we are behind is a given, but we can argue on the time frame): does Day really believe that the NBN is going to overcome issues not yet overcome in the United States?
The real problem comes down to rights distribution models. TV stations here pay a lot of money for rights to US content. The only way a NBC or CBS is going to offer their content directly online to Australians over the NBN to a large screen TV is when doing so delivers a higher return then selling the rights to a local TV stations.
As much as I wish to believe this will happen soon (and it will happen eventually), that’s not a short term proposition in Australia. NBN doesn’t change that at all.
Also consider that Australian uptake of pay-tv (cable) is far lower than most comparable markets. Australian’s aren’t all that keen in paying big dollars for content. That complicates the consideration more.
I mentioned in an earlier post that bundling may be the saving grace for the NBN: in that context, it’s not Day’s suggestion of internet TV (although it may be delivered via Internet protocols) but Cable over the NBN. That could work, well…depending on the cost.
Age:?Ǭ†Telstra set to abandon major cable upgrade
In the aftermath of the Government’s decision last week, Telstra’s immediate task will be to rethink its investment in cable after it emerged that regulatory changes could include forcing the telco to divest the network which passes 2.5 million homes and businesses.
Wow. Just wow.
Should the Government decide to force Telstra to divest the cable network, Merrill Lynch said it could be folded into the proposed national broadband network, which would mean that fibre-optic cables would not have to be rolled out to many homes and businesses in the cities.
The broker said the new company proposed by the Government to run the national network was the “only logical buyer” of Telstra’s city cable network.
More wow.
Steve Murphy in the Business Spectator:
The 21st Century infrastructure equivalent of the Snowy Hydro is what K-Rudd says of his new Broadband plan, but will we end up flushing as much money down the fibre optic drain as we do water down the Hydro.
The problem is we don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t know and the Government can?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t tell us with any degree of precision because it is yet to conduct a feasibility study. That?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s right, K-Rudd and the team don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t know if what they?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve announced is feasible.
I did some digging, the Government doesn’t use the words feasibility study…but it’s an accurate description. Point one of the NBN rollout (source)
Commence an implementation study to determine the operating arrangements, detailed network design, ways to attract private sector investment
but wait, there’s more:
The preliminary estimate is that the enhanced NBN network will cost up to $43 billion…
The Government’s objective is to achieve 90 per cent coverage of the FTTP network, and remaining coverage to be delivered through wireless and satellite technologies, within this funding envelope. Initial advice to the Government is that this objective is achievable, but this estimate will be subject to an implementation study.
Two questions
1. Does the $43billion include the cost of repayment of debt, or is it simply the cost of the actual rollout?
Whether the Government directly borrows, or offers infrastructure bonds, both come with interest that needs to be repaid. The official release says “will invest” which could suggest that the $43 billion figure is to be spent on the rollout, not the repayments. If this is the case, the $43 billion could actually be something like $45 billion.
2: Why doesn’t the NBN include planning for increased international access?
The NBN includes
implement measures to address backhaul ‘black spots’ through the timely rollout of fibre optic transmission links connecting cities, major regional centres and rural towns – delivering improvements to telecommunication services in the short term
But no mention of international pipes. We already have the problem where say a 20mbps ADSL connection here is the equivalent of maybe a 2mbps connection in San Francisco because of the distance and congestion in the connections that pull the data across the Pacific.
100mbps internal connections mean little if there isn’t increased capacity on the international backbones. Yes, you’ll be able to access sites hosted in Australia quickly, but sites outside Australia are another matter.
Courier Mail: Stephen Conroy’s internet filter ‘won’t stop child porn’
Question then, if it won’t stop child porn, why do it at all?
After all, it was Conroy who continually said that the filter was all about child porn.
“Black lists are needed to combat child pornography” Conroy (The West)
On the overall policy: “It also focuses on managing current threats through technical mechanisms such as ISP-level filtering of illegal material including child pornography.” Conroy (speech)
“Central to the Government?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s plan to make the internet a safer place for children is the introduction of Internet Service Provider (ISP) level filtering of material such as child pornography.” Conroy (media release)
“Conroy told the media that it would censor online child pornography and other ?¢‚Ǩ?ìinappropriate material”” WSWS
“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.” Conroy (ABC)
“We are not building the Great Wall of China. We are going after the filth – like child pornography. Its been done around the world and it can be done here.” Conroy (IT News)
The last quote is important: Conroy now claims that the filter isn’t a silver bullet, but said that the filter was all about blocking child porn, which he now says it won’t stop.
So what is it then?
Time to go Senator Conroy, if you keep up these backflips you’ll end up with a broken back.
One last quote out of the UK, which I think fits here
BT admitted that the UK’s “Cleanfeed” scheme was “intended to prevent users inadvertently accessing illegal material, rather than to stop hardened paedophiles.” ZDNet
Sort of sums up Conroy’s policy doesn’t it.
On March 3, the Reserve Bank in Australia (RBA) abolished bank intercharge fees on ATM’s in favor of a pay to use system where consumers pay a rate determined by the owner of the ATM.
This was allegedly about reducing charges for consumers, and providing a more transparent charging regime.
Reserve Bank assistant governor of financial system Philip Lowe says the reforms of ATM fees, which came into affect on March 3, have increased competition and benefited consumers.
Dr Lowe said that across the entire system most cardholders were paying no more for ATM transactions than previously and some “may have the opportunity to play less”.
What has happened since March 3 is that most foreign ATM’s (that is, ATM’s not owned by the bank you bank with) now impose a $2 withdrawal charge.
In theory, you can opt not to cop the fee by only using your own banks ATM. But what if your bank or bank like institution doesn’t have ATMs, or more particularly an accessible supply of ATM’s.
My credit union doesn’t.
Until March 3 I could use any ATM and not cop a charge. As of April 1 (the Credit Union is rebating the fees this month) I’ll have to pay money to withdraw money from an ATM.
Oh, but you can use EFTPOS or the PostOffice. Great. The reason I switched to my current Credit Union is because my last Credit Union ran the same line and I never had free use of ATMs. The current credit union has teamed up with some other credit unions for the “Redi” ATM network, but the nearest one is 10 kms away and no where near anywhere I regularly go.
So the RBA says that I should be saving money, but now I’ll be paying fees where I never have before, and there’s really no 24/7 alternative.
Thing is, there are still a fair few small credit unions around with a similar setup, particularly employee related Unions.
In effect, the RBA has actually done more in entrenching the big four and reducing competition than it ever has before. Little credit unions can’t compete on ATM’s, and customers want access to fee free ATM’s. The big four with their army of ATM’s win out.
An epic failure in public policy.
Australian Minister for Censorship Stephen Conroy appeared on the ABC’s Q&A Thursday night. Transcript and video here (I’m not sure if the video is available outside of Australia).
I won’t rehash it all, but some interesting takeaways:
Political Content
STEPHEN CONROY: But that is not what is being proposed. I mean we believe that there is a compelling argument to block refused classification. We’ve not suggested, and I repeat, it would go against the fundamental tenet of the Labor party to suggest you would block political content, which is the China line and the Saudi Arabia line. I couldn’t be more clear or simple or straightforward on that. So no one is suggesting – no one – that we would go down that path.
The problem here is that refused classification has already been used to block political content, namingly the now infamous abortion site that included images of allegedly aborted fetuses.
Now we can argue whether those images are offensive or not (most people would say that they are), but like them or not, they demonstrate the effects of a legal procedure and were being used in a political context. You can show dead bodies on the 6pm news, but you can’t show abortion pictures online?
The call can only be political, even when the context isn’t taken into account, which is what ACMA claimed in Senate estimates.
So under the Labor Government, they won’t ban political websites for being political, they’ll just decree that the content on some political sites is refused classification on another ground and block them anyway.
And I nearly forgot, it was Conroy who previously described the filter as blocking “unwanted” content. For Conroy to now argue that the push as always been RC contradicts himself…until he changes his mind again…flip…flop….
Welcome to Nazi Germany.
Recourse/ errors
TONY JONES: Now, can I just interrupt once again, because there’s a story in the Sydney Morning Herald website today saying that a link containing a series of photographs of young boys by Bill Henson is actually on this blacklist. Bill Henson: back in the media for reasons of censorship. Is he on the list?
STEPHEN CONROY: The classification board looked at this website and actually said it’s PG and a technical error inside ACMA, I’m advised – literally a technical error – included it, but it was actually cleared by the classification board, so it shouldn’t have been on the list. Now, I’ve asked ACMA in the last few hours to go through their entire list again to see if there’s any other examples of this and at this stage – and they’re piling their way through it overnight – they found this one site that falls into this category where it’s been misclassified, not by the classification board but by the ACMA technology that they’ve been doing.
So the list, which is secret so there’s no way of telling what’s on it (until it gets leaked that is), contains “technical errors.” The list currently has 1100 sites on it, but under the new scheme could expand to include millions. How many “technical errors” are acceptable?
Guilty for the actions of others
STEPHEN CONROY: Now, I’d like to talk about the dentist, because that’s been a good bit of fun this week. Here’s what happened. The Russian mob targeted Queensland small businesses last year and what they did was they identified websites that had blank pages underneath the main page and what they would do is they would put some material that would be refused classification on that site, on that one page within that site.
So site owners who have done nothing wrong get banned because someone hacked their site and put RC material on it.
If someone broke into my home and committed a crime, would I be charged for the crime they committed?
Zig Heil.
STEPHEN CONROY: So the dentist that people say, well, how could you possibly block a dentist: because the Russian mob hacked his site. Well, not his site directly, but they actually entered into using his web address, so I don’t actually have a problem with wanting to try and combat the Russian mob putting – I’m not exaggerating – putting material that would be refused classification and then trying to publicise it worldwide
Because striking the innocent in a quest to target the guilty is a reasonable tactic? So someone at the back of my house is a terrorist, and the army is out the front wanting to get to the terrorists. Under Conroy’s logic it would be ok for the army to run their tanks over my house with me inside of it, because it’s justified in getting the bad guys.
Lies
STEPHEN CONROY: This is the existing standards by which current newspapers, current TV shows, current radio shows, are judged.
Actually, that’s also not true. News programs get a free pass of things like dead bodies in war zones as long as it’s deemed “news.” The picture of Saddam Hussein hanging was shown on TV. Dead body in a noose.
And now to the truth
STEPHEN CONROY: I believe in a civil society and a civil society does not have a wild west laissez faire culture.
So this is actually a culture war as opposed to cracking down on kiddie porn Senator Conroy?
Note that in context of Government policy, laissez faire is to “minimize or eliminate government intervention in most or all aspects of society.” So if this policy is the opposite of laissez faire, then it must be one of increasing Government intervention in culture. Culture is not child pornography or other illegal material, culture is (from Wikipedia) an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning. Sounds more and more like Nazi Germany, doesn’t it.
It must be milestone week. First, 5000 posts for The Inquisitr, now 10 million page views. We snuck past the 10m mark some time on March 23 US time, or morning March 24 AEDT.
The funny stat: if we take a line from Oct 5 (US time) our 5th month anniversary, we’ve done 9 million pages views since then. From Dec 5, we’ve done 7.4 million. Goes to prove the point: it takes 6-9 months for a blog to establish itself one way or another.
Hopefully for our first full year, May 5, we’ll come in at around 12.5 million page views.
I should add: ignore the drop at the end of the chart, for some reason the total view doesn’t offer a full count for the current day and it is suppose to go up, not down.