On Thursday 10 August 2006 06:16, Luddite Coonan wrote: > That is why last year the Government announced the most significant > telecommunications funding package in Australia’s history including $1.1 > billion in Connect Australia funding to enhance the roll-out of > broadband infrastructure and $2 billion in the Communications Fund to > ensure Australians enjoy new technologies in the future. In addition, > the Government has commenced the $50 million Metropolitan Broadband > Connect program which is filling any remaining blackspots in > metropolitan areas.
This package and expenditure had nothing at all to do with improving our broadband backwaters (which remain backwaters by OECD standards), and everything with misusing taxpayers money in order to subsidize Telstra by stealth in order to make their sell-out more attractive to potential buyers. It failed as expected and predicted, and the vast sums of taxpayers money disappeared with a fraction of the benefit that could have been achieved by investing in public broadband infrastructure that could have been leased at *equitable terms* to all competitors. Horst _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
