First order of business for the next government should be a Royal
Commission into the Coalition's sabotage of the NBN.
<http://mobile.pcauthority.com.au/News/449632,nbn-watch-when-reality-and-transparency-is-the-enemy-of-marketing.aspx>
The evolution of NBN Co from a transparent, publicly funded,
engineering-heavy telecommunications utility to PR-heavy,
marketing-driven, closed shop was steady and swift. It began almost
immediately after the Coalition won the election in 2012, as then
communications Minister Turnbull launched his many reviews. As the new
policy regime began to drift through the organisation, so did the
gloss. NBN Co became “nbn™”, the website changed from a nice mix of
technical information and guides to a Telstra or Optus-esque mess of
marketing jargon and stock images, complete with a hard demolition of
its once open API.
There are dozens of PR staff on Twitter who attempt to hide or dispute
hard truths about the NBN when published by journalists. Almost
nothing they don’t carefully announce is available on the record –
even information that isn’t politically sensitive and mostly
well-known on communications message boards – which allows the company
to completely control the narrative. Even getting basic information
about your own connection is next to impossible – where once there was
a three-year plan that contained locations, dates and the likely
technology that was going to be installed, there is now nothing.
Sure, they’ll give you information on the various parts of the mix,
but searching for your residence either brings up a fat lot of
nothing, or a rough month and a very general “type” (Fixed Line or
Wireless) in regards to your connection. If your build is commencing,
there is no one you can call about when someone will be out at your
house, or if they will be digging up your lawn, or attaching things to
your walls. In my own personal situation, someone came out, lead some
fibre to my garage through existing conduit and then left it there –
this was three months ago.
Hiding the type of connection being offered helps NBN hide from
accountability. Much of its connection equipment is built, coloured
and labelled in the same way, making it difficult for people who
aren’t tech savvy to understand what they have once it’s there. If you
aren’t aware of what you are getting or what you have until you have
it, it is much more difficult to complain or request a different
product, or raise complaints with your MP, or NBN itself.
Then there are speeds. NBN’s recent rebranding of its own speed
profiles to the laughingly basic “nbn 25/nbn50/nbn100” is almost
condescending in its lack of transparency. What are the upload speeds?
Every single other telco once clearly defined what speeds you could
expect to get on their networks. NBN’s change has not made it easier,
instead, obfuscating the values removes the ability of customers to
complain about substandard performance.
For example – if I purchased a service that claimed to offer 100mbps
down and 40mbps up and this was not being provided, I have a clear
benchmark to compare against. But if my service is called “NBN 50”,
that could mean practically anything. You could be getting
21mbps/1mbps and they could claim that “50” is more of a guiding
principle, and that it only relates to downloads. Or that “50” is an
aggregate. This also assists NBN retailers to gain valuable cover to
skimp on their CVC bandwidth. The site conveniently does not explain
the restrictions of each technology, outside of fine print that
babbles on about how different factors affect speed.
This full circle PR nightmare is then completed via spending money on
advertising that, almost comically, imagines an Australia where
everyone has superfast broadband. The NBN is a now a feeling, rather
than a network, a “possibility” of a “brighter future”. It
conveniently fails to mention when these businesses, schools and
households will have their access, if it will deliver the speeds
promised to make much of this minority report nonsense possible and,
most importantly, if the network will be able to keep up with further
growth and demand for data and speeds. Hell, one of the businesses in
the ad isn’t even connected yet.
All this feeds into the narrative that NBN is a private company, when
it is very much not, and is only accountable and accessible to the
government, not taxpayers. It’s no surprise that its CEO used to work
for Vodafone, because the company now looks, feels and acts like
Telstra or Optus. That NBN is playing the Telstra Wholesale card in
refusing to deal directly with end users even during the build stages
is straight out of that playbook, when they have a right to know when
and how equipment being installed on their property will be completed.
Taxpayers don’t want the NBN to be slick. They don’t want Telstra
style ads that carry on about “the magic of technology”. They want a
government utility that is open, honest, and communicative. They want
to talk to someone about their options and what they should expect.
They want an API that allows third parties to track the build and keep
their government accountable. They want clear instructions on how to
lodge complaints about wholesale service quality, rather than being
pushed into their RSP’s support queue. They want clear graphs and
figures on network performance, average speeds and heat maps.
Turtling behind a glossy border wall may very well get NBN to the end
of its construction phase deadline in 2020. But it won’t hide it from
the likely scrutiny of a future government, as it pours over the
hidden failures and exposes them as evidence of a failed
administration. It also won’t save it from reality, as more and more
Australians are switched over, sooner or later the chickens will come
home to roost.
--
David Boxall | All that is required
| for evil to prevail is
http://david.boxall.id.au | for good men to do nothing.
| -- Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
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