I saw Conroy debating Tony Smith (relevant shadow minister) on ABC last night. The Liberal Party's plans to slash the National Broadband plan to a $6b patch job would limit business growth in regional centres, with some places capped to a theoretical maximum 12Mbit/s over wireless.
Smith refused to divulge the percentage of households that would be limited to the base level, stating that their minimal fibre backbone would "promote competition in regional areas". What this means is that the Liberal Party wants the network to be built by competing businesses. That sounds well and good, but what the hell has Telstra done for the last 12 years of this? Businesses would only build it if they saw potential to profit from it, and the regional population is too scattered to have any chance of that.
My idea is, the NBN is too important to throw away for a patch job, even if Labor has plans to censor it. As long as the physical structure is up, a logical firewall can be torn down anytime, with enough backlash from the population.
