NBN: Turnbull and 'inside the house' costs. Nope!

Malcolm Turnbull trotted this out and it really needs to be highlighted and responded to in and of itself:

it's is so fundamentally flawed as to be inconceivable for an informed person, let alone the expert commentator he'd like to portray himself as

From Malcolm Turnbull's "Comms Day" 2012 speech:

Another takeaway is that ‘inside the house’ costs for FTTP can mount and become a serious economic factor. These costs tend to fall over time, and vary from place to place, but in the UK ‘inside the house’ expenses have been estimated to be 20 per cent of total FTTP costs. 

The Telstra fibre rollout in South Brisbane likewise indicates this expense is likely to be material – Telstra this week confirmed industry reports that it is using up to a day of technician labour at each residential premise, adding up to $1000 to the cost of the cutover. 

It is not clear NBN Co has budgeted for this expense anywhere. If it has, it would be instructive for someone from NBN Co to explain where and how.

No Telco has ever been responsible for 'inside the home costs'.

NBN and the impact of Australian Telco's Business Practices.

AUSTRALIAN TELCO BUSINESS PRACTICES

Australian Telcos aren't just uncooperative, their behaviours are pernicious, obstructive and often perversely self-injurious. This (and the GFC) is why Telstra's share price fell around three times pre-NBN, and has recovered over 10% in the short time since the NBN arrangement has been completed.

There are 4 incontestable examples of this:

• Telstra/Optus cable rollout.
• ISDN only as a 'premium service'.
• ADSL 1 (ACCC intervention), ADSL 2 turn-on and ADSL 2 DSLAMs & ULL (non) churning.
• Mobile roaming.

The NBN and defending against Cyber warfare attacks.

CYBER-WARFARE and the Australian NBN.

We know from "Stuxnet" that Nation States are actively building and deploying Cyber warfare tools, applying them to National Security concerns and running them as Military, not technical, operations. This includes accurate reconnaissance and network topology and vulnerability mapping. The worst case is that attackers will gain access to the network control tools and infrastructure.

Recent coverage suggests that Obama denied a US Military request to launch a cyber attack on Syria's infrastructure during the recent 'troubles'.

From the "slammer" worm, we know that any Cyber warfare attack will be fully developed within 3 minutes, and any attack will be launched at the worst possible time for defenders, possibly accompanied by physical distractions.

Recovery from "munitions grade" worm/malware compromise will be long and expensive. Experience is that malware infections is as damaging to businesses as a fire: Within 12 months of a fire, 80-90% of small businesses fail.

The NBN as an Essential Strategic Defence for Cyber-warfare.

Whilst reading this piece today I 'had a thought'.

"Militarisation of cyberspace: how the global power struggle moved

online",  Nick Hopkins, guardian.co.uk, Monday 16 April 2012 15.00 BST

One argument in support of the NBN I've not heard is about Security, but not the "how to keep your bank account and credit card safe" kind - the usual direct theft or Identity Fraud talked about at Cyber-Security conferences.

The National Security kind that interest the Intelligence agencies and Military, a.k.a. "Cyber-warfare".

This is as far removed from normal Cyber-security as guarding bank vaults is from fighting a war. Attack, and hence Defence, is taken to a whole new level: because the resources employed and what is at stake is taken to a whole new level.

The NBN we had to have, and the one we'll likely get.

Yesterday I read Robert Gottliebsen's, "Who wants a poor man's NBN?" and thought, "Am I the only person who remembers why we had to have the NBN?"

We got the NBN for a number of reasons, few of them necessary or good, in my opinion:

Smart-Grids and Carbon Trading: Enough for an economic Negawatt scheme?

Can the Smart-Grid and Carbon Trading create a new, economically viable marketplace in saving power?

In 1997, Amory B. Lovins co-authored a book with a radical new idea to address the Energy Crisis and our Environmental problems (now it might be "Climate Change"):

the negawatt negative watts of power consumed by creating lower demand through more efficient power use.

It is still much cheaper to "save a watt" than for a Power Generator to "build a watt", and the marginal cost of production and distribution is zero to the Generator. The consumer still has to maintain and replace their infrastructure investment.

So why hasn't the negawatt market happened? What's different now that it could work?