Complaining about the $35.9 billion National Broadband Network has become a pointless exercise. The real question, now that it is being built, is how will we pay for it, and the nasty answer is a compulsory levy.
Complaining about the $35.9 billion National Broadband Network has become a pointless exercise. The real question, now that it is being built, is how will we pay for it, and the nasty answer is a compulsory levy.
Not a one-off levy like the flood tax being imposed because the Queensland Government was too lazy or too incompetent to insure its assets, but a lifetime levy in the form of every internet user being forced to buy a connection service from the NBN.
The only unknowns at this early stage of the process is the size of the NBN levy and the point at which the government hits taxpayers for the greatest folly since earlier Australian governments built railways of different gauges, inhibiting national freight transport for decades.
Defenders of the NBN argue that it is an essential item of nation-building infrastructure, and perhaps they are correct. But, there is no way they can justify the cost, nor is there any validity in the claim that it is an asset which will serve the country for 30 years.
The simple test of the long-life nature of the fibre-optic cable being laid around the country is to reverse the 30 years claim.
Rather than attempt to look 30 years ahead, an impossible task in the high-speed world of technology, it is easier to look back and ask what communication technologies were we using 30 years ago, and what happened to them?
The golf-ball typewriter was the star of many offices in 1981. The fax machine was making an appearance, but there were no mobile telephones and only a handful of computers.
Technologies have been born and died in the past 30 years, which is what opponents of the NBN have been trying to tell the Australian Government without success.
The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has cast aside criticism of the NBN from the world's richest man, Mexican telecommunications billionaire, Carlos Slim, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, to name two.
Senator Conroy says he knows what's best for Australia, but refuses to answer questions which might help his case:
- What will it cost households to connect to the NBN?
- How many people will buy the service when they know the full annual cost, not a discount sign-up fee?
It's those critical points which are being masked by the ongoing debate about the estimated $35.9 billion capital cost of the system, and the demands for a cost/benefit analysis.
Important as an analysis might have been before construction started it would serve little purpose today, apart from embarrassing the government - which is why it refuses to reveal all the costs, or why it reckons the NBN will not be a white elephant, it will be a successful business.
Now, why is it that the government is so confident of the NBN being a success when so many high-powered critics say it is doomed to fail, killed by growing (and yet to emerge) technologies such as high-speed wireless broadband?
The only answer is the compulsion card that all governments hold. That is perhaps the greatest secret hidden inside the NBN - how the Australian Government proposes to turn a cable-laying exercise of dubious merit into a viable business.
If in doubt, consider how government has always reverted to compulsion to make a service viable. Water, electricity, post, and the original telephone system are examples of services that at some stage you had to buy from government, or go without.
NBN will be a case of history repeating itself, constructed in the name of nation building (and damn the cost), and then paid for over the next 30 years by forcing all internet users onto its systems, and that will include wireless service providers.
Talk of high-speed wireless killing the NBN is as pointless as fretting about the capital cost because the solution is starring us in the face; compulsory use of the NBN whether you like it or not.
Rather than complain, perhaps it would be more profitable to ask where and when you can buy shares in the NBN.
