SteveJ-restore-test

The NBN started as an estimated $5B Rudd/Conroy project tender to deploy Fibre-to-the-Node, to which the owner of the copper network to the Nodes , Telstra, declined to respond beyond a single page. The next iteration was the $43B Rudd/Conroy Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH) scheme a s a tertiary-level Stimulus Package , addressing longer-term impacts of the GFC. It hadn't been ALP policy before then. After Kevin '07 became Toast '10, Gillard/Conroy had the opportunity to walk away from the NBN, but the ALP became wedded to the NBN in the 2010 election. In the spirit of the knife-edge Parliament, the Abbott/Turnbull Opposition stance on the NBN is " not what they said ", with Turnbull initially charged by Abbott with "destroy the NBN" and now having morphed that into "we'll do it cheaper, with less waste". The NBN is the most notable current place where Politics meets Engineering. The tension in this project is between the lead-time for large infra...

1. ICT is a "force multiplier" (or 'cognitive amplifier'). It enables services and work to be performed "Better, Cheaper, Faster" (BCE). It Amplifies the Effectiveness of staff at 3 levels: individuals can perform tasks "Better, Cheaper, Faster", can need 5-25 times fewer staff. co-ordination and communication tasks become 'zero-friction' improving cross-boundary efficiency and effectiveness.  Reducing team & Department sizes removes delays and other barriers to productivity and efficiency. Organisationally, decisions can be taken faster, with more informed sources and promulgated/implemented in real-time. Yielding much more agile and responsive products and services. 2. Savings may be real (direct staff reductions, measured in Virtual-FTE's) or avoided expenditure:  same staff doing (much) more or with less. This is without estimating additional revenue from providing services "Better, Cheaper, Faster" to clients and incr...

As IT/Computing moves through successive "event horizons" to becoming Ubiquitous, Universal and Invisible [like petrol, tyres, home telephones, plastic bags and ATM's], I think we need to monitor, model and report "Performance" in 3 areas: Organisationally : For every dollar spent on ICT, what revenue and profit does it bring? Technically : For each IT system and Computing Application, how does it scale, where are its bottlenecks and  Business Systems and Apps : What are our ICT, staff and resource input costs? Where our bottlenecks? What investments are needed to optimise throughput, reduce costs and increase revenues? The key points here are: Without the Business, there is no ICT. Without ICT, there is no Business. Neither the Financial or Technical sides can be considered in isolation. 'Business' isn't just about Finances, it's about managing and optimising many other dimensions: Staff, Demand Forecasting, Production Planning, Resource Alloca...

Synopsis: The Killer App is the new Ecosystem:    small Apps, Platforms for Ordinary Folk and the Ubiquitous and Universal Network. Reviewing notes for these posts: Lesson from History. Facebook is only 7-years old. L2 VPN's + turn-key Telco packages: Vertical Integration? How I'd restructure the NBN finances. Led to a new insight: Killer Apps aren't necessary or likely in the Post-PC era. In 1995 it was: "The Network is the Computer" , in 2012 it's: "The Platform is the Application". Just the steady take-up from "Early Adopter" to "Early/Late Majority" accounts for a 15-20 fold growth in demand... Facebook & Google started small and Just Kept Growing. Ditto the iPhone. How big will they get?? Still more people on the planet who can connect to all of them, so "bigger". I'm starting to form a view that the "Killer Apps" of the PC era were an aberration. Once people have bought the enabling technology (p...

Turnbull has a central criticism of the NBN, and it is astute and credible: Is there any evidence it will provide Extra Value, or is that just an Article of Faith? I watched the Mark Zuckerberg piece on ABC one night prior to their $100B float today, which triggered the thought: The NBN Mk 1. won't be fully deployed for 7-10 years. What might be different then? Maybe looking 7-years back might give us some clues... Zuck started in 2005 and isn't 30 yet and changed the world. That's a Generation or two in Internet time, and only a fraction of the lead time for physical infrastructure and large scale change like upgrading servers and corporate technology. NBN opponents assume "there has to be a Killer App" for the NBN.Microsoft is still insisting "Everything is PC" whilst looking for The Next Big Thing , and languishing economically. Meanwhile Apple, Google, Facebook and a host of hot new startups that build on the available infrastructure. Sometimes  just...

Tony Simmons recently wrote a piec e suggesting that the Banks could be their own Telco using the NBN. Banks in Australia and New Zealand have run co-operative businesses for many years. A couple that spring to mind: the Australian Payments Clearing Association  and Bankcard, Australia's first Credit Card in the 1970's, was run by "Charge Card Services". There are many advantages, not just cost, but Security [protection against hacking/attacks], very strong Identification of source and destination, and strong independent logs and auditing of transactions. In fact, the L2 VLAN abilities of the NBN allow a whole range of very interesting non-switching-provider networks. Federal Government is an obvious one. There's already ICON around Canberra, but every Agency has different supplier agreements and the Telcos play "divide and conquer" with them. There only needs to be one "GovieNet". Such a single network would allow employees, contractors and f...

I think there are 3 actions the Gillard Government can undertake to improve the prospects of the NBN. 1. Reform NBN Co into a Co-operative owned by Telcos and ISP's. Takes away the problem of the wholesaler being a monopoly and setting prices too high. It's necessary to get the voting/Governance right so Optus/Telstra don't automatically control it, but still have some influence. Funding? I don't know enough about the topic to know how the Govt can raise bonds for a Co-OP. Perhaps they can be allowed to raise Govt Guaranteed Bonds like the old Telecomm/Telstra Bonds. 2. Let the market speak!! Allow subs to prepay for service to bring forward their installation. This allows retail customers to put their money where mouth is, and is an additional source of cheap funds. There'd need to be several levels of pre-payment from ~$250 to $10,000, each with a different incentive/discount schedule. If whole street or communities pre-paid to $2,500/household, that should ...

This is not an extensive review of the field, nor is it legal advice. I wanted to inform myself of the limits of what I could do with an email that had come into my possession. One of the parties, known from the content to be very aggressive and sometimes threatening, I wasn't prepared to approach for permission, whilst the other, when I did, was happy to publish the interchange on-line. These are my notes. There is no "Right to Privacy" in Australia, but that doesn't mean there are no rights and what are available aren't clear cut. There is a long-running Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) into this. The 'interception' of a real-time or stored electronic communication is a serious crime, but that's not what we're dealing with, nor is it hacking. Nor does an interpersonal communication come under the Privacy Act or the SPAM Act. There could be 3 causes of Action for an unauthorised disclosure of an electronic communica...