Fighting the NBN Bullshit

This is from Delimiter, an online technology magazine.
From Delimiter,

Over the past several weeks, several prominent newspaper commentators have published a number of factual inaccuracies with respect to the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network project. With the aim of informing good public policy debate, it seems appropriate to try and correct the record.

It starts out talking of the Daily Telegraph commentator Piers Akerman.
From his opinionated article that was published in the Daily Terror Telegraph on the 4th January.
They have signaled out a number of things in his piece and bullshit busted them.
The things that Akerman said are below.

The NBN is the most expensive piece of infrastructure ever committed to by the nation and is on track to be the greatest ever economic disaster any government has ever created.

Only 4000 homes have been connected to the fibre optic cable so far at a cost of more than $1 billion … NBN’s own projection for 2011 were 35,000 connections. That is a huge discrepancy and a massive failure to deliver.

Everything about the NBN is dodgy.

 The creation of the NBN Co was itself a demonstration of Labor’s lack of administrative skills and ineptitude with no background checks conducted on the men who have been handed a blank cheque drawn on the taxpayers of the nation.

Below is from Dean Jaensch, a political science academic and commentator for The Advertiser in Adelaide.

The roll-out is miles behind what NBN Co set as a target. It promised 35,000 connections by mid-2011. By the end of 2011, the NBN Co spin-doctors proudly announced that they had connected 12 per cent of the target.

We did not even have the opportunity to closely examine a prospectus before we decided to invest. The Government can claim that its mandate to inaugurate the NBN was based on the 2010 election result.

But it would be a good idea to let the public learn and understand what is going on in the finances and productivity of a company that they, not the Government, own and will pay for. Secrecy is not the best way to win support.

This low productivity has the potential to be interpreted as another policy failure coming up.

Now go to the Delimiter article to see the Bullshit Busting.