Rudd promises $4.5bn broadband network
Wednesday March 21st 2007, 2:34 pm

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzoooooooooommm

Labor commits to $4.5b high-speed Internet network

The Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd has pledged more than $4.5 billion to build a nationwide Internet broadband network.

Mr Rudd says the network will deliver high-speed Internet access to 98 per cent of Australians within five years.

The money will come from the existing Communications Fund and the Telstra Future Fund.

[…]

Mr Rudd says the new network would be done in partnership with the private sector and would run at speeds up to 40 times faster than most current broadband.

[…]

“Nation building in the 19th century was about building a new national railway network for Australia, nation building for the 21st century lies in building a new national broadband network.”

I say right on, righteous Br’er Rudd!

Can I get an AYYYY-men? I say, can I get an AYYYYY-men?

The Season of Pork is commenced!

Top that, Johnny.

-weez


11 Comments so far
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100 meg pipe, per man, per day perhaps ๐Ÿ˜‰

Comment by Dan 03.21.07 @ 3:09 pm

Dan, that’d be good. Would that put us on par with Tokyo & Seoul?

Broadcast TV will suddenly become redundant. I’m designing a coffeetable for the loungeroom which will hold a networked PC. We’ve been sneakernetting torrent downloads to the loungeroom TV for months with my little pocket portable video player; may as well make it a bit more permanent.

If I spoke Unix, I’d do a MythTV setup, but I think there’s Winblows equivalents around now. Will nose around.

Comment by weez 03.21.07 @ 8:04 pm

heh, Johnny don’t wanna top it- he wants to squash it!

I can see why… those intarwebbers are uppity. ๐Ÿ˜€

Comment by weez 03.21.07 @ 10:15 pm

I’m sure he’ll get the thumbs up from Rupert. Over at CoreEcon they’re still wondering why anyone would want more than a modest broadband speed.

Comment by slim 03.21.07 @ 10:17 pm

heh, Johnny don’t wanna top it- he wants to squash it!
….or does he?

Comment by suki 03.21.07 @ 11:24 pm

Oh, ferfuxsake…

“ABS SURVEY SHOWS AUSTRALIAN APPETITE FOR BRAODBAND

Ef Abbitt & teh Lieberals carnt evin git teh speling rite en teh hedleins, haw gude kin theyre ‘braodband’ plin bee?

Comment by weez 03.22.07 @ 7:22 am

Yeah, I’ve had my chipped X-Box networked to my PC for a couple of years now, with Xbox Media Centre installed – being the most excellent piece of homebrew software I’ve yet to play with. Being a science fiction fan, all too often treated with scorn and contempt by australian broadcasters, broadband + torrents have been a godsend. Bring it on Big Kev!!! This is one of the coolest policy announcements I’ve heard in a long while!

Like weez, I’m starting to gather the bits and peices to build my own “home theatre” PC, with Digital TV capture card to burn TV straight to disk, and of course networked. Also Weez, you might want to think about GeeXBoX for your loungeroom PC. Its a pared down linux distro that is designed to operate as a media centre… all u need to do is install ur OS, and you’re already set to play most any media file that exists. And it doesn’t need you to speak Unix or any other foreign tongues!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰ (http://geexbox.org/en/index.html)

Comment by Marcus 03.22.07 @ 8:13 am

Thanks for the linkage, Marcus.

I’m sure Linuxistas look disdainfully upon Those Heretics Who Don’t Effing Care About The Backend As Long As The Desired Function Works, but that’s who I are. We have only VERY recently and begrudgingly installed storebought copies of XP Home on our main desktop boxes on Weeznet (at $130 a pop), mainly because a number of new web content features require software that only runs on XP. Damn the Microsoft hegemony!

However, we’ve found that XP is mucho more stable on our boxes than 98SE was and are thus reluctantly considering the same for the multimedia box.

In that course of upgrading only 2 of the Weeznet boxes from 98se to XP, I have found that it’s not so easy to make XP speak to 98, which is what remains installed on the proposed loungeroom media box. Formerly our network proxy/firewall, this 1.7Ghz Celeryon (with a spiff ATI Radeon 9200PCI vidcard) became redundant when I put in a 4-port DSL router; the old place had cable- the best available at the new digs was 1.5Mbps DSL. The loungeroom box will probably have to get XP (or Vista Home) and WMP11 to make it easy to use with our XP boxes.

I hate giving any more money to Bill Gates, but all the same, I want the whole schlemozzle to work reliably without a lot of screwing around nor having to learn a ‘foreign language’ as it were.

Comment by weez 03.22.07 @ 9:01 am

“Linuxistas” indeed! I count myself among the “Don’t Effing Care About The Backend As Long As The Desired Function Works” crowd thank you very much!

Comment by Marcus 03.22.07 @ 11:34 am

I approve of Rudd’s decision of constructing a nationwide fiber optic network. A fiber optic network is what this nation needs in order to compete with other high tech countries such as Japan.


Comment by Vick 03.22.07 @ 1:21 pm

Back on topic for just a second… Keating’s comment about Costello being ‘all tip and no iceberg‘ sure has been ringing bells today. Costello is whinging to anyone who will listen, including a lot of people who won’t, that ‘Rudd is RAIDING THE FUTURE FUND!!

As if the Libs were never going to invest the dough. Thing is, we’re talking about a $4.5bn investment that could return up to $12bn per year in new industry.

Don’t be fooled by the smirking snowball over there who is busily rearranging the deck chairs on the Libs’ sinking telecoms policies.

Comment by weez 03.22.07 @ 9:11 pm



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