Former prime minister John Howard is in far north Queensland campaigning for the Coalition.

Mr Howard has spent the morning in Cairns in the marginal Labor seat of Leichhardt.

He says he will visit marginal seats in Western Australia over the weekend and then New South Wales seats next week.

"It's getting to the business end of the campaign and this is going to be a very tight election," he said.

"The Coalition has done very, very well over the last couple of months; the public are utterly confused about the Labor Party in relation to Mr Rudd's removal."

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Gus: that's good... Rattus-the-First reminds us of what we fought to get rid of... Not that we need to be reminded... But the public outthere is somewhat fickle and I would suggest less confused about the removal of Mr Rudd than Rattus wants us to think... Possible confused at first, but by now I believe most of the public knows there were a few hitches to sort out. Personally I was utterly not confused at all...

Now, Tony is unrolling his broadbeans — sorry broadband — policy which Mr Murdoch supports entirely, because "it's letting the market decide" and the Labor superfast option will provide access to so much facilities that Mr Murdoch exclusive Foxtel won't be exclusive anymore...

Why is your opinion less evident?  Murdoch.

Cheers mate.

Ern G.

Experts have again ridiculed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's sheer lack of knowledge surrounding broadband and labelled the Coalition's policy "technical ignorance on a national scale".

Abbott's claim on ABC's Q&A program last night that wireless was a substitute for a nationwide fibre-to-the-home network has been met with derision by the industry, which claims his plan would require a mobile tower on every street, push up internet prices and fail to support future applications that the public will demand.

Geoff Huston, chief scientist at APNIC, said the Coalition's plan to fall back on technologies such as wireless would end up running into capacity constraints due to a lack of spectrum and make broadband prohibitively expensive for most people.

see toon at top...

... in a an attempt to bring some much-needed balance to the issue, the Punch unveils it’s ‘Ten Reasons Why the Liberals Are Right to Slow Down the Inter-web’

1. Because slow things are better - in the same vein as the Slow Food Movement the Slow Download Movement will give people time to smell the roses as they wait for their documents to download.

2. Experts argue the internet is rewiring our brains - it’s making us less creative and shallow thinkers. So the slower it is the less people will use it and we might get some serious work done.

3. At the moment social networking freaks can only bore us stupid with constant updates about their day. Fast broadband means they’ll be able to show us. In realtime.

4. Slower connections will help win the battle against illegal down-loading of content by ensuring the connection times out before the end of the first scene. 

5. Justin Bieber was discovered via online video. This shows what dangerous enabling technology we are playing with.

6. The threat of extinction of Apple’s ‘spinning wheel’ aka ‘rainbow ball of doom’, ‘spinning pizza’ . This cute, colourful icon has become an integral part of the daily routine for many office workers as they wait for – it may need protection through heritage laws.

7. We will lose a generation to chat-roulette. 

8. It will be good for national health outcomes by forcing you to leave your house to do banking, travel and all the other things you used to go out for.

9. Maintaining the digital divide will give people a reason to put up with the traffic and smog and stay living in cities.

10.Because Queenslanders need to use the internet too.

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http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/10-reasons-why-the-liberals-are-right-about-the-interweb/?from=scroller&pos=3&link=text

see toon at top...

The world’s richest man, Mexican telecom and media tycoon Carlos Slim Helu, says Australia is paying too much for its proposed national broadband network.

‘‘It’s too much money,’’ Mr Slim told the Forbes Globes CEO Conference in Sydney today.

‘‘It’s just not necessary to spend so much money because technology is changing all the time.’’

Mr Slim made the comments after he was awarded the Malcolm S Forbes Lifetime Achievement award, which honoured his achievements for entrepreneurial capitalism.

The federal government plans to roll out the NBN, a high-speed fibre optic cable network, across Australia at a cost of up to $43 billion.

Mr Slim queried the fibre optic technology on which the NBN would be based.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/too-expensive-worlds-richest-man-slams-broadband-plans-20100929-15x6l.html

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Gus: I would not be surprised if Mr Slim makes his money by selling lower valued technologies that work well with cell phones (mobiles) but are poor at speed data transfer.

In terms of pushing data through, the airwaves are not as reliable and not as "pumpable" as cable (fiber optic). I have studied this in detail. What makes the price also go higher in Australia is the size of the place. Mexico is only 1,972,550 sq km while Australia is 7,659,861sq km or four times the size. Laying down cables is expensive but cables also need boosters every so often to keep signal strength despite cable clarity improvment by using "rare earths" in the "glass". But the amount of data stream speed is far far superior and far more reliable than via the airwaves... It's a similar comparison as transporting electricity through cables or by "convection"... Electric cables are still in use and data fiber optic cables are most important to connect continents.

The mexican connection is a dud despite Mr Slim being a rich bloke...

"Mr Slim's comments about the NBN are no surprise, given he has become the world's richest man by owning a vertically-integrated monopoly," Conroy's spokesman said.

The government said the implementation study and experts agreed that fibre-to-the-home was the optimal future-proof technology with a lifespan of 30-50 years, and wireless would never be capable of matching the capacity of fibre.

Conroy said the study found that the $43 billion cost of the network was a conservative estimate and there were opportunities to reduce the cost significantly.

The NBN would generate sufficient earnings by the end of year seven so that the investment required by the government would peak at $26 billion, of which $18.3 billion would be required over the next four years.

"The implementation study confirms that the NBN Co can develop a strong and viable business case, generating stable and positive cash flows, and that the government will get a moderate return on its investment sufficient to cover its cost of funds," the spokeswoman said.

On Lateline last night, opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull continued to attack Conroy over the cost of building the NBN and the lack of a cost/benefit analysis.

He said billions of dollars should not be wasted on laying fibre-to-the-home when it was possible to build the existing network and add wireless support for the regions.

"I'm not interested in demolishing the NBN," he said.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/conroy-hits-back-at-slim-you-dont-know-what-youre-on-about-20100930-15xqe.html?autostart=1

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Yes, true to form, Malcolm isn't interested in demolishing the NBN... but he would, given the chance... see toon at top.

The arrogance of rich business people is really breathtaking.

An American billionaire, Ken Fisher, told the Forbes Global CEO conference in Sydney this week (''Ride of the patent leather cowboys'', BusinessDay, September 29) that ''capitalism to me is a spiritual concept; democracy just gets in the way'' and ''where I come from, if you don't believe in capitalism you're going to hell''.

In Australia we have the chief executives of numbers of companies getting bonuses and higher salaries even though their companies are losing what to mere mortals are staggering amounts of money. Then there are others whose conduct in charge of companies is continually arousing the interest of ASIC.

But Mr Fisher presses on: ''I believe in legalising everything. If people go to hell that's their problem.''

There are protests across Europe because people are fed up being forced to pay for the gross excesses of banks, other financial institutions and their partners, and governments have to bail out the people who brought the world to the brink of financial disaster. And we are being given this claptrap from those whose greed contributed to the new normal: austerity.

To cap it all, we have a ''squillionaire'' from Mexico - of all places - telling us our proposed national broadband network is too expensive, and the media lap up his pearls of wisdom.

Pity they didn't come by small boat. We could have expelled them all.

Fergan O'Sullivan Artarmon

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Gus: note to the squillionaires:

squillionaires make their money because we, the ordinary folks, let them to do so... A massive revolution would soon get them squillionaires on the beggars road... Sure, squillionaires can afford an army to defend themseves, but shall we not buy their goods and create our own, they soon would be cut down to size... And in the end, what's the point of dying with lots of money, no respect from anyone and no friends — or friends who can't wait to see you die so they can put their hands on your loot?... 

The European Commission is set to propose investing almost €9.2bn (£8bn) in a massive rollout of super-fast broadband infrastructure and services across the European Union.

The plan is partly aimed at stimulating further investment in rural broadband.

It is hoped the initiative will also help to create a single market for digital public services.

The Commission has already set targets for improving the speed of home internet connections across the region.

It aims to get all European households on at least 30 megabits per second (Mbps) by 2020, with half the population enjoying more than 100Mbps, so as to make the continent more competitive and productive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15320628

See the little shit Abbott plan at top... Note that the Australian NBN is being deployed as planned, with very few hiccups. Than you Julia...

Telstra shareholders have overwhelmingly supported a plan to hand the telco's fixed-line copper network to the National Broadband Network (NBN) in a vote at the company's annual general meeting in Sydney.

More than 99 per cent of proxy votes cast supported the deal, with 0.55 per cent of votes against it.

The $11 billion agreement with the Federal Government is an important step towards setting up the national high-speed broadband network.

Telstra will receive the compensation in exchange for decommissioning the fixed-line phone network over 10 years.

The telco also will lease its telecommunications infrastructure to the NBN for 30 years.

Telstra chair Catherine Livingstone welcomed the result.

"It is clear from this interim result on the resolution that, given the alternatives facing their company, both institutional and retail shareholders are supportive of our involvement in the NBN," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-18/telstra-agm/3576790

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See the little shit Abbott plan at top... Note that the Australian NBN is being deployed as planned, with very few hiccups. Thank you Julia...

A price comparison has found internet connections are likely to be cheaper on the NBN than ADSL2+ for similar speeds.

The study by price comparison website WhistleOut looked at the four internet service providers (ISP) that have publicly announced their National Broadband Network pricing plans: Exetel, iPrimus, iiNet and Internode.

It found, on average, a reduction of between 23-43 per cent on plans where NBN speeds are limited to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) - a similar speed to the maximum available for most ADSL2+ services.

On average, NBN services with the four ISPs limited to 25 Mbps were also slightly cheaper than ADSL2+, even though they are around 2.5 times faster.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-10-18/internet-cheaper-under-nbn/3577578