Gary McLaren blog posts
“Deep Fibre Broadband for The Networked Economy”
Minister hands special Statement of Expectations to the ACCC – what is going on behind the scenes?
The Minister for Communications, Cyber Safety and the Arts, Paul Fletcher, has issued a special Statement of Expectations (SoE) to the ACCC regarding its telecommunications-related functions on 9 October 2020. This new SOE apparently sits alongside the generic SoE...
Deep Dive into UK Broadband success with FTTP
I recently was invited to present to the Australian Telecommunications Associations (TelSoc) and chose to present on what has been happening on the broadband scene in the United Kingdom over recent years. Of particular interest to me is how the UK market is...
Coalition doubles down on the NBN monopoly – but can it defend itself in the upcoming battle with 5G?
NBN Co’s latest 2020 Corporate Plan was announced last week with the headline being a substantial $4.5 billion investment in deeper fibre for both enterprise and residential customers. This has been welcomed by many and seen as a vindication of the original NBN plan...
What now for the NBN? Answers to questions from iTWire.
I have been asked by iTWire to provide my thoughts on where the NBN should go from here as the rollout of the network is announced as completed. The article appeared on 20 July 2020 and can be read here. My full answers to the questions submitted are as follows : I...
NBN declares rollout finished but what about those left behind?
While NBN Co may have declared “Mission Accomplished” on the rollout of the NBN, where does that leave up to 250,000 premises who cannot receive the minimum download speed of 25 Mbps. 1 NBN Co’s riding instructions from government, the...
High time for Government to upgrade its expectations of NBN Co
The Minister for Communications, Mr Paul Fletcher, has made it clear that the government will not provide any further equity or debt funding to NBN Co now that the rollout of the network is largely complete – see AFR ($$$). A total of $49 billion has been...
NBN Co peak funding increases to $52.5 billion
A joint media release from NBN Co’s shareholder ministers (Paul Fletcher and Mathias Cormann) on May 12 announced that NBN Co had secured extra funding of $6.1 billion in loans from Australian and international banks. This is $4.1 billion more than the $2.0...
Turnbull’s memoir silent on monopoly’s future
It was “Too early to tell” according to the misunderstood reply from Zhou Enlai (China’s Prime Minister from 1949 to 1976) to Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s on the question of what he thought about the French Revolution. The same can be said for...
Will Australians buy the “Team Australia” pitch for the Covid tracing app?
The Australian government has announced plans to make a Covid-19 contact tracing app available to all Australians. The privacy and security concerns that inevitably accompany such initiatives are now being debated as the government moves into ‘sales pitch’...