A Labor chaired Senate committee is proposing that competitors be prevented from laying fibre optic cable and providing broadband services until after NBN has completed it's national rollout.
The thinking behind this is to prevent rivals " cherry picking " the most lucrative, high density take up areas and leaving NBN with the less profitable, distant and more expensive to service options.
There is one glaring problem with this suggestion. If it is adopted it will hand NBN a monopoly.
Government services are not very good at competing in instances where they face commercial competition. Inevitably the cost blows out and huge time over runs occur - and in the end the price of that service bears no relation to reason.
Older Australians will remember the phone service just after the end of the second world war. Providing phones was then a monopoly provided by the Postmaster Generals department ( PMG ) and the wait for a phone installation was measured in years. We even had such archaic practices as " party lines " foisted on the public as a remedy for the government's inability to provide services.
The only way NBN will be up to scratch in laying cable and providing broadband at a rate comparable with world prices is if it has a competitor breathing down it's neck. Give it a monopoly and we can expect sloth and the dead hand of government to turn this $ 36 billion investment into a nightmare.
Not much point in the government getting involved in broadband unless the end product is competitive - and in a monopolistic scenario - that never happens !
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