News
ABC Radio National – The NBN
The Money is broadcast every Thursday and over 30 minutes tries to understance a topic through interviews with experts.http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/themoney/
On 2 November, its chosen topic was “Fibrte Optics – A look at Australia’s NBN” which set out to explain why “Despite the billions of dollars spent on the National Broadband Network, Australia has continued to slide down the international rankings when it comes to broadband speed and equity of service…Why has the NBN been such a debacle and what can be done to fix it on this week’s episode of The Money”.
The four experts interveiwed were:
Dr Tooran Alizadeh
Director of Urban Design at Sydney University’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning
Paul Budde
Independent telecommunications analyst
John de Ridder
Independent telecommunications economist
Rod Tucker
Laureate Emeritus Professor, University of Melbourne.
What is the fair value of the NBN?
The Department of Communications estimates the value of the NBN based on the depreciated current replacement cost less the present value of leave and superannuation. It should now turn to using net present value of discounted future cash flows; as it does now for Australia Post. In doing that, it should not assume that average revenue per users will rise at the rate needed to recover costs but assume levels that reflect the market (especially competition from wireless broadband). It is likely that the fair value revealed by this DCF estimation will then lead to a write down in equity.
Are NBN prices out of control?
Previous columns have been about the structure of NBN prices. This is about the current and future level of NBN prices. See Economuse 2017-10-10
A New Approach to Rural and Remote Communications
This is the refereed paper that appears in the September 2017 issue of the Australian Journal of Telecommunications and the Digital Economy Safetynet AJTDE
2017 Review of broadband pricing
This is my tenth annual review of the retail broadband market in Australia. It is interesting to observe how the market has evolved since 2008 and to speculate where it could go next. See Economuse 2017-09-27