Friday 12 April 2013

Come on down, Luke 'Mañana' Hartsuyker!


The ever laid back Nats MP Luke Hartsuyker told The Coffs Coast Advocate this month that "We're not in fantasy land, a dream sci-fi world. We have to deliver affordable broadband to people quickly" and the cost of bringing fast broadband into the house will be "addressed as time went by".
Come again?
Labor will give me free fast broadband connection into my house by 2021.
Luke will give me slower broadband to a junction box somewhere into my street by 2019 and I will have to pay for every metre of cable laid from that box into my house.
If - and it’s a big if – I can afford it.
And if I move house I bet I’ll be paying again under Luke’s plan.
So till the day I win Lotto Luke expects me to get his broadband to my PC via Telstra’s 100 year-old copper wire phone network which in 2003 even that telco said was within "five minutes to midnight" of its deathbed.
I could almost hear fellow voters falling off their chairs when they read Hartsuyker’s comments.
No wonder many techies fell about laughing when he said the Coalition broadband scheme was a win for regional areas. They know that sending broadband to a computer along old copper wire will never give the fast download speeds of fibre optic cable.
What Hartsuyker is really offering the North Coast is a souped up version of this:
For which he expects us all "to pay up to $5000" each to upgrade if Labor's Janelle Saffin is right.

Pic from the folks at CSIRO

No comments: