• Malcom Turnball's Facebook Q&A backfires with NBN Rage
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[IMG]http://delimiter.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/turnbull-facebook.jpg[/IMG] [QUOTE]news An attempt by Malcolm Turnbull to leverage a visit to Facebook’s headquarters in the US to communicate with Australians about the future of the digital economy via social media has backfired, with the Communications Minister’s official Facebook filling up with hundreds of comments slamming the Coalition’s inferior broadband policy. Yesterday Turnbull, who is currently on a study trip to the US meeting with top executives from US technology giants such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, Cisco and Square, posted a notice on his Facebook account that he would be hosting an online questions and answer session with Australians from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park on “the latest in technology and the future economy”. However, the overwhelming majority of the several hundred questions posed to Turnbull during the session related to the Coalition’s broadband policy, which most Australians believe is inferior to Labor’s more comprehensive and popular National Broadband Network vision. “Why are you so near-sighted on the NBN scheme? Does this stem from your generational lack of understanding/inability to use IT to the capacity of everybody else? NBN concerns me. We NEED a world class system. Are you going to help deliver this?” asked one reader. Another alleged that the majority of NBN Co’s board was composed of former Telstra executives, and asked whether Turnbull believed it was “wise” that NBN Co was negotiating with Telstra for the sale of the copper wiring, which they described as “an outdated method of communication that their own CEO referred to as ’5 minutes to midnight’ ten years ago and is currently held together in water-logged plastic bags”. “Shouldn’t an independent committee, with no relation to Telstra, be negotiating the deal?” the questioner asked. It is not true that the majority of NBN Co’s board is composed of former Telstra executives, although it is true that the majority of senior executive and board appointments which Turnbull and NBN Co have made since the September election have been of former Telstra executives, several of whom have direct personal connections with Turnbull. Another questioner asked: “The future of the internet is not about movie download speeds, but in machine to machine communication that will require a “smart” network able sometimes to deliver terabytes in nanoseconds, and where symmetry is vital. In that context, why are we even considering basing national broadband infrastructure on platforms that we know cannot do these things? what is the expected cost of repairing the [plain old telephone system] to deliver even the inadequate network currently planned? and won’t this spend inevitably be duplicated?” And still another asked: “An assumption made in your costings for the NBN prior to the election was that Telstra would allow use of their copper network without charge and now it has been reported that the government/NBNCo will now enter negotiations for use of the network. Will this be another riveting surprise from the self-proclaimed no surprises government?” Some commenters verged on alleging improper behaviour by the Coalition. “How much did Murdoch pay you to slow down our broadband development so that Foxtel could build its on demand feature and offer home and internet so that Netflix didn’t kill it off?” asked one questioner. And the NBN wasn’t the only issue where Turnbull faced censure from his critics. One questioner pointed out that Australian software firm Atlassian had confirmed plans to shift its headquarters from Australia to the UK because of more favourable regulatory and financial conditions, and asked what the Coalition Government was going to do to attract innovative startups to establish themselves in Australia.[/QUOTE] [url]http://delimiter.com.au/2014/01/15/turnbull-facebook-qa-backfires-nbn-rage/[/url]
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