Fans of the Coalition’s vaguer and vague plans for the National Broadband Network (NBN) aren’t exactly thick on the ground. But I’ve run into one during my visit to Macau: Cisco APJ president Irving Tan.
During a press session at Cisco’s APJC Collaboration Connection 2014 event in Macau, Tan mentioned how many countries in the region are pursuing plans to develop national fibre networks, with varying degrees of success. On Australia’s attempt, he had this to say:
Australia is a bit more complicated but I think they’re moving in the right direction.
Tan was visiting Australia last week, so it seems likely the NBN was one of the issues under discussion.
Regardless of whether you agree with the assessment, this remark highlights one aspect of the current reassessment of the NBN plan: it means vendors are again jockeying to have their technology included. Cisco didn’t score a large role in the original NBN contracts, but it’s one of the dominant providers of HFC cable, and that’s supposed to have a larger role in the “mixed technology” approach currently favoured for the NBN.
Cisco also has a well-established partnership with Telstra, which was the first company to sign up for the global “Intercloud” network Cisco announced in May. Any change to the NBN is going to be crucially dependent on Telstra agreeing to vary its contracts.
We’d all like the NBN (in whatever form) to have more certainty attached, but certainty seems some distance away. That’s not great for consumers, but for equipment providers it’s a second bite at the cherry.
Disclosure: Angus Kidman travelled to Macau as a guest of Cisco.
Comments
9 responses to “Cisco: NBN Is ‘Moving In The Right Direction’”
Sounds like political double speak. Not wanting to bite the hand that feeds him really. You can be sure if things were going well, he’d say so, but instead things here are “a bit more complicated”…
I refuse to believe anything that is either promised, or being considered by this current Goverment. They’ve done nothing but lie, connive, break promises and constantly move the goal posts… Nothing serious will happen with the NBN until Labor finds its way back home…
Unlike your favoured lot, which was pure as the driven snow. No doubt that’s why they’re still in power, right?
#thinkingisnotillegalbutitclearlyisoptional
Lemigess.. you didn’t vote Labor huh…? 🙂
🙂
A bit more complicated..
For the rest of us, that means more time spent in proposal, design, implementation – all and sundry.
Which translates to more money going the vendor’s way.
wow really?, abotts NBN has been universally panned by anyone even remotely involved in the industry, anyone who isnt a blatant follower of abott, cisco are supposed to be a technology leader not a political mule
Well, if the changes give Cisco an opportunity to sell more product in Australia, it would be a move in the right direction, for them at least. And they’re well within their rights to take advantage of that – more power to them for taking up the opportunity, particularly if it results in more investment in Australia and more jobs for Australians.
That the new plan for the NBN represents a potential boon for multinationals over the Australian public is hardly surprising, particularly from a government that is already being repeatedly pinged for being more business-friendly than they should be. In fact, given the criticisms about how un-“future proof” the Coalition model in particular is, for major corporations it could ultimately be giving them three bites at the cherry.
Welcome to Bet Hedging 101.
Of course Cisco are happy!
Its in their direct interest to be happy with the current direction of the NBN.