Optus' HFC problems were never a secret, so why did nbn™ need the network?

Someone check in on former senator Stephen Conroy, would they, and make sure he hasn't laughed himself to death? One of the reasons nbnTM set the Australian Federal Police (AFP) onto the pugilistic parliamentarian was that documents leaked to him suggested Optus' hybrid fibre-coax (HFC) network wasn't fit for purpose. That …

[MrDamage]

3 ring circus

As mandated by Malcolm Turball, and 2 other arseholes.

[GrumpyKiwi]

Now would be a good time for you Aussies to admit that you don't know how to fibre. Get some people in from over the ditch to start all over again, only do it right.

(Said with a nauseating amount of smugness from my cheap and reliable 100/50MB fibre connection... )

[Medixstiff]

"Now would be a good time for you Aussies to admit that you don't know how to fibre. Get some people in from over the ditch to start all over again, only do it right."

F*ck off, we know how to fibre, it's our overpaid underperforming pollies that need to be dropped in a ditch and filled over for screwing it all up.

[Robin Whittle]

HFC cable is aluminium. http://www.catvcoaxialcable.com/sale-616626-aluminum-tube-trunk-cable-500-pe-jacket-scte-feeder-and-distribution-cable.html The 0.61mm thick extruded aluminium tube has a polyurethane foam insulation layer holding a 2.77mm diameter solid aluminium conductor, which is copper plated for even greater conductivity. This cable is called "hardline" because it is very light and stiff like a rod. Turning it into scrap aluminium would be tricky, since the polyethylene would need to be melted or burnt or removed by some other means (shredding and floatation?).

I guess you would need 16 metres of it to get 1kg of aluminium, which would be worth about a dollar, assuming the copper plating didn't diminish its scrap value.

[Richard Chirgwin]

Consider me burned! Wonder how aluminium is on the scrap market...

[MrDamage]

Last time I checked*, it was worth a quarter of what cooper is worth.

*2011: Period of poor health prevented me from working, so resorted to going through my hoard of old IT gear, stripping out heatsinks and stripping cables to drop off at the local scrap merchants.

[Geoff_Aus]

Maybe we can recycle it in to some cans to string together. S*it better not give LNP anymore ideas for future MTM technologies.

[anonymousI]

Cans and "string" (aluminium or not) would be no worse than many areas will get from MTM, aka Malcolm's Terminal Memorial. It will certainly fulfil his rampant ambition to go down in history, though infamy might be closer to the mark.

People who wantonly destroy valuable national projects for the crassest political reasons are never well regarded by history.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's never been a secret that the density of Australian premises is not ideal for cable, which suffers from attenuation. Why the Liberals didn't realise that they could have just taken FTTP and made it a bit better, a bit cheaper, rolled it out a little faster, nobody will ever know. Instead they keep weaving a web that keeps tripping them up. Whatever happened to a fair and transparent government? Has anyone seen them? Someone switched them with clones?

[rtb61]

Typical Sales Commision

So what is the typical sales commission say 10%. Why did they pay for a crap network, becuase 10% of $800 million is $80 million and who they hell would not pay $80 million to get back $800 million, incompetence only reaches so far, ahh off shore tax havens and Toxic Tony Abbott did actively block attacks on tax haven cheating, apparently with good reason.