Wednesday 1 April 2009

And a blogger waits

While the Key Government promises a nearly country-wide, $1.5 billion broadband experiment of fibre to the home, a blogger waits.

A grown adult, a married man, a blogger who just wants to run his business and do what people do online. I give you Blair Mulholland, who -- while Steven Joyce promises the earth and a whole new bureaucracy this morning (unless you live on the West Coast) -- is reduced to blogging from his Mother's computer, and from the free ones at the Whangaparaoa Library because, because . . . well, let Blair tell you:

If telecommunications companies think someone is going to steal their networks,
they won't build any more of them! It's really simple. Now we are stuck with
waiting for the government to waste my tax money building something that every
private interest is now too scared to.

Remember when the government effectively nationalised Telecom's network and you all cheered? You're paying for that now with reduced property rights protection and decreased service, just as you'll be paying for National's promises with money that could have been spent on tax cuts.

Happy?

4 comments:

Berend de Boer said...

I didn't vote for him. Oh wait, that doesn't mean a thing. If you win the election by 50% + 1 you get the force people to handover money regardless if they voted for you or not.

Clunking Fist said...

I tell anyone who cannot run away fast enough from me: leave it to Telecom and they will spend less than the gummint, slightly slower than the gummint, but at least it won't be our fookin tax dollars.

Heisenbug said...

Fist, TelstraClear and Vodafone could do it too, probably faster and cheaper than either Telecom and the gummint. Hell, if Kordia had any clue about networking technology they could do it too. Mind you, the point PC and Blair are making is still valid: nobody is going to do it because the gummint will just steal it from them when it's built.

Clunking Fist said...

...except that Kordia is a loss-making gummint owned entity. So it would still be your tax dollars spent to give me high speed porn.