Spoke too soon. The West Australian Government will award a 10-year, $1billion contract, to “to facilitate the installation of the State-wide broadband network”. Unlike Queensland and NSW, this time, the money is right out in front.

And its the worst - state funded ADSL2+ for the next 10 years.

The NSW Government has announced that Sydney residents will soon have a city-wide wireless broadband network, but the announcement - I can’t seem to find the original press release - doesn’t appear to specify any specific financial arrangement. Some more details in the Australian here, and here, none of which sheds that much light on the proposal.

Municipal wifi networks have a rather chequered history. Google and Earthlink, trying to build a San Francisco network with the ‘help’ of the council there have seen their project bogged down in politics. And, if that experience is any indication of the level of service expected in Sydney, I’m not that anyone will be eagerly looking forward to 300k downstream connections in two years, even if it is free. Especially considering they can get pretty good wifi already with Unwired.

Moreover, now that telcos are hurriedly trying to deploy HSDPA, it makes NSW’s attempt to pick a winner in the competition between wireless broadband technologies curiously retro. Wifi is so 2004.

Broadband is the technology of the moment, and state governments are frustrated with the perceived lack of investment from the dominant telcos. I looked at Queensland’s proposal to build a wired network here, and the West Australian government is supposed to come out with something by the end of the year. The Federal Government will come up with some sort of grand broadband strategy soon as well.

Few commentators challenge the assumption that there is an enormous groundswell of demand for dramatically higher speed broadband - everybody just seems to assume that more speed = more commerce, or something like that. But assuming that that is true, the answer to Australia’s broadband ‘problem’ is simple - just set the framework right and somebody, anybody, will try to service the demand. There is no shortage of technologies available to do so.

I have a piece in The Age on anti-siphoning laws, which, for those who are unfamiliar with them, prevent anybody except free-to-air television providers from bidding for ‘premium’ sport: “No umpire needed in sport media“

Without doing the research to factcheck it, this claim from the ALP is pretty funny: The Howard Government spent $89,000 on massages for public servants last year.

‘Wastewatch’ is a great idea, but it seems to be restricted to administrative costs, like overseas trips for politicians and so on. A genuine monitor on the wastefulness of a big Australian government would be much more powerful and useful, but it may not fit Labor Party policy.

A quick solution to Publicservantsmassagagate would be to get rid of the public servants. The massages will soon follow.

A couple of items in The Australian recently have flagged the possibility of Australian regulators importing the ‘net neutrality’ debate to Australia - today, Telstra flags the possibility of changing the business model to charge content providers for access. Greame Samuel so far has the right view - relying on the market to regulate internet discrimination policies.

But considering how big an issue this has been in the United States, and how appealing it is to market-skeptics (Margaret Simons in Crikey was pushing it very hard until recently - I responded to her here) it wouldn’t take much for it to be a major issue in Australia.

With communications policy in a shambles, lets hope this government or future governments don’t add more regulation to discourage telecommunications investment.

UPDATE: Bigpond chief Justin Milne’s speech, where he links net neutrality and piracy, is here.

My colleague at the IPA, Jennifer Marohasy, visits an area described by Bob Brown as “the most untouched and secluded area within 50 km of the Hobart CBD” and finds tram tracks.

Is it possible to both die a little inside and squeal with delight?

As the entire world merges every issue over to climate change, the Guardian reports that digital televisions and radios could increase energy usage of the consumer electronics sector by 60%. (via Tim Blair) The Australian government has as one of its core media policies the aim of shifting everybody over to digital television by 2010…12..16… eventually - actively encouraging climate change!

For that matter, many Australian ICT policies can be converted to climate change policies relatively easily. Broadband networks utilise a massive amount of energy, and have network effects which encourage further usage. Therefore: The Commonwealth Government’s opposition to regulatory reform, which meant that Telstra has not built a fibre-optic broadband network = sensible climate change action. Peter Beattie Brisbane fibre initiative = climate change denial. The anti-siphoning policy, which supports wasteful free to air broadcasts and punishes efficient, highly compressed cable broadcasts = a crime against humanity.

I suggest a prize be awarded to the first person to convert Workchoices into a climate change issue. I will be watching here closely.