NBN BUZZ: Facts hacked to pieces

NBN Buzz is a weekly wrap up of everthing that's going on with Australia's biggest ever infrastructure project. For previous editions go to our NBN Buzz page.

Hack reporting

For every charge that a 25-year old Cowra man is facing for infiltrating the systems of an internet service provider there is a misleading report about his 'achievements'.

David Cecil, an unemployed truck driver operating under the alias 'Evil', has been arrested for breaking into the systems of Platform Networks. Police allege the self-taught hacker could have brought down the entire Platform network.

Because Platform Networks has signed up to the NBN the mainstream press reported this as an 'NBN hack,' despite the fact that Platform is yet to actually offer services over the NBN.

A spokesperson for NBN Co said the following: “NBN Co has evaluated its systems and controls and can confirm the National Broadband Network was not affected by this incident."

The company was today (Thursday) forced to reiterate the point with a press release for the "misleading reporting," specifically naming Sky News, the ABC, The Daily Telegraph, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian for their "provocative headlines".

“The NBN was not hacked," said NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley. "It has not been compromised. It has not been placed at risk. NBN Co's security has not been breached.

"Any suggestion that the NBN was hacked or could have been hacked in relation to this incident is entirely wrong.”

The apparent confusion seems to centre around comments from Australian Federal Police high tech crime manager Grant Edwards that Cecil “could have potentially have caused considerable damage to Australia's infrastructure”.

But The Register's Richard Chirgwin points to clarifying comments from another big wig from the AFP: “In a press conference broadcast on ABC News 24, the AFP's Brad Marden associated the “national infrastructure” implications of the attack as being related to Platform's domain and web services, saying “Web hosting or domain registrars … may have 150,000 or 200,000 downstream companies”. The potential for that many companies – or even individuals – to lose access to internet services is what elevates such services to “national infrastructure” status, he explained, not the association between Platform Networks and the NBN. In fact, he said, this attack “would not have had a direct impact on the NBN”."

Writing in Crikey, Stilgherrian was a little more forward: "The internet has been a part of our lives for a decade and a half. A journalist doesn't know the difference between wholesale and retail ISPs? That's like not knowing major roads are constructed by state governments and local streets by local councils. Like not knowing the difference between a bookmaker and the TAB.

Fictitious pricing debate

The Internode pricing announcement shattered some illusions; at least that's what the initial reports told us. The ISP's NBN prices had newspapers around the country claiming that NBN services could cost almost $200 a month for some, undermining the illusion the government had crafted about cheap, high-speed broadband for all.

Internode managing director Simon Hackett said the government's promise to deliver similar broadband prices over the new network was “untenable in practice”. Opposition Communications spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull said the announcement “undercut Labor's credibility,” and, given Hackett's claims that people in the bush will pay more, advised the independents propping up the government to “revisit” their position. The uproar even sparked the competition watchdog to announce it will launch a public inquiry into how NBN Co charges the internet service providers.

Of all the pieces floating around about Intenode's prices, only about three were worth reading.

First is Stilgherrian in Crikey: “When comparing Internode with Internode – like with like – the NBN packages offer at least equivalent services for the same price. And Internode is just one ISP, one that isn't at the cheap end of the market. I cannot over-stress the vast quality difference between copper-based ADSL2 and fibre to the home... Unfortunately for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, the rubbish media narrative is an easy sell. Stereotypical battler voters who reckon the NBN or, indeed, any broadband improvement is a waste of money are unlikely to understand the details. You can be sure the opposition will encourage them to compare pomegranates with potatoes, Taragos with Trabants.”

Second is Richard Chirgwin in The Register who, like Stilgherrian, runs through some simple examples of Internode's prices to disprove the NBN naysayers, but also explains how small businesses coasting by on consumer plans will get much better deals under the NBN: “At $189.95 for a 100/40 Mbps service with 1 TB downloads, Internode's NBN prices look like an absolutely fabulous deal for the small business lucky enough to be in the footprint. But in the world of the-stupid-it-burns media commentary surrounding the NBN, the productivity and cost benefits to SMEs have been completely ignored.”

A subsequent pricing announcement from wholesale aggregator Exetel that undercut Internode prompted Stephen Conroy to claim that Turnbull was “misleading” Australians about the end-user prices under the NBN.

But the third piece worth reading comes from Business Spectator's Stephen Bartholomeusz, who went all the way by saying all of this, to some extent, is white noise: “At the moment all NBN Co has are a handful of trial sites. It will take the best part of a decade before most of the network has been rolled out. Until that happens the economics of the NBN, from a retail service provider's perspective, are a work in progress.”

Revisiting Turnbull's 'policy'

The first glimpse that Malcolm Turnbull offered us last week into the Coalition's forthcoming broadband policy promised to deliver Australia's high-speed broadband cheaper and faster than the government. The 'announcement' from the Opposition's communications spokesperson, given during a speech in Sydney, was short on detail – the benefits of opposition – but it didn't take long for the commentariat to start poking holes in the Turnbull plan.

The best critique comes from The Australian's John Durie: “The broad concepts outlined by Turnbull make sense, except for how he plans to split Telstra. Turnbull suggests leaving the copper network in Telstra's hands and regulating it like an energy utility. This just happens to be what the ACCC has tried to do without success for the past 14 years. If he wants to buy some of the network, then he can refer to Telstra's last demands, which start at $15 billion and climb from there.”

There were a number of similar offerings.

James Hutchinson from iTnews found many analysts doubting that the Coalition could deliver the network quicker than the government, particularly when it wants to halt the whole project for six months for the Productivity Commission to perform a cost-benefit analysis.

Delimiter's Renai LeMay asks “how long will a Coalition government take to re-negotiate the Telstra NBN deal,” especially given that the current government took a year and had every incentive to do a deal as soon as possible.

And David Braue in ZDNet wonders why Turnbull didn't commit to opening up the existing HFC networks to competition: “Without government intervention to force the wholesaling of those networks, he's not so much preserving competition as destroying it — and handing Telstra and Optus a non-competitive duopoly over the provision of 100Mbps services to the 25 per cent of homes that are currently cabled.”

Turnbull's speech was clearly not a policy announcement; it was a broad statement of intentions.

Take the words of iiNet chief executive Michael Malone who up until Turnbull's speech was worried about what a Coalition election victory would do to Australia's broadband future. “I don't want to be complacent, but I'm becoming less concerned for the NBN now,” Malone told ARN. “The argument around the NBN has become more nuanced, particularly in the last few weeks and months, so whichever government builds it, I think we are going to have ubiquitous high-speed and affordable broadband.”

Opposition leader Tony Abbott appointed Turnbull, his main rival for power within the Liberal party, to “destroy the NBN,” but it didn't work. The NBN is too good, too popular, or both, to destroy, so the Coalition is softening us up for a 'me too' moment at the next election – whenever that is – where they will unveil policy more or less in line with the government.

Wrap up

The joint parliamentary committee into the National Broadband Network has started its hearings outside of Canberra and Sydney, with people from the bush voicing concerns that the satellite speeds won't be fast enough. The independence of the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network has been brought into question after it became apparent that the vast majority of the group's funding comes from the government, The Australian reports. Concerns have also been raised by the same newspaper that NBN Co could avoid regulatory scrutiny on pricing. Stilgherrian wrote in ZDNet that an IT skills shortage could undermine the benefits of the NBN, citing comments from NetApp's vice president for Australia/New Zealand and the ASEAN region Peter O'Connor (a previous report from Technology Spectator came to the same conclusion). And finally, the Australian Computer Society president Anthony Wong popped up in The Australian calling for the e-Health benefits of the NBN to be seized as soon as possible.