They say, 'Never read the comments' but there's gold to found in them thar mountains of dirt and I've dug out a few nuggets. Here are some interesting observations from some of our recent NBN articles. These also provide a great example of open journalism - the situation where readers provide additional information and insight thereby enhancing the message delivered in the original article.

Old school journos tend to hate the growing practice. However, social media, bulletin boards and the popularity of comments sections demonstrate that it's here to stay and that you can't get away with picking an angle and running with it without massive scrutiny from numerous educated readers anymore.

The following each make for great little articles/mini blogs all on their own. While they can't all be instantly verified, they can be incredibly useful for identifying new sources and avenues of research which would not likely have been identified using traditional methods. It's also good to see other readers providing excellent (and speedy) counter arguments when a complaint might initially appears valid.

I'd like to add more negative examples, but in this case, once you've cut out the trolls, ranters, lunatics and the generally misguided, there wasn't much left. In the meantime:

Fran Barlow : 02 May 2012 3:34:23pm

A CBA [Cost Benefit Analysis] probably wouldn't have supported the Harbour Bridge, the Snowy Scheme, the Overland Telegraph, the Opera House and so forth because most of the benefits were prospective and to measure them exactly would require assumptions that without the data, cannot be made. A CBA can be useful for a private organisation because its timelines for benefit are likely to be short and moreover, the stakeholders are well specified. A private organisation can work out whether some particular initiative will save it enough money to repay an investment in an acceptable time frame, or win them access to new markets at acceptable cost, or so forth. Private organisations don't need to take the public good into account and can also ignore externalities - impositions on others from their activities. For example, it would be easy for a company to determine that dumping toxic waste into a river (rather than disposing of it safely) would be worth it using a CBA. If the government had competent, well-resourced and honest inspectors of the river and a power to impose remediation and swingeing fines, then they might work out that it wasn't using a CBA. But at the time, the Overland Telegraph was just a cute idea. Until built, it was hard to see the benefit - yet it took something like half of SA's state revenue. The public benefit was huge, but that became clear only after the fact. So too with the others. The Harbour Bridge massively improved the land value of land on the north shore and made the city much more functional, but that assumed things that could not have been assumed in the 1920s. Not the least of its advantages was underpinning employment during an unforeseen downturn. That was and is a huge public benefit but it seriously hurt the state's balance sheet at the time. The Opera House is an iconic symbol and a major tourist drawcard but again, it was a huge expense with an unclear business case. One could go on. Was it worth laying sewers? We can scarcely imagine otherwise but again at the time it wasn't clear because people's knowledge of disease vectors were limited. Many supposed this expense was an entirely about aesthetics, just as some say the NBN is about downloading movies.

Dan : 02 May 2012 11:12:57pm

"If it really were a financially viable project to supply fibre to every home in Australia then it would have already been done by private enterprise" Well luckily that has already been done so we know how that story goes. First up we have Optus HFC. They knew how bad the situation with Telstra's copper monopoly was so they went and built a HFC network in the cities. What did Telstra do? They duplicated it with competing Telstra HFC cleverly disguised as Foxtel. Nice way to spend twice as much. Read about that saga here. Second up we have TransACT. You can read about that on the Wiki. Lastly we have Telstra Velocity, and the other similar Greenfield Triple-Play serivices from private companies including Arise, BES, Comverge, Fuzeconnect, Openetworks, Opticomm, Pivit and Syncaccess Group. What do all these have in common? They have a monopoly. So you see mate, once you have a monopoly, "financial viability" isn't an issue, because take-up is 100%, as will be the case on the NBN

Dan : 02 May 2012 11:33:19pm

Telstra, Optus and AAPT all offer business fibre in major capital cities so long as you are smack bang in the middle of the CBD. So yes, they are already doing it; it just costs 50x as much as an NBN connection.

100Mb Fibre ($3,000/m) vs. 100Mb NBN ($60/m). Sources: Current Fibre | NBN Fibre (NB: I used Exetel for both because they publish prices for current non-NBN fibre)

Steve Mount : 01 May 2012 9:23:11pm

The opponents of the NBN, for whatever reasons, be they technical, financial or practical, would do well to study the history of the Overland Telegraph, from Adelaide to Darwin. This was financed, managed and completed by a State Government, namely, that of SA. Many private business owners described it as madness, and a waste of money which would never be recouped. Nevertheless, competition between State Governments was fierce, because they could see the long term benefits. In what can only be described as an engineering marvel, it was completed in less than two years. As someone once later said, it would now take that long, and cost more, to do an EIS, never mind a CBA. It is now history, and a success of unimagined dimension. Here is the lesson : when it comes to large infrastructure projects, be they highways, comms, water, sewerage, electricity et all, only a Government can muster the financial might and take the long term view. Private industry is more concerned with its quarterly reports, and rightly so, which, by that very qualifier, removes them from the picture. The Sydney Harbour Bridge, and the Sydney Opera House, were both built, despite much uproar, by Government funding. The NBN is the right thing at the right time. John Howard's ideology of 'private industry taking up the baton', post the Telstra sell-off, has demonstrably failed. Most comms companies, with some exceptions, still ride on Telstra. For example, I'll point to the copper CAN, with dozens of ISPs using it as a carrier. That's not innovation, competiton, development or expansion, that's using the status quo, which is a publicly funded, well-aged service, and with a punitive regime attached to ensure 'cometitive fairness'. Private industry has had over ten years to develop competitive, wide reaching comms networks, but little has happened, and that's simply because they're focussed on the product, ie, ISP or mobile delivery, not network. The Government funded PMG, Telecom and early Telstra is what built most of the network that most folk take for granted. The NBN will provide what no private company can, and that includes a now-private Telstra. A long term view. For more info, "An End To Silence : The Building Of The Overland Telegraph Line From Adelaide To Darwin", by Peter Taylor.

Der Tag : 01 May 2012 9:12:58pm

In Kiama, the NBN is due to be connected to the nursing home in which my wife lives. It is planned, so I was told, to connect every room and hence every patient to the local medical centre. This would allow doctors instant contact with a patient instead of a two mile trip by car or ambulance. True, Kiama is unique because it is experimental and because the Kiama Council runs the nursing home and so has a special interest in using its guinea pig status for its maximum benefit. On a question of value for money, I can only offer an experience last year when we visited a kidney specialist. He needed a copy of a CAT scan from a local hospital. Downloading it by broadband took 20 minutes. The consultation of 30 minutes therefore had 10 minutes of our time in which to find nothing was wrong. Cost to me, $170. Value to me, $53. Loss to community, $117 [through Medicare]. Cost benefit for an NBN instant download? The urologist would be coining it!

Nameo Ceo : 02 May 2012 3:18:48pm

Here's a ridiculously quick [CBA] for you that only takes into account the cost and 2 benefits:

Revenue from AVC (direct)

Reductions in internet costs to government and businesses (indirect) In Australia we currently have:

32,000 subscribers on 100Mbit or Greater

1,182,000 subscribers on 24-100Mbit

3,985,000 subscribers on 8-24Mbit I think it's safe to assume this people will want to keep at least those speeds, which would mean:

32,000*$38(100/40Mbit) = $14.592m a year.

1,182,000*$34(50/20Mbit) = $482.256m a year.

3,985,000*$24(12/1Mbit) = $1.147b a year.

Total = $1.635b a year. Now on to the indirect benefit of reducing internet costs of business and government. We currently have 292,000 business and government entities that have a connection of 24Mbit or greater. A business grade connection at that speed costs at LEAST $1000 (check any ISP you want, please note that ADSL2+ does not count as it's only up to 24Mbit). An equivalent business grade connection over the NBN (using current offerings) at the 100/40Mbit speed tier costs $200-$250 a month. That means that the 292,000 on 24Mbit or greater government and business entities will be able to save $750-$800 a month on their internet bills. That's $2,628 a year savings with the $750. So in my very limited 2 benefit only CBA:

Total NBN benefits = $4.273b a year

Total cost of $43b Pay off = 10.06 years.

Useful life = 40+ years So without even taking into account the CVC charges, CIR charges, possible education and health changes, etc, etc, etc we have a pay off period of 10 years... That seems pretty positive to me ;) Hell even if the NBN ended up costing twice as much it still pays for itself well before its useful life is up! All subscriber numbers come from http://www.abs.gov.au/ 8153.0 - Internet Activity Costs of business internets comes from ISP sites and sales people.

The following comments appeared on Reddit:

dhask 32 points

"Labor's abject failure to promote its NBN policy through actually informing the public about the health, power, education, business opportunities and other benefits - the things that represent the overwhelming value of the build - is now being rivalled by the Coalition's failure to acknowledge those benefits even exist." Oh, if only there were some group of people whose primary purpose it was to inform the masses of important events in politics, and what it might mean for them. They wouldn't be politicians, or businessmen, or labourers. They'd be some fourth group, a fourth estate if you will. What a strange world it might be, were such a group to exist.

northerndan 7 points

Hope Labor's media and political advisers are taking note of that quote.

takinterGillard, best. PM. ever. 7 points

And if Labor pushed forward with a campaign promoting, say, the benefits to health system patients, a certain over represented news organisation would write a lot of opinion pieces throwing doubt on claims and drag up some "experts" from somewhere to agree.

Here is an illustrative negative one regarding cable lifespan

What an outrageous piece of drivel. There has NEVER been a business case so the Cost/Benefit of the NBN remains (probably deliberately by Gillard/Conroy) unknown. FTTN is the best solution because it does give individuals choices as well as providing a vastly faster and less expensive rollout than FTTP. Fibre as well will last 20-25 years (less than copper by the way). As such if the NBN were to be sold in 15 years it is likely that the value of the NBN fibre network would be up to 75% through its remaining useful life. Hence the NBN value would be discounted heavily - meaning taxpayers would not get their "investment" (funny term for government risk/waste) in the event of an NBN sale. Copper actually has a longer life than fibre. http://www.astricon.net/topics/broadband-mobile/articles/23002-report-recommends-20-25-years-life-cycle-fiber.htm The NBN is already way behind its originally published schedule - time is money and hence the cost will blow out well over the $42b budget. But then we are talking Labor as Project Managers? There have been a few people who have cited optic fibre as lasting less than 20 years. This seems to be the source of the misinformation. Here are some responses:

Jamie : 27 Apr 2012 3:35:55pm

... The article you linked to is not about the lifetime of optical fibre cables. It's about the accounting depreciation of the asset. Optical fibre has been around for 40 years, and cables that old still work perfectly, even ones located in submerged stress test beds. The projected useful life is 50+ years, but no-one knows how long they'll really last because no mechanism of failure has yet been identified.

NBNmyths.wordpress.com : 28 Apr 2012 2:06:36pm