If the NBN Co is to be believed, then the organisation that has been vested with building and commissioning the national broadband network is not in any way responsible for the terrible speeds that many residents encounter after they switch to the network.
All good things are attributable to NBN Co. All bad things? The retail service providers are to blame.
This is the message in its latest publicity blitz, which is styled as an "information campaign to improve customer experience". It operates on the principle that one would enjoy being murdered if one knew the type of poison being administered.
This kind of behaviour, an abundance of which we have been seeing in the US since 20 January, would be amusing were it not for the fact that at times it tends to affect us and badly too.
{loadposition sam08}Nobody who has decided to switch from their ADSL or cable connection and then found that they are unable to connect to the NBN will find any solace in the NBN Co's latest publicity round, which essentially tries to pain itself as responsible for nothing else other than providing information that paints the organisation in a good light.
What about slow speeds? Well, those are to be discussed with the RSPs. Nothing the NBN Co does — not the steep AVC and CVC charges — is causing the treacle-like connections that are becoming the rule, and no longer the exception.
The NBN Co is not placing any emphasis on explaining why things are as bad as they are. Rather, its entire push is towards rationalising the process and doing what Pontius Pilate did: washing its hands of any responsibility.
One grows tired of writing the same thing over and over again, but what choice does one have? It is now something like an article of faith that the NBN will have to be "upgraded" after the current, miserable mongrel mix is completed in 2020. Rebuilt is actually a better description but then will NBN Co utter that word?
It is simply amazing how people can get away with what can only be described as a scam. The public does not have recourse to anything other than venting their wrath on the government that brought it about and voting the bunch out in 2019.
By then, many of us would have encountered the problems that the NBN Co has created.
It is a game in which there is only one loser. No prizes for guessing who that is.