If you want an uninformed opinion on broadband, ask a stockbroker

You can say what you want about Chairman Rudd's National Broadband Network, but this statement surely takes the cake: "I've got no idea what's driving the Government to do this," Ivor Ries, an analyst with EL and C Baillieu Stockbroking, says. Hmm, not reading the papers lately, Ivor? Can't even make a decent guess at it?

Mr Ries goes on (somewhat tediously) to speculate that"what it will do is create a market for people selling downloads to homes - people selling movies for downloads to homes will obviously be big winners from this. "But is it going to provide some sort of magic shot in the arm to productivity? Probably not.".

We may as well have stuck with dial-up modems then, eh? All it's really good for is movie downloads. So much for companies with a need to move drawings or artwork around between offices or to staff who work from home. So much for teleworkers who may appreciate the extra speed of file transfer and multi-user VoIP teleconferences; or educators in remote schools who want to tap into virtual classroom material; or hospital staff who may want to send diagnostic images quickly (or at all) to services in capital cities, or to get second opinions from specialists 'over the wire'.

Bravo Rudd and Co.. Nice solution to what was looking like a sub-optimal solution. Instead we make friends with Telstra again, if only just to avoid litigation, potentially get a big, new competitive telecoms landscape and please the small operators as well. Let's hope it all comes to pass quickly with no further hiccups.

Broadband over power line rollout serves isolated US communities

Here's an option for isolated communities looking to get faster, cheaper broadband - use the power lines you already have. This is a rollout in progress by IBM for a group of community electricity collectives serving around 12% of the US electricity market. As a side benefit the power collectives gain computer-aided power monitoring and control functionality they wouldn't otherwise have. The big gain here is in using existing cabling, of which there is a lot, strung all around the country.

Disclaimer: my day job is with IBM, but I have nothing to do with this, I just like the potential of BPL technology! Thinking of which, BPL, or Ethernet over power in general works just fine in most house-based applications (as opposed to the longer-distance power cabling above), as long as you avoid messy interconnects like power boards. If you have a clean installation it's fast, easy and available now, off the shelf. Alas I love power boards so a "clean" install is a bit of a dream. Back to WiFi and Cat 5 for me.