Ad industry better off with Labor’s NBN – internet could be biggest ad medium in three years
August 16 2010, 5:35 am | | 17 Comments
Lara Sinclair in today’s Media section of the Australian reports that the country’s most powerful media buyer, Harold Mitchell, says the internet could be the biggest advertising medium in three years. That is, if Australia maintains an “aggressive” broadband policy. Broadband policy is crucial to sustaining ad industry, says Mitchell.
17 Comments
That’s a nice, moody shot, but hopelessly out of date. He’s half the man he was.
Umm….so Mitchell wants to set up a government bureaucracy bigger than the old Telecom (we remember how competent that was) just so he can have a better ad medium to make millions more in?
Not just a little self-focused are we, Harold?
The fact is, the NBN – if we’re stupid enough to let it go ahead – will be the biggest white elephant in Australian history. Labor says it will be finished in 7 years and cost ‘$42 billion. Going by every other major government project (computers in schools, school building projects, Victoria’s fast train between Bendigo and Geelong etc etc) that will end up at at around 15 years and $150 billion.
But more importantly, no one has any idea what will be happening with communications technology in 7 months, let alone 7 years. Anyone reading here think they’d be using iPhones and iPads back in 2003?
And would anyone here be willing to bet their house on wireless not being the main way to access the internet in even 2 years?
Gee 4:16, that sounds like Mr Rabbit on QandA last night, & he’s currently recognised as knowing as much about telecommunications as he does about economics. Great.
Actually, 6.31, it’s what most people in touch with the real world are saying. (Except for a few geeks who want the rest of us to pay so they can download movies in 2 minutes instead of ten.)
But are you willing to accept my bet?
Will you bet your house on wireless internet not being the main way we access the internet in two years time?
Because that’s what Labor is saying – their policy actually claims that wireless internet access will decline.
That’s right, at a time when Telstra is losing customers because people are abandoning fixed line telephones and having just mobiles instead, the NBN is based on the premise that wireless internet will decline and fixed-line internet will grow.
Now, instead of being a smart arse, tell me why you think Labor is better at predicting the future than the people behind smart phones and iPads..
By the way, Abbott has a degree in economics – and it was a good enough degree to earn him a Rhodes scholarship. He also ran two major ministries very successfully.
In fact, while all the Liberal finance spokespersons have economic degrees, none of the Labor economic spokespersons have anything of the sort.
Julia Gillard has a law degree and worked for a time for one of Melbourne’s leading ambulance chasing law firms. And her performance as the minister for rorts, overseeing the BER, hardly speaks well of her economic credentials.
She also came up with the economically insane Medicare Gold policy that finished off any hope Mark Latham had of being PM. (Something he obviously remembers.)
Sorry mate, the NBN assumes nothing of the sort. The real argument is not what will be the main way we access the internet, but what will we need into the future. And just in case you’re confused, the future extends a little beyond next week! If you’re convinced that fast broadband is just for the geeks downloading porn, it’s time for you to just sit back & watch.
Mr Rabbit understands nothing about technology or economics. His ridiculous assertions about public debt & stimulus are a testament to that. If he doesn’t even understand the difference between the Federal Budget & the Australian Economy, how could he possibly understand the difference between a fibre & wi-fi?
It’s kinda insulting to ignore what Mr Mitchell has to say & trot out silly partisan rhetoric that only came into existence to be different. Mr Mitchell seems to have a track record that suggests we at least listen.
Mr Rabbit’s possession of a degree in economics & his subsequent scholarship tend to indicate he is not stupid, rather a deceitful liar. Let me think about that for a minute. Nope, I’m sure you would prefer him to be stupid. I’m not all that sure that Slater & Gordon would be considered “ambulance chasers” but if it makes you happy….
Dear oh dear. The point is that the government is creating a massive new state bureaucracy to force one broadband technology on the country. You may be too young to remember the “good old days” when we had one government run telephone company, but ask someone over 40 and you’ll find out that it was slow, incompetent and ridiculously expensive. A monolithic government run internet provider will be worse. The world has moved on from those sorts of things. More importantly, the world keeps moving on technologically at breathtaking speed. To gamble on one technology is insane, and to do it with borrowed money is beyond belief.
Slater & Gordon, by the way, are primarily ambulance chasers. What they do is get people who are unhappy with their TAC or WorkCover payment to come to them (lured by a no win/no fee promsie), and they try to get them more money. Of course, they only take on cases they’re pretty sure they will win. What happens in 99% of cases is that the TAC and WorkCover, wishing to avoid the legal expense, will increase the payout by a small percentage, which generally ends up being pretty well the amount Slater & Gordon take. They keep their high win record, and the client gets a dollar or two more. In some cases they may make a lot more, but that’s rare. Slater & Gordon do take on big high profile cases now and then, which is good publicity, but most of their money is made chasing ambulances.
And if you really think Abbott knows less about economics than the person who gave us the BER scandal and proposed Medicare Gold, you really are too thick for words.
What? There are really people who actually want the government having an internet monopoly in this country?
Wow, I thought that kind of thinking died out back in the 70s, or at least when the Wall came down.
Just to set the record straight…..I am slightly over 40 (but thanks anyway) & I clearly recall when Australia had the lead on many first world countries in telecommunications. This was despite slow & poor customer service. You may not be aware of it, but the copper wire infrastructure in Australia was considered worlds best practice into the 1990s. (I should note here that my early career like so many in our industry was in broadcasting & closely involved in the telecommunications side of things). There is another slight error in your anti government propaganda….the NBN is not an ISP, it is the cable infrastructure that will be wholesaled to the ISP of your choice. It seems to me that it is the role of government to provide the “highways” & for private enterprise to provide the cars, trucks & buses.
On the Slater & Gordon thing…..well I’m not defending a law firm, but I’m sure James Hardie & the sufferers of asbestosis wouldn’t agree with you. Nor the litigants in the Ok Tedi tailings litigation against BHP. Or the victims of medically acquired HIV. Just because a law firm specialises in med neg & class actions doesn’t make it an ambulance chaser.
My prediction, if I may be so bold is people will rely more on wired technology than 3G in the future.
If you want to predict where things are going, just have a look at where they are now.
Tomizone is becoming increasingly popular overseas, which may explain why you saw iPads that only had WIFI capability.
Then there’s Google TV. The shit is seriously going to hit the fan in 2-3 years time when people will have access to unlimited content, not monitored by a profiteering company like Apple in their living room. Most new TV / home entertainment units are coming internet enabled, with downloadable content you can watch in real time.
Provided you have a decent connection.
TV isn’t going digital, it’s going www, and I for one am thinking wtf am I going to do when Google adwords replace my beautifully butchered TV spots.
No, 5.02, we were not a leader in telecommunications in the days of Telecom (or the PMG, as it was before that). Countries like the US, where telecommunications was (and is) totally run by private enterprise had vastly better and cheaper services than we had. It is absurd to suggest otherwise.
It is very 70s thinking to believe that creating a giant government bureaucracy will ever be the way forward – Christ, we’ve only just rid of that stuff.
Just about every country in the world is advancing telecommunications by allowing private enterprise to do its thing – all government should ever do is make sure there is proper basic regulation. The reason Australia is a little (but not all that far) behind some parts of the world is that we have had far too much government interference. From Hawke to Keating to Howard to Rudd, governments have all slowed things down and got in the way. With an open market, we’d be years ahead of where we are. Telstra should have been fully sold off years earlier than it was, and the competition should have fully opened up.
In the end, the fact that Labor hasn’t done a cost benefit analysis for the biggest single government outlay ever in this country says everything about where the whole thing is headed. And the fact that they refuse to even release the minimal analysis they’ve done pretty well proves that the NBN is more about getting Labor elected than getting the public connected.
Actually, Telstra can already offer most businesses in Sydney and Melbourne the speeds being promised by the NBN. (When, and if, it gets going some time in the next seven years at God knows what final cost.) I just got a call this morning from Optus offering me speeds of up to 80Mbps right now for an extra $20 a month.
Also, I’m still laughing at 11.52’s prediction that wired is the way of the future. That’d be the first time in history that Telecommunications has gone backwards.
The point is, wifi will be everywhere – already is in a lot of countries. And yes, those wifi places will have high speed connectivity. But that doesn’t mean you have to stick cables into every house in the country.
Another good joke was the suggestion that our copper wire network was once world’s best practice. Maybe, if the world was Africa or the Eastern Boch back then. Most European countries had (and have) all their wiring underground for a start, which was a bit more reliable than all our overhead wires.
4:52. 11:52 here.
Do you even know what wifi is?
It relies on having cable. You’re thinking satellite / 3G / 4G.
Please laugh, but read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi
wifi relies on having a fast connection. it could be satellite but that would be stoopid.
man some people are dumb.
4.52 knows less than tony abbott.
Even mobile towers are connected to land lines eventually, so mobile internet without upgrading the copper cables it has to go through…
Bit silly.
I wonder if Tony thinks the cordless phone in his house is a mobile?
The Liberals policy included fibre-optic cabling – it just opposed the idea of spending billions to bring it directly to millions of homes where it isn’t wanted and to people who don’t want to pay the extra for it.
Labor’s policy’s is to enforce an internet monopoly – that’s why they blackmailed Telstra into agreeing not to use their existing cable TV network to compete against the NBN. (That network can already provide high speed internet to most people in the capital cities.)
And we all know what happens when you get a monopoly – bad service, slow delivery, and endless waste.
Anyway, this debate is settled by one simple point. Labor has refused from day one to implement even a basic cost benefit analysis.
None of us would open a milkbar without having a basic business plan, yet this lot want to spend $43 billion (and the rest) on their NBN (which was worked out on the back of an envelope when the plan they went to the previous election with proved to be unworkable).
That tells you everything you need to know.