Information about the National Broadband Network implementation study has begun to seep out, with current indications suggesting it has established a path for network viability predicated on bullish forecasts for very high speed broadband take-up over the next eight years.

The NBN draft legislation released yesterday provides some more clues on what Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy have in mind for their grand re-design of the telecommunications sector—and is considerably different to what might have originally been envisaged ten months ago.

The revelation last week that the United Nations is going to get into the broadband policy and advocacy game was interesting enough in itself—what was more interesting was its seeming policy impulse, that it’s time that governments stopped thinking of the mobile communications sector as a revenue-raising opportunity and instead saw it as a key enabler of economic development.

The United Nations is poised to launch a new broadband commission in an effort to redress what Denis Gilhooly – principal adviser to the UN Office for Partnerships – describes as up to twenty years of government policies which hindered network rollouts.

Telstra is turning up the heat in the 3G arena, pushing its Next G network to 42Mbps peak speeds – double the previous maximum. And even with LTE on the horizon, the firm is already planning to wring even faster speeds out of HSPA, with a further upgrade to 84Mbps set for next year.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy and NBN Co executive chair Mike Quigley are certainly making themselves accessible to the media as they announce NBN rollouts in Tasmania and the mainland. And the media are certainly not taking a backwards step in throwing curveballs at the two this week.

I feel I owe the Department of Broadband an apology. I thought the only explanation for Stephen Conroy persisting with NBN Mark 1 was that his department wasn’t telling him the tender was deeply flawed and implicitly unworkable.

In a secret, draped room at Barcelona, a bunch of mobile executives gathered, lit some candles, turned out the lights, chanted a little, and joined hands around a table. The specter of WAP arose, the glass on the ouija board moved, and the letters spelled out “get it right this time.”

It’s that time of year again where CommsDay founder Grahame Lynch takes a look at back at year of issues to judge his 15 Australian telecom people of the year.

Is history important? Seemingly not in the fact-free environment that the Australian government’s policies on the NBN and Telstra separation have been framed.

In a blog post this week, Alan Kohler raised an interesting question: do we need both structural separation of Telstra and the NBN? (If you’re interested, you can find it by looking at Alan’s articles at www.businesspectator.com.au, headlined “The NBN solution was there all along”).