Australia - NBN has made technology an election issue like never before

[abc] Technology has become an election issue like never before with the NBN at the heart of the matter. Neither side has made a good case for having it or not having it so let's have a look at what we know.

Where the numbers come from

Virtually all of the numbers that are being bandied around by both sides come from an impenetrably dense tomb [tome??] called the Implementation Study for the NBN by McKinsey MPMG which cost $25 million to commission. For all those people who think it's been worked out on the back of a napkin, that's a mighty big napkin.

There's an almost total lack of graphs and spreadsheets in it and the key facts are spread out all over the place. Few people can have read it and fully understood it but one man who has is Mark McDonnell from financial specialists BBY. He gathered all of the figures and reengineered them to form tables and graphs which show how everything was worked out and what assumptions had been made to get to them. He's not happy.

NBN laid bare