this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2026
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It's almost like privatisation of infrastructure has always been a terrible idea ๐ฏ
This one's a little more nuanced. The government owned (and sold off) the old copper phone lines. And yes, that sale hurt the people for two decades.
The government did not have 5G data towers. Hell, they didn't have 3G data towers. There were some 2G towers, but most of the mobile network at the time of the Telecom sale was analogue.
They have had government assistance/incentives while deploying mobile towers in rural areas, but they have pretty-much always privately owned their mobile telephony infrastructure.
My thesis on this is that instead of having a private company build and own the telecom networks (and have a monopoly in many regions), and then customers pay for it, we could save money as a community by just building it ourselves, like we once used to, and selling the services at cost (or less than cost depending what the infrastructure is, like roads or trains)
I remain pretty sceptical that privatisation has ever been a net good for the community, ever.
I agree that is the best approach. And so did Kevin Rudd. You're describing NBNCo, and I think that's been a success - despite a decade of lies and resistance from the coalition about its successes. The two big issues with this approach are: