NBN: L2 VPN's and turn-key NSP Telco solutions

Tony Simmons recently wrote a piece suggesting that the Banks could be their own Telco using the NBN. Banks in Australia and New Zealand have run co-operative businesses for many years. A couple that spring to mind: the Australian Payments Clearing Association and Bankcard, Australia's first Credit Card in the 1970's, was run by "Charge Card Services".

There are many advantages, not just cost, but Security [protection against hacking/attacks], very strong Identification of source and destination, and strong independent logs and auditing of transactions.

In fact, the L2 VLAN abilities of the NBN allow a whole range of very interesting non-switching-provider networks.

• Federal Government is an obvious one.

There's already ICON around Canberra, but every Agency has different supplier agreements and the Telcos play "divide and conquer" with them. There only needs to be one "GovieNet".
Such a single network would allow employees, contractors and firms to have certified connections (even at home) to link their Certified Office Laptops - and at reasonable speed to FileServers etc!
[No "BYO" equipment allowed on a Secure network.]

• Voice, secure email and secure file/record sharing/transfer benefit hugely from this...

• Share the FedGov network with Local Govt, who have no clout and few resources, except for the biggest like Brisbane City Council.

• Banking, finance and news are obvious communities of interest that have large budgets and expensive information products.

• e-Health, especially between Hospitals, Labs, Imaging and GP's/super-clinics would greatly benefit. The slam-dunk applications for e-Health are:
•  backups and secure, trusted and logged data-sharing, and
•  communications: email, 'flash messages', booking/calendars (gotta trust others)

• community-of-interest VPN's (Closed User Groups in X.25 network parlance) could finally make EDI realise its potential!

All the smaller grocery shops, their suppliers, their transporters and their EFTPOS facility suppliers have a common interest. Especially when in the central network, IDS and IPS (intrusion detect/prevent) equipment can be coupled with 802.1X [port-based network access control]

I think when these existing Industry groups and associations realise how simple it will be to create their own closed/controlled networks that not only can they provide something of real value, but create for themselves an on-going revenue stream of real value to members (to support the admin and lobbying), there will be a very long queue.

But to enable this, there will have to be turn-key providers that offer complete 'NSP/VPN' packages, including the Telco registration/NBN interconnect forms, or to sign-up with an existing Telco...

Some orgs (Banks) will already have their own secure & high-quality hosting facilities.
Others will need to lease them as well.

The complete package is to add Voice+Data mobile for subscribers.

If Business realised the benefits, cost reductions, security benefits, (radically) improved productivity and control/flexibility L2-VPN's might offer them singularly and communally, they would be knocking down the doors for NBN connections.

But the critical enabler is those turn-key solutions...
People outside Telco's think there's a whole sea of Secret Sauce needed.
I think if it was as simple as a PABX, and the existing collective bodies understood this funding-freebie, there'd be a stampede.

Turnbull wants a reason.: There's one that goes to the heart of his Politics and Constituency.