mortalwombats

Hi Phil,

I am in a Tel$tra Smart Community estate which has had fibre for over a decade. As fibre is already served here, NBN Co classify it as "already adequately served" and don't have any plans for this area. Download speeds are fine but even on the top plan, it is limited to 5mbit/sec up. They will not even allow new customers onto that plan anymore and force everyone onto 30 down/1 up I believe.

As someone who often needs to upload large files for my job, I have neighbours who are videographers, software developers etc. who are in a similar predicament. While Internode and Exetel have served these estates in the past, their prices are through the roof. Telstra run the show and have a monopoly that they exploit. We all seem to be in broadband speed purgatory forever. Would you ever consider serving these estates or have any insight from being an ISP?

Henry, a few years ago when the Donaghy story first broke and he followed up with a book - you interviewed him and wrote blog posts on the subject. Every one of these strongly defended the NBA while attacking Donaghy’s character. You seemed to take the position of the NBA’s attack dog more than anyone else in media. What has changed? Why now that you’re not working for ESPN and years have passed do you take a different view? And do you regret how you approached this previously?

This is very interesting and thanks for the additional context. At the time, it seemed like you were trying to destroy Donaghy's credibility, but he was already a convicted felon. I remember you pointing out in a story he told about Iverson getting three palming violations, but in reality it was only two. It just seemed a bit petty when the big fish to fry was whether there were other NBA referees or officials involved in influencing games. But perhaps this is some of my own bias.

I agree I can see that you were perhaps really probing for him to admit that he essentially fixed games or purposefully altered the spread. While I just assumed this, I guess it was important to prove it. This is something that would hurt both Donaghy and the NBA, and has been demonstrated in the latest ESPN article.

One thing that always seems to be glossed over is the 100+ phone calls to Scott Foster within a short period of speaking to his gambling connections. Do you think we will ever be able to find out what was discussed in these phone calls or how complicit Foster was in these activities?