Podcasts are brilliant, they’re a free (usually) source of expert information you can listen to to entertain or inform yourself, while doing other more mundane tasks. The latest podcast is from NBNCo called ‘Get to know your NBN’ and is available now on SoundCloud.
The idea of an NBN podcast is actually a pretty good one, the project is one of Australia’s largest infrastructure projects ever and podcasts as a format allow long explanations of complex detail contained within the rollout. This podcast should have been around from the start of the project and focused on explaining the underlying technology, along with the intricacies of hiring an army of electrical engineers to deploy the infrastructure out to customers. The NBN have thousands of staff, and like they have in written form, the podcast could contain episodes that interview these staff, providing behind the scenes, on the ground insights into their role and the decisions they make on a daily basis.
I would love to hear NBN address common complaints about the NBN and what concrete changes they’re making to ensure things improve. Even dedicated episodes breaking down the condition of the copper we’re using or how the economics of fiber rollouts are changing. Or the recent emergence of a viable new technology to help improve speeds like FTTdp. The NBN wholesales the internet infrastructure to Retail Service Providers, so guidance on what the differences between providers would also assist some users.
Instead what we got was a podcast, 2 years out from the completion of the project, a podcast featuring the Chief Customer Officer Residential, Brad Whitcomb who simply engaged in generic PR lines that really revealed nothing we didn’t already know.
The podcast definitely needs do what actual podcasts do and that’s offer an RSS feed so podcast listeners subscribe in their mobile app of choice (read: PocketCasts). Comments are also disabled for the podcast, there’s also no show notes for the episode, clearly there’s work to do.