This week’s capitulation – that’s what it is – by communications minister Paul Fletcher sets us on a course that hopefully will see Australia start moving in the right direction again as we head further into a digitally-enabled future. It’s a welcomed move, but we’d be wise to take a close look at the detail in his National Press Club address before getting too excited.
NBN Co will now spend $3.5 billion replacing inferior connections with the fibre they should have had from the beginning. Of course in all likelihood this will blow out. After all, the Coalition’s so-called multi-technology mix model was supposed to be built for under $30 billion but currently sits in the company’s accounts at more than $50 billion.
Unfortunately fibre is only going to be rolled out ‘on demand’ and will come at a much higher monthly subscription fee – although the specifics on this remain unclear. Of course, when Bill Morrow was still CEO he foreshowed exactly this scenario. Morrow told the Parliamentary NBN committee that if people wanted high speed Internet they’d have to pay for it. Those chickens just came home to roost.
If there was any doubt that this is an election move Fletcher specifically point out the benefits for rural and regional customers. This includes a $300 million allocation targeted at the much criticised rollout in the bush. Many of the millions of Australians struggling with slow and unreliable broadband connections live in highly contestable rural seats held by increasingly nervous National Party MP’s.
A white flag moment was inevitable. No government could risk another election with the NBN in the mess that has resulted from Tony Abbott’s politically-inspired demand that his communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, ‘demolish’ Labor’s state-of-the-art fibre model.
To be fair to Mr Turnbull, he took advice from a bunch of ‘techie’ mates who should have known better. He also relied on the communications department and its then head Drew Clarke – who happily now sits on the NBN Co board having retired from the public service. Clarke and his engineers should have warned that Telstra’s copper network had been neglected for years in anticipation (by Telstra) that it would be replaced with fibre.
NBN Co has spent billions of dollars on dud technology. And don’t let anyone tell you this is just an upgrade. Most of the outdated FTTN technology out in the field will be redundant and will have to be junked.
In his Press Club address Fletcher lauded the NBN’s ability to deliver a ‘baseline’ speed of 25 Mbps. Chorus NZ (the Kiwi equivalent of NBN Co) is already delivering gigabit speeds to many of its customers. Over time they reduced their per premises installation cost by around 40 percent. The same would no doubt have occurred here had we stuck to the original business plan.
Curiously, we are now told that NBN Co can roll out fibre for less than half the costing they’ve used in every financial report since 2013 to justify using copper.
Fletcher is to be congratulated for having the courage to admit the mistakes of his predecessors. Stephen Conroy and Kevin Rudd have been vindicated. This is a total surrender and a complete repudiation of the Abbott / Turnbull folly.
Due to the Coronavirus people have become more accustomed to working from home. This trend, which was already evident, will no doubt continue. Real estate experts are predicting an increase in decentralisation as many more companies and their employees realise the advantages, both economic and social, from escaping overcrowded and expensive capital cities. The pressure for a proper NBN was bound to increase.
We’ve just wasted the better part of a decade due to petty political point scoring. As I’ve been saying for more than five years now, we need #BetterBroadband!
Congratulations to all the hard working NBN Co employees who have worked diligently rolling out what was the best technology they were allowed to use but who will now be able to say they are back to building a 21st Century broadband network – well sort of!
Laurie Patton is Vice President of TelSoc and the former CEO / Executive Director of Internet Australia, on whose behalf he launched the campaign for #BetterBroadband. The views expressed here are his own. This article first appeared in The Lucky General.
Laurie Patton is a prominent public interest advocacy and marketing/communications practitioner. He is a former political advisor, journalist and media executive. He is the NSW regional convenor for the Australian Republic Movement.
Comments
17 responses to “A white flag moment on the NBN was inevitable.”
If one enters into a contract with a telco to supply a high broadband speed, I assume they then contract NBN to lay the fibre optic cable to your premise.
What happens if you move house or business premise?
the people that moves in after you will enjoy the fibre already installed ….
I suppose they might even be able to get reliable service even if they pay for (and get) slower speeds
The internet connection is no longer a want but a necessity. You cannot find out what sort of speed is possible or even if there is a connection available when purchasing a property. Can you imagine buying a property and finding out that there is no town water available! When compared to the average speed of our neighboring countries we are woefully slow. It is an expensive unreliable joke!
anyone should be able to type in a premise address and check the internet connection type and possible speeds
Based upon my experience, there may be “hard working NBN Co employees”, but the implementation model is a mess regardless of the technology. Following 7 months, days of my time on the phone, 5 NBN technician visits and a TIO complaint, I finally appear to have internet that doesn’t collapse every time it rains.
Agreed, the base issue was copper, but from what I can see, paying low rates to separate contractor technicians with ISPs between customers and NBN and endless buck passing means that we have a very strange system. Certainly the Coalition mucked up the technology but even what we have is organised on the cheapest basis.
Heaven help customers who don’t have the time and bureaucratic experience I did.
I had a similar experience and as an online worker it can be VERY frustrating. A large mobile data plan is a necessity while the problems and long phone calls to resolve the internet problems. Even now some nights can be unbearable slow, it is better to use mobile data.
Since we were connected to the NBN our speed has dropped to a ridiculous level and we are only 12 kilometres from the “House on the Hill”! Abbots decision to junk Labor’s NBN roll out was the biggest planning disaster we have had in this country since the days when the Colonies could not agree on a common railways gauge .That took generations and great expense to fix!
“Fletcher is to congratulated”? Give me a break. He had no choice as the article points out elsewhere. The NBN has been a disaster under the COALition’s watch for nearly a decade, and the farce is set to continue for a minimum of another three years and still will not deliver. I can smell an election in the wind.
“To be fair to Mr Turnbull, he took advice from a bunch of ‘techie’ mates who should have known better.”
I think you’re being very generous to the then Comms Minister. At the time, the talk around the industry was that the copper plans were a guarantee of trouble and were just not up to it. The Minster very deliberately chose a solution that sent business towards mates & donors (remember the $100M “thanks” to Optus for wires that were already useless), rather than a overall cheaper solution (fibre) that had been provided by the Labour #&*##@*! government.
The government and their NBN glove puppet members cannot be allowed to rest until the NBN is offering the same combination of speeds and cost to the consumer that is available in New Zealand. Given the expenditure required, that will take all the economic management expertise which the LNP claims to possess. In the meantime, the spinning continues and we are expected to believe every word as gospel from the usual suspects.
Malcolm should have chosen his advisers more carefully. It is not as if Telstra had not warned that the copper network was at five minutes to midnight. More money changed hands Telstra’s way as a result of the change of course from that negotiated by Labor. This backflip is justification for a Royal Commission as we cannot afford to squander so much public money, least of all when the economy is almost on its knees.
The NBN fiasco must surely now put an end to the myth that the Liberals have any talents in managing an economy; this was economic vandalism on a national and enduring scale. The nation’s economic well-being skewered by neoliberal ideology.
Upgrading to what sounds very much like a ‘user pays’ system was always going to be the Coalition way (why would they bother with users who couldn’t pay?). With a little pork fat to grease the wheels, of course.
Upgrading to what sounds very much like a ‘user pays’ system was always going to be the Coalition way (why would they bother with users who couldn’t pay?). With a little pork fat to grease the wheels, of course.
Just reading Turnbull’s latest book and how great he was in “correcting” the mess left by Rudd and Conroy. One of the more unconvincing chapters in his book. He likes to think that he is one of the more knowledgeable people in Abbott’s government, and maybe he was which doesn’t say much of the rest.
As a footnote: I live in a street in the Illawarra area. I have had multiple internet providers and even after a number of supposed fixes I still can’t stream music of radio or movies in most parts of the day without the internet squeezing down to “unstreamable” speeds or failing al together. And although I don’t use it, the upload speed has NEVER reached the “guaranteed” 5 Mbs.
So much for a modern internet connection!
recalling Nick Ross, then Tech&Games editor at ABC, wrote before the 2013 election that the coalition’s proposals were neither cheaper nor faster. After the libs got in, and Turnbull was made Comms Min, Mr Ross says he was warned the ABC didn’t want to upsert Mr T, had NBN articles ‘moderated’ and even held back, before he eventually left.
We have been connected this week by NBMCo, fiber to the home. Thank god we were not connected last year as scheduled. At last we are going to get a modern national broadband system.
Once again they are doing this for the richest people who can afford the most expensive plan. How surprising.
And given we can’t trust them with pork barreling, does it mean Liberal and marginal electorates will also get served first?