The debate about the future of Australia’s NBN raged on in 2015, and remains strongly divided along political lines. Malcolm Turnbull, who began the year as communications minister for the ruling Liberal Party and ended it as prime minister of the whole country, pushed on with his multi-technology-mix (MTM) strategy, which, as the name suggests, favours a pragmatic approach to infrastructure technology, encompassing fibre-to-the-x (FTTx), HFC, fixed wireless, satellite, and in future, G.fast.
However, the opposition Labor Party has its own interpretation of MTM: ‘Malcolm Turnbull’s Mess’. The reworked network is running behind schedule. It was forecast to cost A$41 billion (€26.1 billion)–compared to the previous government’s estimate of A$43 billion for its FTTP-led network–A$29.5 billion of which would come from the public purse and the rest from the private sector.
However, this summer the government revealed that the total spend to build the network will come in at A$46 billion-A$56 billion. In addition, according to shadow communications minister Jason Clare, anecdotal evidence suggests that engineers are having to replace more of Telstra’s aging copper network than first thought. Clare summed it up thusly: "Massively over budget, behind schedule, a raft of broken promises, an unrealistic rollout plan…and dodgy copper that needs to be fixed."
