Australia’s shadow communications minister on Wednesday launched a stinging attack on the government’s handling of NBN.
In a speech delivered at the CommsDay Congress in Melbourne and posted to his Website, Jason Clare warned that the decision by Austral ia’s prime minister and former communications minister Malcolm Turnbull to adopt a multi-technology approach to NBN, rather than rely heavily on fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP), "might cut it for the next decade or so, but won’t meet the needs of Australians in the long term."
He pointed out that telcos and governments in many countries are driving towards all-fibre networks.
"In our region, South Korea, Japan, Singapore all have fibre networks. Across the ditch, New Zealand already has fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) – now it’s replacing it with fibre-to-the-premises," Clare said.
NBN was planned as an FTTP-led network under the previous Labor government. However, when the Liberal/National coalition swept to power in 2013, Turnbull immediately set about implementing his multi-technology mix (MTM), which as the name suggests uses a combination of access technologies led by FTTN, with copper and HFC used to connect premises, in a bid to deliver the new network for a lower cost.
The reworked network was forecast to cost A$41 billion (€26.1 billion), compared to the previous government’s estimate of A$43 billion, and would be paid for by A$29.5 billion of public money, with the rest coming from the private sector.
However, over the summer the government revealed that the total amount of funding required to build the network is expected to come in at A$46 billion-A$56 billion.
Furthermore, Clare cast doubt over the government’s pledge to connect the majority of Australians to the NBN by the end of 2016.
"That’s not going to happen. They are way behind that target. The NBN won’t get to everyone now until at least the end of this decade," he said.
In addition, Clare claims that the quality of copper lines in some areas has degraded to such an extent that NBN is having to replace them with new copper.
"I have been talking to some contractors in the field recently to get a feel for how good the coppe r network is – and how much of it needs work or needs to be replaced. They have told me that NBN’s working assumption is that 10% of copper pairs in fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) areas will need remediation. But in places like Newcastle and the Central Coast, closer to 90% of the copper pairs have needed work. In some places the copper is so bad it has to be replaced. Replacing old copper…with new copper," he said.
"This is the real MTM – Malcolm Turnbull’s Mess. Massively over budget, behind schedule, a raft of broken promises, an unrealistic roll out plan…and dodgy copper that needs to be fixed or is being replaced with more copper."
Being a politician, Clare concluded his speech with an election rallying call.
"The Australian Labor Party is the party that conceived and started building the NBN. A fibre NBN. We are the party of fibre. The Liberal Party is the party of copper," he said.
"If you vote for the Labor Party at the next election you will be voting for more fibre."
