And now he government will effectively fix it. Maybe they will subsidise it with our taxes to make us all feel we are getting a good deal.

Coppers latency, poor backhaul out of the cities and that ADSL is useless over 5 kms from exchange.

It is a good deal for consumers and business. I am looking forward to retiring site servers and lowering the cost of business and communication for me.

Coalition numbers indicate a net cost of 17 billion to the taxpayer. The numbers do not take into account productivity improvements.

So you see no problem. Now I understand why you don't understand the solution.

Problem 1 - Speed

Australia has one of the slowest average internet speeds in the developed world.

As other countries roll out fibre to the home we are falling further behind.

Australia’s average speed of just 1.7Mbps is less than 1/30th of the average speed available in Japan, and about 1/3 of the average speed in the USA.



Copper has had it's day. Fibre will be the new backbone network for many decades.


Problem 2 - Issues caused by Speed (in case it needs spelling out)

Slow speeds and poor universal access retard business opportunities, reduce mobility, hurt regional australia, reduce the ability to make savings in health, education, transport etc, etc, etc. These things will become more and more important as the population ages and the costs of providing these services on a reducing tax base increase.

Technologies like cloud computing and future use will require faster and faster networks.

Those countries without the structural means to take advantage will become technological backwaters.


Problem 3 - Lack of competition leading to higher costs

Telstra Wholesale owns most of the current copper backbone. In smaller markets private firms cannot afford to put in the backbone kit needed to offer a competing retail product.

This leaves the whole market to Telstra Retail to exploit without competition.

Collusion between Telstra Wholesale and Telstra Retail also reduces competition in all markets.


Problem 4 - Access

Many parts of regional and big city Australia do not have access to higher speed internet due to "rims" and other copper network structural failings and private companies cherry picking the best areas. Even suburbs close to the big cities suffer.

Because of lack of universal access governments can't penetrate enough homes to replace traditional services with internet based services.

And the NBN will be a govt asset returning a income which will pay off the asset. This asset will eventually be sold with the money going to the taxpayer.

I think the classic bit of NBN slagging was from Alan Jones. On learning about a new record speed for fibre optic technology Alan Jones recommended that NBN use fibre.

News ltd has been particularly ignorant insisting we would need to re Cable our houses at great expense.

Other mistakes include claiming ADSL+ is 24 mbs when it is 4 mbs to 23 mbs. Fibre will also give synchronous speeds much higher than copper.

The only debate is whether the dollars add up as good value to the economy. We will find out.

I believe the analysis takes that into account.

NBN is a big white elephant.

The same was said about snowy hydro.

As fibre penetrates the world the applications and use of communications requires faster and faster speed. For many our position near the bottom of the pile is untenable now and for all of us it will be untenable in the future.

Ned the amazons, microsofts and googles of the world don't agree with you. Companies that continue to pay for all their own infrastructure and salaries to support it will wilt under competition.


As you haven't explained why you think this I can't reply to it. I'll just say that removing the situation where Telstra Retail is the only company that can afford to compete because of it's historical advantage and link to Telstra Wholesale will address the issue of competition in the retail ISP space.

They are, the NBN.


You and Doctor No will be flying across the plains on that big white elephant in the future thankful that nobody listened to you

Boosting the average domestic speed won't help when the pipes to other parts of the world don't match. Currently there's already a bottleneck to pretty much any country - especially the US and Europe, which are major trading partners. A higher speed domestically will currently mean more of a bottleneck internationally - and this is an area that can't be ignored.

I'm all for getting fibre rolled out, although I think the scheme is a bit expensive for what's being achieved. However there needs to be investment in the overseas links to match the domestic investment otherwise it could end up being a white elephant as internationally there wouldn't be increased competitiveness for Australia - it could go the other way.

While I agree that improving international links is desirable a lot of the benefit will be realised in business to business, business to consumer and govt to consumer - all within australia.

Can you give us some examples?

Not sure if you realise, but Australia is part of a very globalised economy - improving only domestic links will not lead to that much of a benefit.