Why the NBN still matters — and how it can be improved after the election
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Loading... - Lucas Wilson
- 18 May 2022
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There was a time, not long ago, when internet infrastructure policy was a big part of any federal election campaign.
Politicians in hard hats would spar over acronyms like FTTN and FTTP, and talk glowingly about the knowledge economy.
That time appears to have passed, and yet Australia's broadband is still bad — at least compared to other countries.
For more than a decade, our global rank has been slipping.
On the authoritative Ookla Speedtest Global Index, we're now 65th, or about 30 spots lower than in 2013.
And yet we've spent so much money on the network: more than $50 billion on fibre optic cables and those little green network boxes that have popped up on suburban verges everywhere.
How did we end up here?
When can we expect speeds like in Singapore, New Zealand, or the United States?
And why aren't we hearing more about internet infrastructure this election?
Remember something called the NBN?
Experts have called the prolonged and costly rollout of the National Broadband Network "Australia's greatest infrastructure disaster".
It's both the reason the national median speed for fixed-line broadband is low — and the only way to make it any better.
In 2009, the Rudd government announced it would build a modern fibre optic telecommunications network.
Those outside the network footprint would be provided broadband access through fixed wireless and satellite technologies.
All up, it was estimated the NBN would cost $41 billion.
But even as the first cables were being laid, there were calls to change the model.
In the lead-up to the 2013 election, the Coalition proposed what it said would be a cheaper version: Instead of running fibre to every premise (fibre to the premise, or FTTP), it would run fibre part of the way, and use the existing copper-and-cable network for the rest.
In practice, this mostly consisted of running the fibre to small neighbourhood network boxes, or nodes, which connected to the copper network servicing each house (fibre to the node, or FTTN).
The Coalition won the election and estimated the cut-down version would cost $29.5 billion and be completed by 2019.
A few months later, that estimate was revised to $41 billion.
By 2019, the cost had blown out to $51 billion, and the network was not complete.
Along the way, new technologies were introduced like fibre to the curb (FTTC) and fibre to the distribution point (FTTdp).
But none of these clocked speeds as fast as FTTP.
In late 2020, the Coalition and NBN Co (the government-owned corporation that operates the network) declared the network was complete, with a small fraction of homes waiting to be connected.
By then, NBN Co had told Senate Estimates that the network, including planned upgrades, would cost $57 billion.
But that wasn't the end of the story: the NBN wasn't fast enough.
The mostly FTTN network is now in the process of being upgraded to FTTP (yes, that was the original idea), which could push the total cost past $70 billion once it's completed later this decade. Read More...
