There is a glaring and gaping hole in the Coalition plan announced yesterday to replace the National Broadband Network (NBN). Despite being a vastly inferior solution, it simply does not add up with their own statements made during the announcement.
Certainly, I’m not talking about whether their costings of almost $7b are “right” or “wrong” – (I’ll leave that up to the accountants) – but I could not help but be disturbed by some massive assumptions they appear to have made in regards to the formulation of their policy.
During the press conference, Liberal communications spokesman, Tony Smith indicated that there did not appear to be any indication of any likely “significant uptake” of the NBN once it is rolled out.
| Coalition Unveils Broadband Policy |
“Smith says the Government is spreading a myth that Australians want to pay for 100Mbps services, and realistically, the demand just isn’t there.”
Firstly, nobody is suggesting that everyone will want or need 100Mbps – there will be many options between 10Mbps and 100Mbps available for people to choose from, as demonstrated by these iiNet/NBN plans.
Secondly, the recent deal between Telstra and NBN Co to migrate all of Telstra’s copper-network-based customers onto the NBN as the network is progressively rolled out blows the Coalition argument completely out of the water.
Almost every premise in Australia will need to be connected to the NBN’s fibre network – (and therefore generate return to NBN Co) – because the decaying Telstra copper network would be decommissioned. Not only would this obviously be a significant uptake of the network, it would be close to 100% uptake in fibre-enabled areas. Even if 50% of the people who currently pay for a copper-based POTS service decided not to continue with a fixed line service on the NBN, the remaining 50% is still a huge number.
Sorry Coalition, but if even basic numbers and concepts like these are beyond your grasp, I can’t trust the rest of your numbers and concepts in regards to this. Especially when your proposal seems like it was baked up on the back of a napkin over breakfast yesterday morning before the press conference. You clearly do not understand the difference between “broadband” and “internet” – although related, they are NOT the same thing.
The Coalition completely missed the point for the sake of having a policy that looks good to the average Joe Schmo, who will only see the difference between $7b and $43b. Clever politics maybe, but terrible policy. Big fail for them on this one.