Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's agile & innovative NBN accused of screwing the poor. Why am I not surprised?

“Examining the rollout of NBN technologies as of December 2016, our preliminary analyses suggest areas of greatest socio-economic disadvantage overlap with regions typically receiving NBN infrastructure of poorer quality.”  [The Conversation, 22 June 2017]

c|net, 23 June 2017:

The richer you are, the better the NBN getting rolled out in your area.

That's according to a new study that maps Australia's disadvantaged communities against the NBN technology they're receiving. The findings show that when it comes to accessing the technology of the future, the poorest in our community are being left behind.

Conducted by the Centre for Research Excellence in the Social Determinants of Health Equity at Flinders University, the study ranked Australia's richest and poorest communities according to ABS data. The team used the ABS's 2011 socio-economic indexes for area (SEIFA) and index of relative socio-economic advantage and disadvantage.

Matching these metrics against NBN technology, the researchers found "areas of greatest socio-economic disadvantage [shown on the left of the graph below] overlap with regions typically receiving NBN infrastructure of poorer quality."  

There is massive difference in the NBN technology rolled out to the least advantaged parts of our society (on the left-hand side) and the most advantaged. The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to be using fibre (shown in blue). 

Centre for Research Excellence in the Social Determinants of Health Equity

The Conversation, 22 June 2016:

This result tells a similar story to an early analysis by Sydney University’s Tooran Alizadeh of 60 NBN release sites that were announced in 2011. She found some of the most disadvantaged areas of Australia were not gaining equal access to the new infrastructure.

If we look only at major cities in Australia – where the level of fibre technology is higher overall – areas with the greatest disadvantage, while exceeding similarly disadvantaged areas nationally, still received significantly less FTTP and FTTN: 65% of areas with a SEIFA decile of one had FTTP and FTTN, compared with 94% of areas with a SEIFA decile of 10…. 

NBN services in outer regional areas

Composition of currently available* NBN service technologies in outer regional areas by Socio-Economic Indexes for Areas deciles (SEIFA). SEIFA decile 1 denotes the most disadvantaged areas, and SEIFA decile 10 denotes the least disadvantaged areas. 
Note: Decile 10 has been excluded from this chart because only one suburb falls into this category, whereas other deciles have between 129 (Decile 8) and 341 (Decile 4) suburbs.

Notes: 
(i) A suburb can have multiple NBN service types. The data is for services that are currently available*. (Services that are planned or where build has commenced is not included).  
(ii) Fibre denotes both Greenfields and Brownfields fibre, and includes Fibre to the Premises (FTTP), Fibre to the Building (FTTB) and Fibre to the Node (FTTN). 
(iii) HFC is Hybrid-Fibre Coaxial service. 

*Technology available at December 2016

Another perspective on the issue……..

How the early NBN roll out was originally determined.

Telecommunications Policy, Volume 41, Issue 4, Tooran Alizadeh,  and Reza Farid, Political economy of telecommunication infrastructure: An investigation of the National Broadband Network early rollout and pork barrel politics in Australia, May 2017:

Abstract

It has been argued that infrastructure unevenness rigidifies into more lasting structures of socio-economic and political privilege and advantage. This paper focuses on telecommunication infrastructure as the backbone of the fast-growing digital economy, and raises important questions about the early National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout in Australia. The paper asks whether there was any case of pork barrelling in the selection of early release sites that enjoyed a regional competitive advantage against other localities that had to wait several years to receive the infrastructure. The answer to this question then leads to a second question about the degree to which voting in the early NBN release sites has swung following the infrastructure rollout. In order to answer these questions the paper examines the voting patterns in the earlier NBN release sites versus all electorates in the Federal elections in 2007–2013 using the data available via Australian Electoral Commission. Findings show trends of politically targeted funding, followed by vote swing in the very next election.

State of Australian Cities Conference 2015, Tooran Alizadeh:

An analysis of the voting behaviours within the suburbs that were selected by governing Australian Labor Party, for the early NBN release, reveals that those suburbs that voted for the opposition Liberal/National Coalition and where the Coalition-held marginal seats were the key beneficiaries. This pattern occurred in all three states, as highlighted in Figure 3. In New South Wales and Queensland, electorates where either party held marginal seats had the most likely chance of receiving the NBN, followed by those were the Australian Labor Party-held safe seats. Chances of receiving the NBN in Victoria differed to the northern states, with electorates where the Australian Labor Party-held safe seats almost as likely as suburbs where marginal seats were held by the Liberal/National Coalition to receiving the NBN in the early rollout. Moreover, across the three states, the opposing Liberal/National Coalition-held safe seats were least likely to receive the NBN. With this said, fairly safe-held seats by either party also lucked out, although those held by the Australian Labor Party overall had slightly higher chances. Thus, in terms of receiving the NBN early rollout, the overall winners were those seats held marginally by the opposing Liberal/National Coalition. At the same time, the biggest loosers where the safe seats held by the opposing Coalition.

Abbott Government sets the clock back to the IT dark ages

Former Telstra CEO and Tony Abbott-appointee as NBN Co Chairman, Ziggy Switkowski, will earn a total of $700,000 on an annualised basis if he keeps the acting [NBN] CEO role for 12 months.

Apparently this amount of money may have purchased Prime Minister Abbott and Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull a change of heart on the part of Mr. Switkowski.

Switkowski said he had changed his mind about copper. “Copper has since turned out to be more robust than anybody thought,” he said.

“It was an example of assuming that the technology has been around 100 years [and I thought] it would be obsolescent quite quickly. And that proved to be wrong.”

The existing network is not failing, he said.

But under questioning from Labor’s Kate Lundy, he admitted that his view on the quality of Telstra’s copper was based on “anecdotal evidence” and his own experience when he was at Telstra (he was CEO from 1999 to 2004).

Lundy said Telstra had been talking up the condition of the copper network ahead of renewed talks with NBN Co on the use of the infrastructure for the revised FTTN plan, and that she was surprised NBN Co should apparently be taking Telstra’s side.

“I default back to my own history. It's constantly being maintained, remediated, upgraded,” said Switkowski. "My feeling is that in 2013, the copper network fault rate may be higher than it was in the time I was at Telstra, but perhaps not materially higher," he said.

This volte-face was revealed when.......

The Australian Select Committee on the National Broadband Network’s Inquiry into the National Broadband Network issued summons.

IT News 27 November 2013:

The newly-formed senate committee examining the NBN said it has been forced to summons NBN Co executives to appear as witnesses at planned hearings this week.

Kate Lundy, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on the national broadband network, said in a statement NBN Co executives including interim CEO Ziggy Switkowski, strategy head JB Rousselot, COO Greg Adcock, CTO Gary McLaren and CFO Robin Payne had been "reluctant to attend the committee in person".

"The committee is disappointed that NBN Co have taken this position," Lundy said.

"It is with regret that we have had to issue this summons, given the public commitment the Government has made to openness and transparency in all matters relating to the NBN."

The summons requires NBN Co to appear before the committee on Friday of this week.

Comment is being sought from an NBN Co spokesperson at the time of publication.

ZDNet 28 November 2013:

The membership of the committee is made up of three Labor senators and one Greens senator. The Coalition is allowed to appoint three of its own to the committee, but it is understood that the government didn't nominate any senators prior to today's hearing.

And those giving evidence at the Inquiry stated for the record what most bloggers already knew.

The Sydney Morning Herald 28 November 2013:

There are at least three reasons why the NBN Co expects to make less money from customers on the Coalition's network – which is expected to be about $17 billion cheaper to build than the previous Labor government's NBN.

First, businesses and families will not be able to buy the highest speed plans offered under Labor's NBN, which involved running fibre cabling to 93 per cent of homes around Australia.

The Coalition's alternative NBN, which piggybacks on copper telephone wires for about 70 per cent of households, could not offer “packages” of 250, 500 or 1000 megabits per second, government officials said on Thursday.

Second, it is likely Australians will download and upload less data across the Coalition's slower NBN, which would lower revenue forecasts.

And third, while Labor's NBN was essentially a government-owned monopoly, the Coalition's network will face infrastructure competition from telecoms companies offering other technologies such as HFC (hybrid fibre-coaxial).

The Australian 28 November 2013:

Under that new proposal the Coalition will connect nodes on street corners with fibre cabling and use Telstra's existing copper network to connect homes over the last few hundred metres.

Today the Department of Communications conceded that those changes would preclude the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node NBN from offering broadband plans above 40Mbps, which would hit revenue forecasts for both access costs and the increased data consumption which comes with the availability of faster download speeds.

Some 72 per cent of customers on the NBN are currently using plans that deliver download speeds of 25 megabits per second (or less), the same download rates promised by the Coalition's fibre-to-the node plan.

Including facts rural and regional bloggers knew only too well

http://youtu.be/BubtC6hZKYA

Then a media leak gave Internet users more bad news

SBS News 29 November 2013:

The government's 2016 delivery deadline for the national broadband network looks likely to be blown out, according to a leaked internal NBN Co document.

The coalition has promised to deliver 25 megabits per second (Mbps) broadband services to all homes by 2016, but a brief to the incoming government, obtained by Fairfax Media, says construction and technical issues mean that may not happen.

"There are a number of conditions that will impact on NBN Co's ability to undertake a volume (fibre-to-the-node) network rollout," the report says.

"Given the complexity of these conditions, it is unlikely that NBN Co will meet the 2016 deadline to upgrade the fixed network to enable Australians to have minimum download speeds of 25Mbps."

In addition to raising issues about timing, the document also cuts revenue projections by up to 30 per cent by 2021.

To add to the old and very old bad news

Financial Review 29 October 2013:

Some potential bottlenecks remain for Telstra’s network, however. Both global and local technology experts acknowledge the carrier’s decision to use thinner copper wiring in newer suburbs could reduce the maximum potential speeds by up to 10 per cent.

Others have criticised poor maintenance on the network, too, after years of patching the ageing telephone network with tape or plastic bags.

The Sydney Morning Herald 11 December 2003:

A month ago, before a Senate committee inquiry into broadband competition, Telstra's Bill Scales and Tony Warren rather let the cat out of the bag.

Warren, group manager, regulatory strategy, told the committee: "I think it is right to suggest that ADSL is an interim technology. It is probably the last sweating, if you like, of the old copper network assets. In copper years, if you like, we are at a sort of transition - we are at five minutes to midnight."

A few minutes later his boss, Bill Scales, attempted to bury this bit of candour: "The only point of clarification, just so that there is no misunderstanding, is that when we think about the copper network, we are still thinking about 10 years out. So five minutes to midnight in this context . . ."

Dr Warren (chiming in): "Doesn't mean five years."

Mr Scales: "It does not. It could be 10 or even 15 years, just to get some context into that."

This was Malcolm Bligh Turnbull's NBN promise to the Australian people during the 2013 federal election campaign

This was then Australian Communications Minister Malcom Bligh Turnbull’s promise to voters during the 2013 federal election campaign:

https://youtu.be/MzSDAGDIn44

On 12 December 2013, less than three months after the Liberal-Nationals Coalition won government, ITnews reported:

The Coalition is already predicting an $11.5 billion blowout to the cost of building its version of the national broadband network, but says it will still cost less than Labor's scheme….

the Coalition's own pre-election pledges proved overly optimistic, with costs expected to come in at "around" $41 billion rather than the promised $29.5 billion.

The 2016 forecast to bring 25 Mbps to all Australians has also been canned. Instead, the Coalition predicts it will be able to bring download speeds of up to 25 Mbps to 43 percent of premises in Australia's fixed-line footprint by that time.

The Coalition's approach "should also be able to deliver access to wholesale speeds of up to 50 Mbps to 90 percent of Australia's fixed-line footprint and wholesale speeds of up to 100 Mbps to 65-75 percent by 2019".

The Coalition will only guarantee these speeds to NBN Co's wholesale customers — internet service providers. There will no longer be a guarantee of what each end user will see in terms of speeds delivered to the home.

On 25 August 2015, almost two years after Abbott & Co formed government, itWire reported the deteriorating NBN situation thus:

It’s official. The Coalition version of the NBN, with its inferior copper technology, will cost as much as Labor’s all-fibre version – on the Government’s own figures.

In February last year – 18 months ago – I sat in a room full of IT journalists and heard Malcolm Turnbull’s deputy, Paul Fletcher, admit that the Coalition’s costings of Labor’s planned NBN had been exaggerated.

Before the September 2013 election Turnbull and Fletcher and Abbott and the rest of the Coalition, when they weren’t chanting ‘Stop the Boats!’ and ‘Axe the Tax’, were endlessly repeating the unsubstantiated talking point that Labor’s NBN would cost $90 billion, more than twice ALP Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s estimate of $39 billion.

Then Fletcher, in February 2014 said in a public forum, in a direct response to my question, and in front of dozens of witnesses, that NBN Co’s internal review of Labor’s NBN had costed it at $56 billion, much closer to Labor’s figure than the inflated estimate the Coalition took to the election.

When I quizzed him on the disparity between the Coalition’s $90 billion estimate of a FTTP network and the much lower NBN Co estimate (made by the management team the Coalition had put into place) of $56 billion, the best Fletcher could say was that the Coalition estimate “may have been a little high”.

Now it seems its estimate of its cut-down version of the NBN ‘may have been a little low’. The big advantage of the Coalition’s ‘multi technology mix’ model, in which millions of households will receive fibre-to-the-node rather than fibre-to-the-home, was supposed to be that it would be a lot cheaper.

Now the CEO of NBN Co, at the briefing accompanying the release of the company’s annual financial figures, has said that the Coalition’s ‘multi technology mix’ NBN will cost at least $46 billion and may cost as much as $56 billion – EXACTLY the same figure that Malcolm Turnbull’s handpicked experts had estimated the Labor FTTH NBN would cost…

That same day The Sydney Morning Herald ran with this:

A $15 billion blowout in the cost of building the national broadband network, partly caused by the slow rollout of key broadband services, could make the internet more expensive for Australians, M2 Group chief executive Geoff Horth said.

NBN on Monday revealed that the cost of building the project would increase by as much as 36.6 per cent to $56 billion up from the $41 billion previously forecast.

By 14 September 2015 The Sydney Morning Herald was reporting:

It is taking Telstra longer overall to repair phone lines damaged during extreme weather than previous years, leaving some consumers and businesses without service and ineligible for compensation.

However, the cost of fixing copper network outages in the street will soon transfer to the government-owned NBN Co, under a rewritten multibillion-dollar deal with Telstra…..

What many people do not realise is that if NBN Co were to announce this week it was rolling out fibre-to-the-node [FTTN] internet in Punchbowl, it would become responsible for making sure Mr Patane's mud-soaked copper wires were good enough for a 50 megabit per second service.

"If it's an area designated to receive FTTN, and the copper in the street needs to be remediated and can be remediated, then we will remediate it," an NBN Co spokesman said.

"If the copper cannot be remediated, then we will use one of the other technologies we have at our disposal to provide them with a service."

NBN Co becomes responsible for maintaining the copper lines between nodes and premises. Its latest corporate plan was full of warnings that degraded copper connections could delay the roll out and increase overall costs.

"The quality of this [copper] network is not fully known as there has been limited opportunity to evaluate the physical infrastructure at significant scale," it states.

NBN chief executive Bill Morrow also revealed Telstra did not release any information about the copper network until after the $11 billion deal was renegotiated.

"If there is a case to where the copper is just in such poor condition that we can't offer the speeds that the government has made us commit to, then we won't use copper in that area. If it means pulling in fibre or fixed wireless towers, that's what we'll do," he said on August 24.

Unlike the NBN started under Labor, which planned to replace the copper connections with end-to-end fibre at 93 per cent of premises, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has asked NBN Co to redesign the network to include the copper connection at millions of premises. About 4 million households and businesses would now get a boosted copper connection, while the remainder getting fibre, cable, satellite or fixed wireless.

As at 3 March 2016, almost two and a half years after the Liberals and Nationals introduced their supposedly ‘new, improved and cheaper’ National Broadband Network (NBN) the three-year construction plan for Angourie, Freeburn Island, Iluka, Wooloweyah and Yamba is seemingly no longer relevant and there appears to be no plan to connect most of the Northern Rivers to NBN via Fibre To The Node in the foreseeable future.

Given the aging population on the NSW Far North Coast, many of us may die still waiting for Malcolm Turnbull’s 'innovative' version of the NBN.

Adding to our NBN blues now come the scams

ACC, ScamWatch, 22 August 2017:

Watch out for NBN scams

The ACCC is warning the community that scammers are pretending to be from NBN to con victims out of their money and personal information.

Scamwatch has received 316 complaints this year about scammers impersonating NBN with nearly $28,000 reported lost.

“Scammers are increasingly using trusted government brands like NBN to trick people into falling for scams. Their goal is always to either get hold of your money or personal information,” ACCC Deputy Chair Delia Rickard said.

The three common scams reported to Scamwatch that involve scammers impersonating NBN are:

signing victims up to fake accounts – scammers will ring victims to ‘connect’ them to the NBN network for a low price. They will often demand payment be made through iTunes gift cards

gaining remote access to computers – scammers pretending to be from NBN will call a victim with claims there are problems with their computer. The scammer uses this ruse to gain remote access to the victim’s computer to steal valuable personal information, install malicious software or demand payment to fix ‘problems’ they have discovered

phishing – scammers impersonating NBN will call victims to steal valuable personal information like their name, address, Medicare number, licence number. The scammer may tell the victim they’re entitled to a new router, for example, and say they need these personal details to confirm the victim’s identity.

“Australians over 65 are particularly vulnerable to this scam with fraudsters using phone calls to target their victims,” Ms Rickard said.

“NBN will never phone you out of the blue to try to sign you up to a service over its network. NBN is a wholesaler meaning they don’t sell direct to the public. If you get an unsolicited call like this, it’s a big red flag that you’re dealing with a scammer,” Ms Rickard said.

“NBN will also never call you to remotely ‘fix’ a problem with your computer, or to request personal information like your Medicare number or your bank account numbers. Don’t listen to the reasons they give you for needing this information.”

“Finally, if someone ever asks you to pay for a service using iTunes gift cards, it is 100 per cent a scam. Legitimate businesses, especially those like NBN, will never ask you to pay for anything in this way,” Ms Rickard said.

People can protect themselves by following some tips:

If you’re ever in doubt about contact you’ve had from someone saying they’re from NBN trying to sell you an internet or phone service, hang up the phone and call your retail service provider to check if the person calling is a fraud.

You can only connect to the NBN network by purchasing a plan through a phone and internet service provider. Go to NBN’s website(link is external) to check if your home or business address is able to connect to the NBN network and see which phone and internet providers are available in your area.

Never give your personal, credit card or online account details over the phone unless you made the call and the phone number came from a trusted source.

Never give an unsolicited caller remote access to your computer.

If you think you have provided bank account or credit card details to a scammer, contact your bank or financial institution immediately.

People can also follow @Scamwatch_gov(link is external) on Twitter and subscribe to Scamwatch radar alerts to get up-to-date warnings.

Australian Federal Election 2022: after eight and a half years the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government has still not delivered a reliable NBN high speed broadband network

(Cartoon by Mark David / @MDavidCartoons)
INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIA, 16 February 2022

It’s been eight and a half years since the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government came to power and took a wrecking ball to key policy initiatives of the Rudd & Gillard Governments – solely on the basis that these were programs initiated by the Labor Party.

Even in Opposition, one of the Coalition's targets had been the National Broadband Network (NBN).

However, unlike the price on carbon, it could not erase the NBN but was forced to tolerate its existence.

By 23 September 2020 the Morrison Government and NBN Co had declared the initial rollout of a national high speed broadband network complete and fully operational. Apparently the only thing remaining was to plan for future increases in demand.

NBN Co then closed the door and, to all intents and purposes, walked away from most of the issues both it and the Coalition Government had created by using a patchwork of different connection types to supposedly meet the needs of over 25 million people in homes and businesses scattered across est. 7.692 million square kilometres of widely varying terrain.

In 2021 in response to Internet connection problems in his own electorate a member of the Morrison Government, 

Liberal MP for Berowra Julian Leeser, tabled a private members bill - supported by seventeen MPs and senators - which attempted to make NBN Co more accountable, build better infrastructure and improve customer service.

Julian Leeser, Telecommunications, retrieved 9 May 2022:

In response to the Bill, Choice’s Alan Kirkland said: ‘It’s unacceptable for people who live in a major city like Sydney not to have mobile coverage in their home, and even worse in a bushfire-prone area. We find it puzzling that the telco industry, particularly Telstra, has been able to get away with substandard service for so long.’

Professor Alan Fels, former chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, agreed that more needs to be done. He said: ‘For many years the telco industry has failed to make access to mobile phone services universally available, even in a number of suburbs. Yet such access is an essential service and vital in emergencies. After waiting for so long, it is clear that the only solution is legislation, backed by sanctions compelling it.’

That particular private member’s bill appears to have withered on the vine.

Also in 2021 a five-member panel conducted a review of regional telecommunications in Australia. One could be forgiven for wondering about the independence of this panel given a former Nationals MP for Cowper and, a business person who worked on the 2013 Nationals election campaign and previously derived consultancy work from a WA Liberal Government are among its members.

It came as no surprise that there were 16 key findings contained in the December 2021 review report, along with twelve recommendations. Although Finding 10 (highlighted below) raised an eyebrow.

Key Findings

1. Increased coordination and investment between the Australian, state and territory governments is needed to address a ‘patchwork quilt’ approach to connectivity in the regions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2

2. Local councils and other regional stakeholders are increasingly expected to facilitate telecommunications service delivery, but are not appropriately resourced to identify connectivity need and support the deployment of suitable solutions.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5

3. Supply side issues, including backbone fibre and spectrum access, are barriers to competition and innovation in regional telecommunications markets.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 2

4. There is an urgent need to consider the future of the Universal Service Obligation in order to provide reliable voice services to rural and remote consumers.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8

5. There are significant issues with the maintenance and repair of telecommunications networks, particularly copper landlines, in regional, rural and remote areas.

Relates to Recommendations: 7, 8

6. In instances of natural disasters and emergencies, connectivity is significantly impacted by power and network outages. This reduces access to recovery and support.

Relates to Recommendations: 3

7. Mobile coverage continues to improve, but expanding reliable coverage to priority areas is becoming more difficult.

Relates to Recommendations: 9, 10

8. Increased ongoing demand for data on regional, rural and remote mobile and fixed wireless networks is not always being met, causing network congestion issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6, 9

9. Although Sky Muster Plus has improved access to data, Sky Muster users are frustrated by insufficient data allowances, high latency and reliability issues.

Relates to Recommendations: 6

10. Current minimum broadband speeds are mostly adequate, but will need to increase over time.

Relates to Recommendations: 8

There is a certain irony in Finding 10 given that less than one month before the report was delivered to the Minister, review panel member Prof. Hugh Bradlow was tweeting the NBN on 1 November 2021 with this complaint: "Hello @NBN_Australia my Internet at Sandy Point, Vic has been out for 3 full days. Instead of all the excuses on your website (and don't blame the power - it is working just fine) can you actually give a committed time to get it fixed?

11. There are emerging technology options to meet the demand for data but their service performance has not yet been validated.

Relates to Recommendations: 4

12. Regional consumers, businesses and local governments experience difficulty in resolving telecommunications issues and providers are not adequately addressing the complex needs of regional users.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 7

13. Regional consumers, businesses and local government need access to independent advice and improved connectivity literacy to support them in making informed connectivity choices.

Relates to Recommendations: 1, 5

14. Predictive coverage maps and other public information do not accurately reflect on-the-ground telecommunications experience. There is significant misinformation about the availability of 

telecommunications services.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 9

15. The cost of telecommunications services remains high for vulnerable groups in remote Australia. This is impacting on their access to essential services.

Relates to Recommendations: 11, 12

16. Continued engagement with Indigenous Australians in regional, rural and remote communities is needed to address ongoing issues of access, affordability and digital ability.

Relates to Recommendations: 5, 11, 12

Over a year after the Morrison Government declared the high broadband network a success it was very evident that it was far from having that status.

Indeed, in some quarters opinion had been scathing.

InnovationAus.com: Public Policy and Business Innovation, 4 November 2021:

This week, Telstra claimed its 5G home broadband service will offer average speeds of 378 megabits per second to homes and businesses. In contrast, the average maximum speed on Fibre to the Node is 67 megabits per second, and up to 200,000 premises on the copper NBN can’t even get 25 megabits.

Imagine spending $50 billion on a copper dominated network, that’s not delivering minimum speeds required under law, and already losing its competitiveness.

That is the anti-genius of Liberal-National Party. Deceive. Implement bad technology policy at higher cost. Then spend more money to correct their mistakes. They led us down this path on broadband, and now want to do it with energy.

In 2013 the Liberals produced “modelling” known as the NBN strategic review. This elaborate sham had a sole purpose: provide political cover for abandoning fibre.

This document was then used to claim a multi-technology mix of second-rate technologies was going to be $30 billion cheaper than a full-fibre NBN.

This untruth, repeated at nauseum, relied on two tricks.

The first was pretending the copper dominated network being rolled out costs $41 billion. False. It is costing $57 billion.

The second was to claim the original plan to deploy a fibre network to 93 per cent of Australia would cost $72 billion, rather than the near $50 billion forecast under Labor.

The latter claim, which the Liberals clung to desperately, was decimated in a front-page report in the Sydney Morning Herald in February 2021.

It revealed that in late 2013 the Liberals were explicitly told deploying Fibre to the Premises was dramatically cheaper than what they claimed in public.

That advice was redacted and kept secret for seven years, and it is clear why.

If the redacted costs for fibre, along with real-world interest rates, were fed back into the strategic review “modelling”, the original fibre rollout would have cost around $53 billion.

Notably, Minister Fletcher stopped repeating his $30 billion claim since the unredacted extracts appeared in print, because he always knew it to be false.

The NBN copper rollout has now become a business case liability and looks increasingly uncompetitive against 5G.

The NBN HFC network, which relies on Foxtel Pay TV infrastructure, is arguably the most expensive and unreliable deployment of its sort in the world.

Tens of thousands of Fibre to the Curb modems across the country are also frying during storms because lightning is being conducted over the copper that leads into the home.

The government is now saying Fibre to the Curb technology will not deliver gigabit speeds, despite promising it would only a year ago.

Every fixed-line technology deployed by the Coalition is beset by technical or business case problems, except for Fibre to the Premises – Labor’s original technology of choice.

As the 2022 federal election date drew nearer the Morrison Government on 23 March bestirred itself enough to announce that:

The Morrison Government has welcomed NBN Co’s announcement that 50,000 homes and businesses will be able to order an upgrade to their NBN connection, delivering ultra-fast speeds at no upfront cost.

These are the initial customers to have access to upgrades that will allow 8 million homes, or 75 per cent of premises in the NBN fixed line footprint, to access to ultra-fast speeds by 2023.

Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts, the Hon Paul Fletcher, said the on-demand upgrades will give more Australians access to the fastest broadband speeds available on the NBN.

There is no mention of ongoing costs and pricing which remain an issue.

I am honestly not sure that this is anything more than a typical election year 'announceable' which will sink down into the pile of past unmet expectations raised concerning NBN high speed broadband.

Regardless of whatever media releases the Morrison Government is sending out, the dissatisfaction with the NBN high speed broadband network remains 12 days out from election day…..

The Guardian, 8 May 2022:

The NBN rollout may have been completed, but Richard Proudfoot is still using an old ADSL internet connection, and he has to juggle his Zoom meetings around his partner’s work.

He runs a small IT business from his home in Maleny, on the Sunshine Coast, about 100km north of Brisbane, while his partner is a part-time university lecturer.

Due to their property’s terrain, NBN Co has told him he is not able to connect to fixed wireless or fixed line. While he has the option of satellite, many users have reported poor speeds and reliability. He has stuck with ADSL for the time being because he believes the tree cover and weather would adversely effect his service.

“We are very, very dependent on a reliable internet ADSL connection. To make it work for us given the limitations, we schedule internet use based on need ... we cannot do concurrent Zoom meetings so we rearrange diaries in order to cope.”

The Coalition and NBN Co declared the rollout of the then $51bn network complete in 2020. There are now 12.1m homes able to connect, and 8.5m homes on the NBN.

The high-speed network was meant to resolve the digital divide in Australia, but two years on from its completion there remains a stark difference between the haves and have-nots; those who have a decent internet service and those still waiting or suffering from poor speeds and reliability on their NBN service.

The Liberal MP Julian Leeser wrote a scathing review of the NBN in a submission to the federal government’s regional telecommunications review last year, describing it as “too slow with countless delays”.

Leeser’s northern Sydney electorate, Berowra, is a mix of suburban and semi-regional locations, meaning his constituents are living with the spectrum of NBN technologies, from fixed to wireless and satellite.

“There is too much variability in the quality of coverage across the various NBN technologies,” he said.

The pandemic forced many people to work from home and rely on their home internet more than ever before.

Leeser said that teachers had been forced to work out of McDonald’s car parks to leech the wifi for online classes, people were unable to work from home or undertake telehealth appointments, and some had even been forced to move out of the area due to their poor NBN connection…...

Many Guardian Australia readers raised problems with the project when asked what their major concerns were ahead of this month’s federal election.

One reader, Cate, who lives in Killarney Heights in the Sydney electorate of Warringah, missed out on full fibre or cable that some nearby suburbs have access to.

She says she was originally connected via the Optus internet cable but was moved over to fibre-to-the-node (FttN) on the NBN.

“Using Optus cable we rarely had dropouts. I could count on one hand the number of times over five years that we lost internet for any noticeable length of time,” she says.

Now she says they experience daily interruptions.

“Our modem takes five to 10 minutes to reconnect so this can often mean at least 25 to 50 minutes a day of disruption to our service and this is still considered acceptable by NBN and they will do nothing to fix it.”

She says she is rarely able to get the top speeds promised. In speed test results Cate provided to Guardian Australia taken between 2pm and 3pm on a weekday, the results ranged from 1.3Mbps to 40Mbps, compared to 100Mbps on her previous Optus cable…..

Around 119,000 premises that are connected to the NBN via FttN still can’t get the minimum 25Mbps download and 5Mbps upload speeds. Due to the ageing copper and environmental conditions, FttN connections will continue to get worse over time.

In February, the NBN CEO, Stephen Rue, admitted the bit rate – the number of bits that can be transferred across the network per second – would degrade between 2% and 4% every year on average across the 4m FttN connections.

The other looming factor is people switching the NBN off. Customers frustrated with the NBN might look to 5G or another service like Elon Musk’s Starlink, and threaten the ability of the network to make a return on the taxpayer investment.…...

Something to think about standing in line at the polling booths on Saturday 21 May 2022.