NBN fails us
THE NBN blame game is well and truly alive.
Despite the rollout being almost half complete and the debate over technology being past the-pointof-no-return, the knives are out again.
The trials and tribulations were brought to the forefront on Monday in the ABC’s Four Corners program, which highlighted how Australians are being left behind.
Our internet speeds pale in comparison with many of our neighbours and some Australians are even being left with nothing because their home is deemed too hard to connect at the time NBN comes to town. As to not slow the pace of the rollout, these properties will be connected at a later date.
Henry Laverty, 31, is one who has been left behind by the rollout.
“I have had no internet for six months whatsoever,” Mr Laverty said.
He moved to Elsternwick in March and was told the property was NBN ready. But after four technicians visited his apartment, the NBN said the infrastructure was not there to connect him. His property has since been changed to non-serviceable, leaving him in the dark as to when he will have internet access.
“They stole six months of internet from me because of bureaucratic nonsense that wasn’t even true,” he said. “The amount of money, time and mental and emotional stress this has caused me is incredibly upsetting.”
He is waiting to hear whether he is able to be connected with ADSL. In the meantime he stays late at work to use the internet and goes to his friend’s house to watch his favourite shows.
For its part, the NBN has recently said it will put special focus on connecting those who have been left in limbo.
But for those on the network, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing.
Four Corners focused heavily on New Zealand’s experience.
One of the country’s major incumbent telcos is building its network, providing full fibre to a majority of homes meaning much of the country has far superior speeds than most Australians.
On Monday, Malcolm Turnbull said Australia should have followed New Zealand’s model.
“They basically ensured the incumbent telco, the Telstra equivalent, split its network operations from its retail operations. And then that network company in effect became the NBN,” the PM said. “The virtue of that was you actually had a business that knew what it was doing, that was up and running, that had 100 years of experience getting on with the job.” But telecommunications consultant Paul Budde says such revisionist history is “absolutely” disingenuous. “It leaves the history out,” Mr Budde said. The debate about how to build the broadband network was taking place in 2005 to 2007 — when it was happening across the ditch. “At that point in time (then Telstra boss) Sol Trujillo wasn’t willing to do anything along those lines,” Mr Budde said. When Telstra was privatised under the Howard government, it opted not to separate its retail and wholesale business. “Under Howard’s reign, Telstra was privatised without any conditions,” he said. “Despite lobbying from people including myself asking for conditions in the privatising legislation, none of that happened.” As a result, Mr Trujillo was opposed to the government dictating terms. In the end, the Government created its own company to build out the wholesale broadband network leading to the structural separation of Telstra, and, in 2010, the telco agreed to migrate its copper and cable broadband networks to the NBN Co in a deal worth $11 billion.
“It was only when Sol Trujillo was kicked out and David Thodey took over that a deal between Telstra and the government could be finalised,” Mr Budde said.
In the early days of the NBN project, Labor put forth legislation that said if Telstra did not produce a voluntary structural separation, then the Government would break them up. Mr Turnbull and the Coalition opposed it.
Theoretically, NBN Co is designed to be a profitable company that can be sold off.
The mandate for the NBN to become financially viable and pay back the money spent on the rollout is at the heart of the pricing structure that the broadband wholesaler charges to retailers.
It has helped cause a blame game over slow speeds.
NBN Co says internet service providers are not buying enough bandwidth, leading to congestion and slow speeds.
According to Mr Budde, placing the business imperative on the NBN was the wrong move.
He believes there is a social aspect that should be absorbed by the government, reducing the need for complex and expensive pricing models that he sees as “the core of the problems” faced by end users.
“My argument from the very beginning has always been this is not just about internet access. This is also national infrastructure that can be used for education, healthcare, smart cities, smart buildings, you name it,” he said.