Featured, News - Thursday, September 9, 2010 15:14 - 5 Comments

NBN Co now a wireless telco: Slattery

Labor’s deal with the independents to roll out the National Broadband Network to regional areas first means it will now necessarily have to place a big emphasis on the wireless component of the network’s construction, according to Pipe Networks managing director and long-time NBN critic Bevan Slattery.

The original design of the NBN called for wireless broadband — along with satellite — to bridge the gap between the 90 percent of the population that will receive fibre connections to their homes. The number of customers that will receive wireless has shrunk with Labor’s pledge to extend the fibre to a further 3 percent of households.

But according to Slattery, the new outside-in focus of the NBN will mean that it will primarily be a wireless telco in the short term. “They’re going to need to build a network as big as that of Optus outside the cities,” he said in an interview this week after Labor’s election victory.

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