News, Telecommunications - Thursday, December 8, 2011 10:33 - 56 Comments

Everything about the NBN is bad, says Turnbull

news Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has delivered a blistering end of year attack on the Federal Government’s flagship National Broadband Network project, detailing an extraordinary range of areas in which he believes the project is failing.

In a lengthy statement on the matter published this week, which appears to be the text of a speech given by the politician, Turnbull said he suspected that the Coalition’s core criticisms of the project would be “familiar”, following regular statements on the matter over the course of the year.

These ranged from the fact that the project was too expensive (costing “50 billion and very likely more”), as well as driving higher consumer prices anti-competitive due to the planned closure of broadband services over Telstra’s copper and HFC networks and Optus’ HFC networks, poorly targeted as the NBN will take a decade to reach the two million premises in Australia currently with poor levels of broadband, and put the Government in a conflicted position as the owner of a large company in a market it regulated.

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