blog I’ve been closely observing the rollout of BT’s fibre to the node network in the UK, and while I don’t think Australia should go down the same path now — the far better option at this point is clearly fibre to the premises, given that NBN Co is already ramping up to scale in its own rollout — I do think the BT example gives Australia a clear reminder of what could have been … if we hadn’t screwed it all up over the past decade. The key intro paragraph to my detailed, quite historical article on this subject on Delimiter 2.0 (paywalled):
“The success of the fibre to the node rollout deployed by British incumbent telco BT, despite its many and obvious flaws, must come as a stark reminder to Australia’s politicians, telcos and regulators of what could have been achieved in Australia over the past eight years if the various players had stopped their incessant, poisoned infighting on the broadband issue and actually got together to make things work.”
I’d also be very curious as to what other examples of international broadband rollouts Delimiter readers feel Australia could learn from, no matter whether the lessons apply to the current Labor NBN project or the Coalition’s FTTN-based alternative. Because this is a Delimiter 2.0 article, I’m not allowing comments on this post on Delimiter on the issue, but the comments on Delimiter 2.0 are still open even if you haven’t subscribed, so feel free to weigh in :) This isn’t this week’s canonical Friday Delimiter 2.0 article, by the way, that’s still coming — it’s just a piece I thought decent enough to throw into the mix ;)