NBN controversy mars Turnbull’s innovation launch

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news Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was this morning forced to answer questions about the Coalition’s controversial National Broadband Network policy, in the context that his much-hyped Innovation and Science Agenda released today barely mentions the foundational infrastructure it will rely on.

This morning Turnbull unveiled the National Innovation and Science Agenda at the offices of the CSIRO in Canberra. The document — which covers several dozen detailed policy initiatives — is already being hailed as a much-awaited landmark win for Australia’s technology sector, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship policy in general in this country.

However, the Prime Minister also faced questions at the event pertaining to the controversial Multi-Technology Mix model for the National Broadband Network which he instituted as Communications Minister.

Last week leaked documents revealed the cost of remediating Telstra’s copper network had blown out by a factor of ten times to $641 million, and the week before other leaks showed the NBN company has substantial concerns about whether the HFC cable network it bought from Optus at a cost of $900 million can actually be used as part of the infrastructure.

Turnbull’s model for the NBN — which relies on legacy technology such as the copper and HFC cable networks owned by Telstra and Optus — is seen as inferior to the previous model initiated by Labor, in which the best technology for the long term, fibre-optic cables, would be used.

The Innovation and Science Agenda mentions the NBN just once, noting that the Government is investing in traditional infrastructure. This lack of consideration for the NBN as part of the package comes despite the fact that the NBN’s infrastructure will underpin almost all of the other policies announced by Turnbull today.

It also led to hundreds of people posting messages online pillorying Turnbull’s approach to the NBN. “Turnbull calls for ‘ideas boom’ => ummm, how about an NBN that’s a little more advanced than tin cans and string?” wrote one on Twitter. And another: “Most innovative Australian project in last 50 years, with potential for most benefit, was FTTP NBN. [Malcolm Turnbull’s] vomit today is bilge.”

In this morning’s press conference, journalist Mark Riley asked Turnbull: “Assuming that a lot of this innovation is going to be underpinned by broadband services, how much of a drag on innovation is the $16 to $27 billion blowout in the cost of the NBN, the delays to the rollout, the slower upload speed that is going to downgrade revenues?”

In response, the Prime Minister said that all three of Riley’s premises in his question were “regrettably untrue”.

“I don’t know whether you want to go into the NBN here, but let me just say to you that the NBN project was the single most reckless project of the former Labor Government, it was undertaken without any realistic idea of how long it would take to build and how much it would cost,” Turnbull said.

“We inherited it. This is one of the very rare occasions where a bad project doesn’t get worse, and actually gets better.”

The Prime Minister went on to add that the Coalition’s version of the NBN was rolling out “much more rapidly” than it would have been under Labor’s previous approach. He said the network would be finished six to eight years sooner and would cost about $30 billion less than it would have previously.

“Those are not my numbers, those are the numbers from the management of the NBN Co,” he said.

Turnbull said he could assure people that the speeds — both upload and download — on the Coalition’s NBN were “very high”.

“And we’re seeing very strong take-up,” he said. “Last time I checked the rollout figures — they’re published every week — there is about one and a half million premises that are able to connect to the NBN. They are activating over 10,000 premises a week, with that activation rate increasing.”

“It is the most complex infrastructure project ever undertaken in Australia, you know, as you’ve heard me say before, we wouldn’t be starting from there, but we inherited it, and we’ve turned it around … it’ll be finished by around 2020, it’ll be finally complete by 2020, but obviously millions of people will have access to it long before then.”

Image credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting

31 COMMENTS

  1. “Those are not my numbers, those are the numbers from the management of the NBN Co,” he said.

    Yeah, nah.

    • Published by the people you employed, that were your friends and colleagues previously, that you *specifically* asked to create a ‘counterfactual’ document to make FTTP look as bad as possible? Those ‘independent’ numbers?

      • UG
        It’s only a counter factual if they have to restart doing FTTP. Would be too embarising to do a real counter factual as the closest figures (using there own numbers lol) to it is only $8B for a full FTTP rollout.

        • Yes Jase, I was just saving time – while that was the specific purpose, that hasn’t stopped them from using it to disparage FTTP generally.

  2. I see he’s still taking credit for the million plus connections on FTTP, fixed wireless, and satellite, none of which had anything to do with the MTM or the Coalition…

    • Because he’s good at holding strong to his own manufactured version of events. Remember, what he’s doing is the very definition of corruption, stealing public funds and creating tremendous private wealth at the expense of the Australian people. A key part of both his rationale and his possible defence is going to be his conviction that he was doing the right thing. That won’t fly if he wavers in his approach. So don’t expect him to start behaving rationally about this – his very freedom may one day rest on the fact that he is incapable of accepting reality.

  3. A liar or delusional. Either way, why do we deserve such numb nuts as PM? I’ve been keeping up with this project so it’s clear to see how petty, incompentent and stupid his involvement has been. What about the rest of government? As bad or worse? I know where the smart money would be.

  4. So f**ked’: Leading startup mentor Pete Cooper drops a bomb on Malcolm Turnbull’s innovation statement

    http://www.businessinsider.com.au/so-fked-leading-startup-mentor-pete-cooper-drops-a-bomb-on-malcolm-turnbulls-innovation-statement-2015-12

    Describes Mal’s technology Mess quite well too imo.

    Oh and Mal, we know it was you who destroyed the NBN so stop blaming your mess on labor!

    http://mobile.pcauthority.com.au/Feature/412733,analysis-the-destruction-of-the-nbn.aspx

    • ” 61% of the active internet users are in or overlap with the Sydney time zone”

      Heck we just need the NBN for a bit of video, some gaming and facebook updates.

      Access to the world …. pfft overrated.

    • “the launch pad program in the announcement is cute but a network of incubators is way more powerful and practical and works at home too,” Cooper said.”

      The “works at home” part is important as well. Takes some pressure off govt budgets that focus too much on needlessly moving more and more people around each day.

  5. Still blaming Labor for their incompetence. Nothing new, no responsibility. No speeds cited just “very high” a typical weasel tactic we’ve come to expect from coalition clowns. Claims fraudband patchwork is rolling out “much more rapidly” so looking forward to see what GimpCo will actually achieve in the next 389 days…

    • The problem with the figures that they mention is that it never tells the whole truth. An example from the article is the 1.5 million premises able to be connected. This doesn’t mean you actually have 1.5 million premises with an NBN service. These figures sound good to any politician or any person who doesn’t have a clue but far from being a good thing. What about the weekly reports of 10000 activations per week and increasing rapidly? Who gives a crap. People want to know when the NBN will come to them, not how many activations are happening every week. What a waste of time. I would bet that had we continued with the FTTP rollout, we would easily be activating more than 10000 per week by now. These Liberals also seem to forget that the NBN at present is still mostly FTTP. Those who have FTTP can thank Labor for that because the Liberals would never have wanted that for you.

      • Not only that but all the connections he is claiming is all of labor model. So far out of the 30K connect FTTN service only 400 have taken it up lol.

  6. It would be good to do a list of Federal Communications (and Shadow) Ministers from best to worst (or should I say from bad to worst).

  7. Liberals blaming Labor again. They inherited a mess Howard created by selling Telstra. If they never had a fully costed NBN how do you expect them to come up with the money for this without ripping it away from everyone else.

  8. And we have fibre running past the door and have been quoted $20,000 to access it 4.5m away…instead we have 8 ADSL2 lines and a CLOUD service that CRAWLS!!! So much for INNOVATION…

    • i can do one better, we have telstra fiber in our comms room and it is gonna cost $10,000 to connect then $3,000 a month to use.

    • you can’t just cut into a fibre cable any ol where to connect to it. Chances are that line might not even be one that can be used for a retail customer (ie a back haul link).

      They have to trace the cable back to the nearest connector/terminus etc and then run your fibre from there.

  9. Hey, Mal, I live in Springfield, Qld and I pay for ADSL2+ broadband, but get 64k dial up internet speeds because I am connected to an exchange 7 km’s away when there is an exchange just 2 Km’s away and there is no copper left to service this suburb. Tell me again how that old copper wire network is capable of 25Mbps. I need a good laugh.

  10. “I don’t know whether you want to go into the NBN here, but let me just say to you that the NBN project was the single most reckless project of the former Labor Government, it was undertaken without any realistic idea of how long it would take to build and how much it would cost,” Turnbull said.

    Seem that even at the bottom of his NBN hole Malcolm going to double down and keep digging. Seems Abbott will have his revenge after all, as Blind Freddy can see the MTM will end up biting him on the arse.

    Does anyone besides him and his cronies think the MTM is actually a good idea?

    • “it was undertaken without any realistic idea of how long it would take to build and how much it would cost”

      Uh, that CBA and corporate plan didn’t exist, I suppose.

      Meanwhile the MTM has doubled in cost, tripled in estimated completion time (for an inferior-to-promised solution) and in a third of the time it took for Labor to realise their project estimates were out by about 20%… Umm… Just… umm.

      • I laugh all the time over the fact that with all the CBA’s, SR’s, OP’s, CP’s, etc. that Malcolm has bought, it’s actually his MTM thats blowing up/out much, much bigger than “the real thing”.

        So much for planning…especially when it’s paid for to achieve a particular ideology/political outcome…

  11. When will this drone get it?

    It’s not about cost, it’s about quality and conncetability! When the Large Hadron Collider of CERN is running it produces as much data in a day as Google handles in a month! If we want to foster innovation our data MUST move as fast as the world’s best, end of flow chart.

    Someone please ask both Labor & Liberal why fibre to the pavement was not costed, and why schools are NOT prioritised in the LNP installation of our world’s fastest clockwork internet?

  12. MT > “And we’re seeing very strong take-up,” he said. “Last time I checked the rollout figures — they’re published every week — there is about one and a half million premises that are able to connect to the NBN. They are activating over 10,000 premises a week, with that activation rate increasing.”

    When Turnbull bangs on about MtM “very strong take-up” why doesn’t someone point out that in almost 2 years of LNP gov at 30 Sep there were just 375 fibre-to-the-node services. Yes that’s three hundred and seventy five FTTN services connected to a Retail Internet Service Provider (RSP), never mind about activating over 10,000 premises a week – how about reporting FTTN connections to RSP’s, ie actual live FTTN count.

    “As of 30 September, there were 610,712 active services on the network, up from 266,984 at the end of Q1 FY15. The majority of those services are fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections (there were some 37,000 satellite services, 67,000 fixed wireless services, 505,000 FTTP services and 375 fibre-to-the-node services).”
    http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/588467/nbn-revenue-grows-154-per-cent/

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