Truth: The Coalition will not launch a new Election NBN policy

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This article was originally published for Delimiter Members only. In late September 2016, Delimiter ceased publishing new articles. Because of a number of operational and other factors associated with this decision, we subsequently withdrew membership articles from publication. If you would like to see a copy of this article, please contact Delimiter directly with your request. Requests by Delimiter Members will be granted. We will consider all other requests on their merits.


56 COMMENTS

  1. Liberals have come to a dead end that’s why. They want to change but they’ve stuffed it up so badly that the cluster**** of a network can’t get any worse than it is now. They would roll out more HFC if there was more of it and they would use more copper too if they could but this would lead to more delays and missed targets. They ****ed up the design and they know it. The original NBN plan was ready for the future and should never have been played with. The only thing they can do is use more fibre but it has Labor all over it.

    • can’t get any worse than it is now

      You’d think so but never underestimate the stupidity of a coalition clown.

    • See my post a few comments down – they haven’t messed it up, they’ve been doing exactly what they set out to. Deliberate, premeditated and calculated. Don’t write them off as incompetent just because you don’t understand them or hate them. The only way they will be held to account is if it can be proven that they deliberately and knowingly sabotaged the NBN. I don’t just think it can, I know it can, because the facts have been there for years. It’s just a question of political will whether it will be investigated and then prosecuted.

      • Trouble with politics is that if they state what they intend to do and actually follow through, then you cant bring them to account.

        We (as a whole) voted for them and their policies, and as a result legitimised their actions. Might not like the outcome, but thats how it works.

        So you can wind back to Abbotts destroy the NBN line and realise that the LNP is just following announced policy.

        If anything, if you saw an investigation come out of this with any negative outcome, then there is political bias the other way. We might be happy with that, but its no different to what the Lib’s are doing now.

        Political bias goes both ways…

  2. Don’t think they ever had a policy, just a rough idea! Of course it was rougher than we were ever lead to believe.

    • Don’t think they ever had a policy, just a rough idea!

      25mbps for all by the end of 2016.

      193 days to do ;-)

    • I completely disagree – the LNP NBN plan has been in place since at least April 2013 and has been executed to perfection ever since. Ironically the one thing that hasn’t really gone to plan was the renegotiation with Telstra – that would have worked out better for both the LNP and Telstra overall if that negotiation had been more swift, and things would have progressed further and the whole plan would be further entrenched than it is (because if FTTN had been fully deployed the additional cost to convert to FTTP would be tens of billions greater, making it less likely, thus the failure more certain and the sale to Telstra for a pittance all but delivered). As it was, Telstra’s legal division (which is a billion dollar company in its own right) made sure they got the best deal they could wrangle, which was pretty good if you’re Telstra and the delay means nothing because the LNP stay in power, but it is a far riskier strategy for long term profit because a Labor win might nip the whole thing in the bud. Here’s hoping, anyway ;-)

      But getting back to your point, there has been nothing chaotic or accidental about the LNP’s strategy – it was designed to wreck the NBN and it has been delivering. And I don’t mean tinfoil hat conspiracy nutter ‘wreck the NBN’, I mean FTTN undermines the profitability of the project due to altered product mix (no high profit products) and lower market share (due to infrastructure competition from the likes of TPG), while substantially increasing the operating costs (+$1bn a year for copper maintenance, hundreds of millions to power the nodes, maintenance of HFC, the cost of remediating and maintaining the pits and pipes). Guess what increased costs and decreased revenue gets you? No positive ROI. Which means not an investment, so then 100% on-budget cost picked up by tax payers, and negative ROI means a costly burden on the Commonwealth that the government will want to divest itself of ASAP, so selling to the first suckered willing to take it for a massive discount (to make up for it being unable to turn a profit). So Telstra come and save us from this spiralling debt burden, our hero’s, and all for the paltry sum of double your Internet access charges… forever.

      So considering the NBN was meant to give us universal high speed fibre that would turn a profit and make Internet access gradually cheaper over time while removing the Telstra rent seeker from the wholesale market, we’re ending up with a broken, segmented network where it will be unworkably slow for about half the country (and just frustratingly so for another quarter) that will cost us significantly more to access and entrenches Telstra as the wholesale monopoly owner of the country’s national fibre infrastructure effectively forever (because fibre will last centuries, if not millenia). That sounds like they’ve been quite successfully wrecking it to me…

    • True Soth. The innovation revolution transforming YouTube watching, social media spewing masses into tech entrepreneurs might have to wait;-)

      So the assumptions of the “many Australians” (aka squealers) are wrong (again). Not surprising when so few have even a passing knowledge of the techs, finance or fundamentals of wealth creation.

      They’ve likely read the same analysis (by very few) of ridiculous NBN forecasts here before, but enjoy:
      http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/henry-ergas/federal-election-2016-labors-nbn-assumptions-are-implausible/news-story/8a54c1a85cbc610c189c287bbc69b5f8

        • Perfectly illustrating the delusion. SA is an economic basket case; addicted to spending extorted from industries the productive states. I closed a CBD office their several years ago; on my last visit it was still vacant. Must be waiting for its 10ge connection.

          Their great panda industry, comically exposed at the time by a few of us, self-imploded within a year when the zoo put their hand out for more even money. Labor predictions had it generating one of the largest incomes of any business in the state.

          Prof “two to three new power stations required for FTTN” Tucker gives it the thumbs up. What could go wrong?;-)

        • Comically CISCO agrees with me. Lets analyse the article together:

          “By 2020, 82 per cent of Australian Internet traffic will be video”

          As I pointed out the other day video the driver of bandwidth growth, to squealing denials by the fiberartzi.

          “The average broadband speed will nearly double from 24.7Mb/s to 47.7Mb/s globally with APAC region moving from 28.1Mb/s to 51.3Mb/s.”

          Or with our highly contended network from currently provisioned CVC of 1.05mbps to 2.10mbps per active customer. Still plenty of room for my low contention predictions (x6 expected).

          “In Australia the change will be higher with M2M connections accounting for 59 per cent of traffic up from 41 per cent last year.”

          Growth in connections mainly low data devices. Position I’ve argued for years.

          “Average IP traffic per household rising from 61GB / mth (2015) to 149GB (2020).”

          61 / 30 = 2GB / day
          149 / 30 = 5GB / day

          Happily supported by my speed forecasts. Growth very manageable and within expectations.

          4 / 8K video an issue (given low demand for HD content likely an manufacture’s concoction) . How will we recover from this productive roadblock?;-)

          • Hey Richard,

            Did you catch Intel’s keynote address at Computex? Do you know the breakdown estimates for the near 80% of traffic that currently exists?

            Here’s a question for you – what does that video content comprise of? In your own words. Netflix? Et al? Porn? What about YouTube? Instructional videos and courses? Oh, video conferencing? Sure, Skype probably has its own data set, but plenty of video messaging looks like a video feed to logging software. RDP? Also compressed video.. In fact there are a huge number of things you can use and do that all look like compressed video, because that’s exactly what they are. They’re just not the ‘sit back and consume content’ model lots of people looking at that single raw figure like to assume they are. Here’s another one – remote drone/robot/car control – also compressed video.

            Guess what? Lots of emerging apps/companies are being built around technologies where compressed very high quality video is integral to what they’re building. Without high speed networks, their product doesn’t work. So if it doesn’t work here, we just don’t get it here. So we miss out. And right now that may be edge case stuff, but in five years? We might not be in the game anymore, as the largest growth sectors in both emerging and established economies simply won’t exist in a country where rent seekers have killed the necessary infrastructure.

          • The iron wires Richard… they were good enough, weren’t they?

            Oh no they weren’t you told us in hindsight why that was…

            But the total lack of foresight (even to compare the copper scenario to the iron) or simply a sheer and utter adherence to flawed cult beliefs, for one so confident in one’s own self (egotistical) is astounding…

            You’re welcome

          • UG so exactly as posted; video the driver of bandwidth.

            I design and deliver apps, you read about them.

          • “I design and deliver apps, you read about them.”

            You’re claiming to be a cutting edge app developer now? I thought you were an accountant? Or an economist?

            And you’re right, I’m not an app developer – I design, build, deploy and manage the systems developers write their code, build their products and deliver them to their customers on. And let me tell you, we have all the processing power, all the storage and all the internal bandwidth we need for most projects, the thing we bang our heads on time and again is bandwidth to the rest of the world and the ridiculous cost of that in Australia, and the limited bandwidth for consumers to access services. What we have is pitiful and FTTN is not going to substantially improve that.

      • Well then Richard no need to upgrade the HFC as it already meets the needs of 15Mbps by 2023

          • LOL richard Yawn
            “upgrade/buildout required to deliver min speeds”.
            Build out yes but that fttn now
            upgrade no as it already meets the up to 25Mbps
            speed not a bonus when upgrade for those speeds which you said we dont need

          • Yawn Richard I didn’t know offering up to 100Mbps doesn’t meet the required up to 25Mbps NBN needs to deliver

          • Looks like you didn’t understand the point Richard, HFC already delivers what you claim we will need in 2020, so it shouldn’t need any upgrading.

            Why spruik multi-gigabit symmetric speeds on HFC when we don’t need those speeds? (Bear in mind, I support the use of HFC as a midterm solution with upgrades, but I also see the use of high speed connections to the home, that I’ve been over with you many times.)

          • “Both Labor and the Coalition support NBN HFC, the HFC argument is over.”

            Not arguing the use of HFC, arguing the hypocrisy of claiming the speeds provided by FTTN are enough for the future so we don’t need the “gold plated” version, and then spruiking amazing speed increases on HFC.

            Either we need them or we don’t, you can’t have it both ways.

          • R0 The point (made several times) is the current networks don’t support the mandated speeds for 4m users and requires an upgrade. It will be upgraded to current generation of equipment.

            I get it, you don’t understand. Can’t be made any clearer, their ignorance is extraordinary. Yet still they come:-(

          • Don’t feed the troll R0ninX3ph, he’s a master baiter and he’s just baiting you now ;o)

          • Richard, HFC doesn’t currently support 100Mbit? Better tell all those people on Telstra cable that they’re getting ripped off paying for 100Mbit and not getting it!

          • You are still missing the point. You link to articles spruiking speeds well above 100Mbit and claim HFC is great.

            Fine, I agree, HFC is a good medium term option.

            However, you cannot then claim that 12-100Mbit (maybe depending on the length of your copper) FTTN is good for the medium term, because it is completely lacking.

            You cannot claim we don’t need the speeds provided by FTTP and then point to those same speeds being delivered over HFC as evidence.

            You’re a hypocrite.

  3. the Coalition is not planning to do … anything new at all.

    As I predicted, Turnbull is too arrogant and his judgment too poor to change tack on this.

    • He doesn’t have the political clout in his party nor the polling stat’s to outright back flip on a Major party policy that a significant if not almost majority are still in favour for.

      • Derek is right. Turnbull has absolutely no political judgment. This is his baby, so his party would let him make changes if he wanted to. He’s just too stupid and arrogant to make changes.

    • Why change a winning NBN model, a model that won them the 2013 election and will win them the 2016 election.

      Of course the NBN is only a key election decider when Labor win.

      • Lol troll it’s not the winning model it it. The winning model was $29B everyone to have 25Mbps this year. FTTN and FTTP only, HFC allowed to compete not use in the NBN

          • The “winning policy” was 25Mbit to all by the end of 2016 for $29Bn “Fully costed and ready to go”.

            Are they taking that to the election again?

          • The point of this Delimiter article is the Coalition don’t have to take anything to this election, I think the electors who are interested in the NBN know what the Coalition is about when it comes to the NBN.

            The big unknown is Labor’s ‘chuck in some more FTTP’ MtM policy, add a couple of years to the Coalition end date to make it the same as the Labor end date, hey Bingo! magic happens, our end dates are the same.

            What else can we do, let’s add 1 billion to the upper limit of the Coalition funding requirements, and mumble feel good stuff about Infrastructure Australia looking at a FTTN upgrade sometime maybe never in the nebulous future, and keep FTTB (pretend that model is what we had planned all along lol) and HFC.

            There we have it the Labor (Coalition) MtM model.

          • Lol the troll complaining about labor adding 2 years to the coalition claimed rollout when the coalition claimed labor FTTP would be $90B.

            But like I said troll you can’t say anything about the labor policy as it can be revised and everything is fine when it gets revised

  4. Any policy announced by the ALP at this point in time would have to come with caveats. They simply don’t know the details of the contractual commitments made NBN Co during the last 3 yrs. These were continuously hidden under the cover of CiC.
    It’s fact. And to deny it would entail holding Turnbull responsible for his complete BS claim that his party had a fully costed plan ready to go at the 2013 election, along with all the condemnation.

    At least the ALP are being honest and allowing for unknowns. Rather than the LNP who rely on spin and BS.

  5. Since at least March this year, many Australians have assumed that the Coalition would launch a new NBN policy for this year’s Federal Election

    Coalition clowns wouldn’t be doing their patchwork network clusterfuck the right way unless they were going backwards and they did that already so it’s time to do SFA just like they did before the proper FttP came along to disrupt their cave dwelling ways. They need to placate the ignorant copper fanboy knuckle draggers who they rely on for votes who still believe FttP is unnecessary so expecting them to admit they are wrong and change their disastrous “broadband” policy (even for FttDp) would be out of the question.

  6. That is because they have blown all the money delivering people ADSL and HFC. What we already SUFFER with,

    I moved back to ADSL today and it was dropping packets severely as soon as I checked. I am trying to avoid telephone lines at all costs.

    That means no FTTN == ADSL.

    I am stuck between homes refusing to leave HFC because of the Liberals blatant sabotage of the economy. Trying to impose ADSL like they are preventing people getting access to electricity.

    Now people have got a new ADSL service they have to pay twice as much for and as if it was a full fibre service so a scam.

    Telephone lines is complete despair but so is HFC when it decides to go down for days also.

  7. Welcome to the Liberals faulty copper innovation plan. Where they are now trying to impose kids to take maths and science as a way to conjure up some fraud they are actually doing something about the economy and innovation. Just like they have imposed copper on everyone for ideology reasons to sabotage Labor’s fibre plan.

    Nobody can function on this packet dropping crap. The latency is disgusting also.

    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=0 ttl=55 time=108.431 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=35.001 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=94.296 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=79.333 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=41.801 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=5 ttl=55 time=102.889 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=6 ttl=55 time=109.523 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=7 ttl=55 time=120.323 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=8 ttl=55 time=91.517 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=9 ttl=55 time=75.371 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=10 ttl=55 time=80.386 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=11 ttl=55 time=39.298 ms
    Request timeout for icmp_seq 12
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=13 ttl=55 time=62.363 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=14 ttl=55 time=96.571 ms
    64 bytes from 216.58.199.78: icmp_seq=15 ttl=55 time=97.201 ms
    ^C
    — google.com ping statistics —
    16 packets transmitted, 15 packets received, 6.2% packet loss

    • I pinged Telstra’s site, I am on Labors NBN (via wifi with an old MBP, so I am sure my iMac would be better.) Are you on FTTN or old style ADSL?

      PING 139.130.4.5 (139.130.4.5): 56 data bytes
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=18.892 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=20.381 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=2 ttl=57 time=16.779 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=3 ttl=57 time=19.266 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=4 ttl=57 time=17.115 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=5 ttl=57 time=18.126 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=6 ttl=57 time=18.956 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=7 ttl=57 time=17.477 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=8 ttl=57 time=17.355 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=9 ttl=57 time=19.522 ms
      64 bytes from 139.130.4.5: icmp_seq=10 ttl=57 time=18.090 ms
      ^C
      — 139.130.4.5 ping statistics —
      11 packets transmitted, 11 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

  8. As for the Coalition … every indication at the moment is that it will try and stare Labor down over the next two weeks.

    That won’t be hard, ‘Back to 2013’ or do you want it built?

    • How about you quote something from further down in the article, not in the free section?

  9. They won’t change anything because politically they’ve backed themselves into a corner and the don’t have the political nads to get out of it, it’s much easier to let Mitch keep embarrassing himself like the other copper knuckledraggers…

    • They won’t change anything because politically they’ve backed themselves into a corner and the don’t have the political nads to get out of it

      Nailed it.

  10. Yep, they’re going to stick to a bad policy and die in a ditch over it. So agile. It’s actually quite innovative.

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