Hmmm.
Interesting to see what this will do to housing prices. Will people without fibre find their properties being de-valued because of it?
With Saturday's emphatic election result putting almost certain to put Malcolm Turnbull into the communications ministry, the business of rejigging the National Broadband Network is about to begin in earnest. Step one, once Turnbull assumes the ministry, will be a promised “100 day” review of the NBN. This will presumably …
Based on the incompetence of the Labor government in negotiating (Mining Tax, GP SuperClinics, etc.) means that Telstra are already sitting on a very sweet deal which should give the Coalition plenty of room for negotiation. A chunk of the money is also based on customers transferring from copper to the new network. However, Labor's incompetence may also mean that the Telstra have negotiated plenty of loop holes.
Overall given the speed tiered based pricing structure, the Coalition plan should actually see faster overall network speeds in Australia. Sounds ridiculous, but Labor were planning for 50% on fibre to connect at 12Mbps.
As a long-time proponent of the initial FTTH plan, I find myself less and less interested as this whole thing drags on.
Every time it rains (which it tends to do quite a bit here in FNQ), my ADSL drops out. On a good day, I need to only restart my router 3 times. Through 6 years of experimentation we've worked out that there's only one decent copper path for our street - when you complain they re-patch you to the "good" path, then your service slowly degrades over the coming months as your neighbours complain and you get shuffled down the quality ladder. All this, for a base ADSL1 service that generally manages to run anywhere up to 5mpbs, and costs $50/month + line rental, etc.
To wit - I no longer care whether I get FTTN, FTTH or FTTSE (fibre-to-the-something-else) - I just want it to work, to provide decent bandwidth, and to cost less than it currently does. My technical opinion is that the additional cost for FTTH is justified in future-proofing, and that patching up the existing copper is a false economy. But as I'm facing the prospect of at least another 2-3 years before I can qualify for NBN-provided services under the existing plan, I'm willing to cut the LNP's plan a break and give them enough rope.
I'm just glad I'm not the one doing the negotiating. As the article mentions, THAT is going to make the initial NBN contract negotiations seem like a walk in the park.
Cheers,
Matt
The Liberal plan is designed essentially to prevent high speed internet competing with existing (Murdoch) cable / media interests.
The whole plan is a sham no matter what the technicalities of the deals.
Australia will get a 20th century pseudo NBN at great cost.
Thanks to these conservative fools.