Five months from election, Coalition launches NBN alternative

The federal Coalition has move to avoid a repeat of its 2010 election fiasco by releasing an extensive policy document that spells out an alternative policy to Labor’s NBN (national broadband network) that would involve $20.4b in capital costs and $29.5b in total expenditure through 2019.

In a joint event with Opposition leader Tony Abbott, shadow spokesperson on broadband and communications, Malcolm Turnbull, launched the long-awaited policy, which spells out objections to Labor’s $37.4b fibre-to-the-premise (FttP) rollout (which will cost $44.1b when all costs are included) and proposes an alternative infrastructure built on a combination of FttP, fibre-to-the-node (FttN), fixed wireless and satellite technologies.

The policy (available for download here), broadly alleges that Labor’s NBN rollout “is failing” after a series of setbacks that recently culminated in network builder NBN Co revising its rollout targets downwards after subcontractors failed to meet their contractual obligations.

“Labor’s NBN is inching forward so slowly there is no chance it can be completed in its current form by Labor’s deadline of 2021,” the Coalition policy says, noting what it calls NBN Co’s “eroding credibility”.

“Under Labor, millions of Australians would be left waiting a decade or more for better broadband…. At present, up to two million Australian households and businesses don’t have adequate fixed broadband – they can’t access a service or it is too slow and unreliable for basic tasks such as streaming a short video or working from home.”

By 2019, the Coalition would deploy 2.802m FttP connections, or 22% of the total, while repurposing Telstra’s existing copper network to deliver FttN services to 8.968m premises, or 71% of the total. Some 572,000 properties, or 4% of the total 12.712m properties, would be serviced using fixed LTE wireless broadband, while the remaining 372,000, or 3%, would be serviced using satellite broadband services.

Rather than the 100Mbps service promised for all FttP premises under Labor’s plan, the Coalition would deliver a minimum download rate of 25Mbps “for the whole nation” by 2016, with private-sector involvement encouraged in the rollout of new ‘greenfield’ housing estates and multi-dwelling units. By the 2019 deadline, this would be increased so that 90% of the fixed-line footprint received a minimum speed of 50Mbps.

The Coalition FttN policy relies on VDSL2 (Very High Bit Rate DSL) technology, which is capable of speeds up to around 80Mbps over very short distances. However, VDSL2 performance attenuates based on the distance between a fibre-serviced kerbside ‘node’ and the customer premises – so the Coalition policy will be based on installing tens of thousands of these nodes around the country, with a minimum average distance small enough to support its target speeds.

If it wins the September 14 election, the Coalition will direct the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) to provide a ranking of broadband blackspots, and will prioritise the rollout to these areas. – David Braue