http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/4625436.htmlLabor's NBN technology is superior, but at what cost?Kevin Morgan
In an age of tablets and smartphones, staking our future on one vast investment in fibre to every home is not sensible. FTTN is more than adequate, and there's nothing stopping us from upgrading it later on, writes Kevin Morgan.
It does a massive disservice to the debate about Australia's broadband future that the rollout of the National Broadband Network (NBN) has been reduced to one dimension:
the differing capabilities of two technologies.Indeed, it seems the only issue in play is the
differing speeds promised by the Labor Government's fibre to every home policy (FTTH) and those offered under the Coalition's fibre to the node (FTTN) proposal that takes fibre to the street corner and then hooks up to the existing copper cable.
But broadband policy is not one dimensional. It's a complex trade-off between technological capability, cost, competition policy and consumer needs and demand. The question is, when these issues are balanced, which of the two proposals ticks more boxes in terms of sound public policy?
It's now demonstrable that the Government's all-fibre NBN, with its nominal price tag of $37.4 billion,
cannot be built within either its promised budget or timeframe. In the first 10 weeks of this year, NBN Co, the company charged with the fibre rollout, passed only an additional 28 households a day.
At that rate it would take 1,200 years to build the NBN. The rollout has stalled and targets are continually revised downward and missed, while the cost of actually connecting homes remains a state secret.
The government and NBN Co dismiss delays as the inevitable teething problems that a 10-year, nationwide infrastructure project will experience. Yet NBN Co was formed in July 2009, has over 2,200 staff and by the September election will have spent or committed more than $9 billion on various contracts.
NBN Co is far from being a start-up and the problems that have stymied its progress, such as the need to train and mobilise a construction workforce,
were all foreseeable in 2009. NBN Co has failed miserably to plan for them. At the end of last year, NBN Co had as many full-time staff as contract staff in the field, and its contractors still can't find the 8,000 workers they need by mid-year to meet targets.
It's within this train wreck that the Coalition has been obliged to frame their policy. Satellite and wireless network contracts worth over $4 billion cannot be broken. The Coalition says it will honour these and use the networks as planned to serve the 7 per cent of households that would not have been covered by fibre.
They represent a costly and suboptimal solution to rural service the Coalition will have to live with.Similarly the extraordinary largesse to Telstra, the $20 billion cash value deal that got Telstra to agree to closing its copper network and transferring customers to the NBN, cannot be unwound. But although Telstra would be unwilling to relinquish their taxpayer guaranteed windfall, there's obviously more than enough cash on the table for the Coalition to secure the cooperation it needs; most notably, access to the existing copper.
Other contracts, such as those with construction companies, may offer some freedom. Although these contractors
can't find the labour for an all-fibre rollout, they are better equipped to manage a rejigging of the copper network under the Coalition's plan.
So despite the lead in its saddlebags, the Coalition's policy should be achievable within its peak $29 billion funding commitment and within the tight timeframes envisaged. Using the existing copper to each household means extensive civil works won't be needed and the policy falls within existing legislation, precluding the need for new legislation.
But is the Coalition plan "dudding" consumers or, more dramatically, as some commentators argue, damning Australia's digital future? If so German, British and American telcos that are deploying millions of lines of FTTN and the governments that have authorised these rollouts are also short-changing their consumers and condemning their economies to a digital backwater.
The reality is FTTN is by far and away the most commonly used technology to take fibre close to the consumer, even in markets depicted as being almost 100 per cent all fibre to the home. In Hong Kong, 80 per cent of the final distribution of high speed fibre broadband is on copper or technologies other than fibre. In Korea, the percentage is 60 per cent.
Of course, viewed solely through the technology prism, there's no question that FTTH is superior to FTTN. But that superior technology comes at a price that no other government would dare foot the bill for.
Consequently, when the complexity of conflicting pressures that underpin broadband policy are considered,
the use of FTTN is eminently sensible. It will deliver speeds more than adequate for foreseeable consumer needs, and despite
scaremongering, it does not foreclose an all-fibre future.
end pt 1.
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