It is perhaps time to remind ourselves of the ups and downs of the project that was once announced as a dream national infrastructure project for the 21st century.
We are now ten years into the National Broadband Network (NBN) rollout, and the nation has an average internet speed that lags well behind most advanced economy countries. So what went wrong? Let’s take a look at some of the ups and downs that have occurred since the NBN’s inception.
Best unlimited NBN 100 plan in Australia:
The ups
In November 2007, after 11 years of Coalition government, Labor was elected on a policy platform that promised a national broadband network.
The NBN company was announced in April 2009 to provide terrestrial fibre network coverage for 93% of Australian premises by the end of 2020. Fixed wireless and satellite coverage would serve the remaining 7%.
Looking back, it’s hard to deny the influence the NBN has had on Australian politics. Perhaps the peak influence was when three independent MPs cited the NBN as one of the key reasons why they supported a Labor government over the Coalition when the 2010 federal election produced a hung parliament.
The final 60 early NBN rollout locations were then announced. The plan was for the first stage of the large-scale rollout to follow, connecting 3.5 million premises in 1,500 communities by mid-2015.
The downs
The early NBN rollout experienced significant delays. This attracted a great deal of “overwhelmingly negative” media coverage. Public opinion polls reflected growing dissatisfaction with the national project.
This dissatisfaction and the September 2013 federal election result changed the fate of the NBN. In 2013, the new Coalition government suspended the first stage of the large-scale fibre-to-premises NBN rollout to reassess the scale of the project.
In 2014, the government announced that the NBN rollout would change from a primarily fibre-to-premises model to a multi-technology-mix model. The technology to be used would be determined on an area-by-area basis.
This change of direction resulted in a prolonged state of uncertainty at the local government level. As it was rolled out, the NBN was widely criticised for being slow, expensive and obsolete.
Current state of play
Delays continue in the construction of the Coalition’s NBN. What can only be described as a downgrade of the original national project is now seriously over budget. Aaccording to NBN Co, the $51billion project is now on track to be completed by 2020.
The bleak status quo only gets worse when the on-the-ground reality of the NBN rollout is considered. While fibre-to-premises rollout is supposed to be limited in the Coalition’s NBN, disturbing examples of misconduct in the NBN installations are highly concerning.
The image below shows one example of many in which heritage-listed buildings (in this case also public housing) are disrespected to the point that suggests an absolute lack of communication between NBN contractors, local government, or heritage agencies.
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