NBN project hits first birthday
- 07 April, 2010 12:00
- Comments 3
The Federal Government has celebrated the first birthday of its National Broadband Network (NBN) project.
In a statement today, Broadband Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, extolled progress made since the project officially launched 12 months ago, when the Federal Government dropped all commercial tenders by independent telcos to build the network.
Instead, it opted to start its own company, NBN Co, to implement and oversee the rollout. The network will deliver maximum speeds of 100Mbps with selected areas promised up to 12Mbps through wireless and satellite technology. Last April, Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced NBN Co and revealed the cost of the predominantly fibre network would be $43 billion – a long way from the $4.5bn quoted during Labor’s election campaign. The infrastructure project was labelled “reckless” by former Shadow Communications Minister, Nick Minichin, while his successor, Tony Smith, claims it is an “ill-conceived adventure”. The NBN price tag, according to the Opposition, also needs to be justified.
"It’s been a year that has demonstrated Labor’s total disregard for responsible policy making and a complete lack of concern for the interests of taxpayers," Smith said in a statement. "It has been a year when Labor has ignored countless warnings about the irresponsibility of its ill-judged plan."
Meanwhile, the telecommunications industry has mostly embraced the NBN with open arms. The exception is Telstra, which is fighting tooth and nail against the Government’s proposal to split its retail and wholesale arms under a reformed Telecommunications Act. The move would not only quash the telco giant’s dominance, but also allow NBN Co to absorb its backhaul infrastructure and expedite the network rollout.
The Opposition has since succeeded in delaying the proposed telecommunications legislation.
While Senator Conroy pointed out several examples of NBN work over the past year, including fibre rollouts in several locations and the appointment of the first retail ISPs, the public hasn’t yet trialled the service. Wholesale pricing also remains a mystery. So what has the NBN project achieved so far?
Late last year, Tasmania became the test bed for the first fibre network and backbone links. The rollout continues and in March, the Federal Government announced the first retail ISPs for the state: iiNet, Internode and iPrimus.
The Government also assigned $250 million to the Regional Backbone Blackspots program for over 100 rural locations with little to no Internet connections. The Queensland town of Mt Isa was the first area to get a taste of the NBN when the rollout commenced in February. NBN Co also announced the first five mainland Australian sites to trial fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) broadband in February. These sites will be used to test network design and construction methods, according to the Department of Broadband, and include part of the suburb of Brunswick in Melbourne, and Kiama Downs south of Wollongong.
With an eight-year timeline, there is still a lot to be done on the nationwide NBN rollout. The Federal Government continues to plough ahead with the fibre project and all eyes will be watching its every move.
Nominations for the 2012 ARN IT Industry Awards open on Tuesday, June 12.
- Bookmark this page
- Share this article
- Got more on this story? Email ARN
- Follow ARN on twitter
- All on NBN
- Government spends $43 billion to establish National Broadband Network
- NBN 'Reckless': Minchin
- ICT industry greets NBN decision with open arms
- Industry welcomes Telstra break-up
- iiNet, Internode and iPrimus onboard for Tasmanian NBN
- Updated: Federal Government picks towns for NBN bush kick-off
- In Pictures: NBN rolls into Mt Isa
- NBN: The year that was
- In Search of the Long-Term Archiving Solution —Tape Delivers Significant TCO Advantage over Disk
- Aberdeen Group: Building Business Resilience Through Active Archive
- Market Potential-Strategy Guide to the Active Archive Market
- Premier Media Group Fast Study
- Spectra Logic and Australian National University Success Story - March 2012
-
PRODUCTS: Aranez announces K-Leather iPad 2 case
-
Italian mathematician prepares to challenge Google
-
Facebook could buy Nokia to build 'FacePhone', expert claims
-
It's not all Doom at new media conference
-
Tech Watch: Who watches the datacentre?
Get exclusive access to ARN's news, research and invitation only events. 
Comments
David
Surprise surprise. NBN has been embrased by most telecom providers apart from Telstra. Maybe thats because the government is trying to strong arm Telstra into handing over its assets at a discount, and Telstra shareholders are paying the price. The KRudd governments blatant abuse of $43bn tax payers funds to bail them out of their original $4.3bn election promise is just outrageous will lead to one of the biggest white elephants in the southern hemisphere. How can they get away with spending $43bn without a business plan or contructive public debate?
dude
The government is doing what compeition and past governments have failed to do and that is to maintain, upgrade and replace failing infrastructure. Now that is federal not state as there is not much to be said for the state party...
Where i live there is constantly problems with phone lines, rims, power issues and more.
I have witnessed and experienced when a copper telephone has had no maintenance from the provider they just use it till it dies. the copper had completely corroded away!! They tried but failed to make myself pay for it to be replaced as it failed outside of my fence line.
And due this lack of maintenance the network is considerably of less value to anyone in the world. for example would you buy a rusted old car or buy the same car usually at less expense without the rust?
The main reason telstras competitors can't put in there own infrastucture as everytime they try to telstra stops them with lengthy court battles or the government stops them. e.g. Mobile phone towers on hill tops.
Without this we all will be living in the slow lane. If you have less than a 1.5Mbps connection at the moment youtube is unbarable and it is only getting worse. in 6-12 months anything less than a 3 mb connection will not suffice. i Call on internet providers of australia to only offer connection of 3mb/s or greater. Also more providers need to start using some sort caching technology this helps!!. e.g. alot of bit coporate neworks use technology where by if 1 person access a file then another person needs that file in the office it is sent to them from cache thus saving bandwidth. Windows 7 Does this.
Whatever
Dude $43billion so you can get better youtube permance, thats just crazy
Post new comment