Turnbull reveals what he’d do to the NBN

Touting his Ozemail financing, one imagines that Mr Turnbull has a personal wealth goal in his current campaign of half-truths. Telstra shares will double in value by next year once shareholders approve the NBN deal, so this is not about protecting Telstra from a monopoly wholesaler. Wireless cannot deliver 12 Mbps download speeds for less than $20 billion, nor can FTTN. We know this from the years spent vainly trying to develop realistic implementations of Howard's OPEL and Rudd's NBN Mark I.

By laying fibre to large towns, 93% of the population will have everything they need for all future speed demands. (The current record for a single fibre is 69.1 Tbps with full error-correction, for a distance of 240 km on 25 March 2010.) With bulk data on fibre, wireless to 97% at guaranteed 12 Mbps with no congestion can also be delivered with fewer towers. Wireless without fibre would require at least 60,000 (says Telstra) to 80,000 (says NBNCo) new towers.

The fact is that the NBN started with an objective of delivering 12 Mbps bandwidth to all Australians. Five years of trial and error have established that the cheapest way to achieve this is with fibre-supported wireless, not wireless alone. Two satellites are also included in the capital expenditure of $36 billion (cf Malcolm Turnbull's response in The Australian live blog, that the lease and transfer costs are legitimately operational costs, not capital expenditure).

Unless Mr Turnbull is pinned down to list what he would deliver, he can hide behind numbers like $1-2 billion for bits of it. To deliver what he suggests will cost at least $20 billion for far inferior results that will need overbuilding within a decade, and perpetuate the corporate self-interest that has denied broadband to 40% of Australians despite fifteen years of free market competition.

The coalition will lose the next election unless they substantially adopt the NBN model. I for one do not want to see a Green-Labor government elected, but Australians have begun to understand the folly of abandoning this opportunity to build the right solution now.

years of allowing private enterprise to develop/rollout decent broadband has achieved very little.
Broadband is now core infrastructure for Australia - just like roads, rail, defence . If private enterprise will not provide it then the govt must. I have no issue with the govt owning the core infrastructure and just charging the telcos to use it. Like any major infrastructure project the capital cost will be repaid over time.
The Libs have no idea about the NBN - they spent 12 years talking about it but doing nothing - at least Labour has actually commenced the project.
Turnball's proposed strategy is just wasting more time. If the Libs stick to this plan then i will have to vote Labour again.

Keep it up Mal baby. Every time you open your mouth you just confirm what most thinking people already know. The Libs are where they should be. In opposition.

Good analogy Gerry...

What you are saying is that no-one should have ever designed, built and used phonographs, gramophones, vinyl records, hi-fi, CDs, DVDs or anything at all actually...

Because something "better" is always just around the corner?

Or should we alsways be using the best available technology and products if we want to progress?

Your have your not-so-old-fashioned ADSL because others invested in, designed, built and used 1200baud systems, then 2400baud systems, then 4800baud systems, then 9600baud systems, then came along 14.4Kbps modems and systems, then we all lashed out prodigiously on 28.8Kbps systems, jumped carelessly and wasted all our dosh on 56K access systems.

All this time the ISPs glabally, according to your example, we wasting their money on upgrading backbones, access systems, data transfer and security systems, online services etc etc.

But the "waste" goes on Gerry Hiles. (or are you a Phony Tony Abbott staffer...?).

They dumper $squillions into ISDN, early DSL, frame relay, ATM, more and more and more.

All this so that Gerry Hiles could enjoy his "Old fashioned" ADSL today. The start and finish of all useful modem developments sits in Gerry's modem.

Which is not so old fashioned at all. I mean, why did we waste the $squillions in investment before that, why not just pluck the ADSL modem out of thin air?

And ADSL pretty well definitely not the end of all technological developments, but just like all steps so far, it is just as step as we continue to develop better communications systems.

As for "lightning speed" Gerry, there were people claiming that about 14.4Kbps modem connections in 1995...

Now if you really believe all that dosh was wasted on hi-fi stuff, go ask the listeners if they would have preferrred to stay with the phonograph.

I am sure you will find some who say yes, and a vast majority who say no...

BTW: People vote with their wallets, and very few folks today buy and use 14.4Kbps modems. They could have stuck with them you know?

Turnbull never ceases to amaze me. His stupidity knows no bounds. In his rush to ingratiate himself with his nay-saying leader he would sell out Australia's future. He would have us believe that more rims and bloody pair gains will suffice for our communications future. All those years of saying yes to Packer must have addled his brains. By the contorted logic he espouses there is no need to buy a new car, or new phones when the old ones can be patched to keep working - not of course for him, when he flashes his ipad on TV.
I'll be glad when the NBN is finished, by which time all the lying politicians, doubters and opportunistic columnists will be creating some other straw cause with which to berate and to mislead the public.