The current government want to run fibre to every single home in the nation, which will give up to 1GB connection speed. The coalition argue that this is an unnecessary expense as not every home needs a direct fibre connection, and fibre to the node would be perfectly sufficient. As the current system is predicted to cost at least $37.4 billion dollars we tend to agree with the coalition, who's system will cost approximately $17 billion dollars less than Labor's, at an estimated amount of $10.4 billion.
Now, just to be clear, we are not arguing that direct fibre connections are without benefit, because that's obviously not the case. When it comes to educational institutions, hospitals, business precincts, etc. direct fibre connection is a necessity and should have been implemented long ago. What we are arguing is that the massive cost of Labor's plan to connect every single house in the country to fibre is unrealistic and not at all necessary for the every day Australian's internet use.
The main argument for fibre-to-home is that it will provide a faster speed. Is 1GB a second really needed for everyday internet usage though? Yes, Australia's current connection speeds are a bit of a joke and definitely need to be improved, but connecting fibre-to-node will still increase our speeds by anywhere from 20mbps to 40mbps, currently, and potentially up to 100mbps in the near future, if current research in the UK is anything to go by. These speeds are comparable to what the majority of towns currently connected to the fibre-to-home network around the world are running at anyway.
Another fault with this argument is that even if the fibre cables are connected directly to homes, they are still going to need a connection port every block, or maybe even more often, and with every connection port and every fibre that is then connected to that port the speed is going to decrease anyway. Only a very, very small minority of the population located directly by the ports will receive the highest connection speed promised by the current government.
A lot of people are promoting the NBN plan as being "future proof", but projections forecast that it won't be fully installed for at least another 7 years, and once it finally is installed and operational, it will take a minimum of 21 years for the taxpayers to pay it off. Our government has essentially taken out a loan and gone into debt (deeper than they already were) to fund this project, and the taxes they collect from us over the next two decades will be used to pay this loan off.
By the time the project is paid off and we've broken even, the technology will be obsolete. As numerous articles of ours in the past have shown, the market is moving steadily away from static LAN connections to mobile ones. At the moment, WIFI routers have a maximum capability of transmitting 300mbps, so installing a fibre connection that can transmit up to 1GBps is useless, because as soon as it gets to the router it will be dropped back to 300mbps anyway. It's like attaching a pipe that can carry 1000litres of water each second to your house, only to have it connected to a tap that can only put through 50litres of water per second. It's pointless.
Samsung have just announced the development of a new wireless network (titled 5G, but we can ignore all the implications of the other G networks that go with this) that is capable of transmitting 1GB of data over a distance of 2km in 1 second. Although it's not scheduled for widespread use by the general population until 2020, it's still proposed to be fully functional well before the NBN will have completed its rollout.
Rather than having everyone pay for a system that only some will use, we think that it makes much more financial sense to have the government install fibre only to the nodes, and then keep the current copper wiring connected to houses. This will be a lot quicker and a lot cheaper, and it is nowhere near as pointless as automatically installing fibre to every house. If you personally want to increase your bandwidth and have a direct fibre connection to your house, you can pay an extra $1000 to have it installed. Keep in mind that this $1000 one off payment is much cheaper than what you'd pay in taxes to cover the cost of everyone having fibre-to-home, and that with this system your neighbours who don't want to pay the extra money will still see an increased connection speed of at least 20mbps.
This "opt in" system makes much more sense, as it allows those who need or want the faster connection to get it for less money, and it allows those who aren't going to use the system to have their taxes better spent on infrastructure that will benefit them, such as hospitals and public transport. There are so many areas of public infrastructure that desperately need to be improved and require more funding, and we feel that the billions of dollars being invested in the NBN in its current form could be far better spent.
A few people have argued that Australia is doing better than other countries economically, and that we should invest in this project while we have the means. This point essentially cancels itself out, as it acknowledges that Australia is effected by the global market, albeit slightly later than other Western countries, and that we need to be prudent with our spending before we find ourselves in massive debt (more than we already are). Again, our internet connection does need to be upgraded, but not for the cost of billion of dollars and not with fibre to every single home. The fibre-to-node solution will still improve connection speeds, cost less money, and take nowhere near as long, and the leftover money that would have spent connecting node to home by fibre can be spent of other projects.
For cheaper than the current $37.4 billion cost, we could put a satellite into orbit around the Earth and all of Australia could use that to connect to the internet, similarily to how pay TV such as Foxtel works. Funnily enough, Foxtel was originally delivered by cable (hence the name cable TV) but they soon realised that satellite connection was easier to deliver to individual homes than cables.
And judging from past experience with major infrastructure changes, the cost and time is only going to blow out as it goes along - Does everyone remember how awesome Myki sounded when the Victorian State Government first proposed it over a decade ago, and how spectacularly it failed? 15 years later, it still hasn't even been properly rolled out on all regional rail lines, and that's just a payment system. Yet the National Labor government think they can connect fibre to every single home in the country without going over time and budget? Good luck.
So, that's our opinion on the matter. As a graphic design and internet technology company we have a vested interest in the development of the NBN, but please keep in mind that we are not at all involved with it nor are we affiliated with a political party; we are merely collecting facts and stating our opinion about those facts. Feel free to send us your opinions on our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages!
If you want to check out some more articles and information about the NBN (unbiased, we promise) you can visit the following pages:
Pulling the NBN debate out of the gutter
Fibre to the Node Plan
The New Broadband Debate
Copper, fibre, nodes; How do we know best?
Coalition NBN better or worse?
Samsung announces 5G Network
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