Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

On 11 May The New York Times warned the rest of the world about this government's second-rate NBN. The title for the article was: 'How Australia bungled its $49 billion high-speed internet rollout.' The article went on to say, in relation to the Prime Minister's broadband plan, that it has been:

…hobbled by cost overruns, partisan maneuvering and a major technical compromise that put 19th-century technology between the country’s 21st-century digital backbone and many of its homes and businesses.

Meanwhile the rest of the world has been moving towards fibre. In January Ovum declared that 2016 had been a tipping point for fibre deployment. They noted the business case for FTTP had improved dramatically with costs falling significantly across the globe.

The UK is now exploring plans to expand fibre deployment to 10 million premises and British Telecommunications are reported to have halved the cost of FTTP deployment in their rollout trials. New Zealand has a blossoming fibre network and its own space program. It has brought down the costs of fibre deployment by 44 per cent. Meanwhile, here we are, stuck with a $49 billion second-rate copper NBN. This government's digital transformation agenda has collapsed before our eyes, and consumer complaints about the NBN soared over the 2015-16 period. Through all this the government has stood by and watched on as a spectator. Our constituents are fed up with the broken promises, the missed appointments, the dropouts and the blame shifting, which have characterised their experience since moving to the NBN.

The 2017-18 budget will provide $7 million in funding for the implementation of a speed monitoring program. Labor welcomes this announcement and considers the program can help ensure consumers are better informed to make choices about the services they purchase and the factors which impact on their speeds. I was disappointed, but not surprised, to learn the ACCC proposed the broadband speed monitoring program to government in the week commencing 15 February 2016. That is right, last year. This was their evidence to the NBN joint standing committee.

Fourteen months has elapsed since February 2016. Why has this sensible step taken so long? Why did the government and the minister sit on this for 14 months?

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