Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In September this year I travelled to New Zealand under the auspices of the 2012 New Zealand Committee Exchange Program as part of a delegation from the Joint Committee on the National Broadband Network. As a member of the JCNBN, I was particularly interested in comparing the differences in approach to the rolling out of broadband using fibre optic services in each country. Over the course of 3 days I met with organisations involved in the fibre rollout which, in New Zealand, is called the Ultra-Fast Broadband, or UFB. This included visiting several sites to inspect both old and new facilities firsthand.

The first meeting I attended was with Mr Joe Gallagher from the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union in Auckland and was specifically to talk about labour requirements for the UFB. He told us that chronic labour shortages in the telecommunications industry in New Zealand were widespread. In particular, he referred to the great need for people to operate underground horizontal drilling machines. Rather than find or train those people in New Zealand, 150 operators have been imported from the Philippines.

Whilst some companies in the rollout are training workers, others are not. That leads to the appalling situation of imported workers taking local jobs—because the skills have not been taught. This is a situation not unfamiliar to Australia. In many industries, companies over the last 25 to 30 years have reduced the number of apprentices in training, so we no longer have sufficient skilled labour around to meet our needs. It is, obviously, a problem not unique to Australia; it is much wider than that.

The UFB rollout will create 2,000 to 3,000 jobs across New Zealand between now and 2019. That leaves plenty of time for the companies involved in the rollout to train people and then keep on, for many years to come, the skilled workers they have produced. Again, that can equally apply to Australia. The other problem confronting New Zealand is that workers are poorly paid in comparison to their Australian counterparts. Many workers with skills in demand choose to work in Australia for much greater reward.

Later the same morning, I had a meeting with Graham Mitchell, the CEO, and Rohan McMahon, the strategy director, of Crown Fibre Holdings. Crown Fibre Holdings is the government owned company set up to ensure the implementation of the NZ government's UFB Policy and to manage the contracts for its rollout. From a starting date in 2011, there have been 76,311 premises passed with 1,200 customer connections as at July 2012. Retail service providers have only just started to offer fibre products and there are now 56 different retail service providers in the market. The aim in New Zealand is that, when complete in 2019, the Ultra-Fast Broadband will have passed 1.3 million premises.

That same day I also met with North Power's Graham Dawson, their general manager of network, and Avril Pereria, their business development manager. We met at the company's office in Manakau, a suburb of Auckland, to discuss the UFB overhead rollout in Whangerei, a regional city north of Auckland. North Power has the advantage in Whangerei of being the owner of the electricity network in that city. It therefore does not have to seek access permission to use existing infrastructure.

The use of shared infrastructure between power and fibre has speeded up their rollout considerably, with around 3,800 kilometres of overhead and 680 kilometres of underground electricity network already in place that fibre-optic cables can easily be added to.

On 26 September in Wellington I attended a meeting with the Hon. Amy Adams, the National Party Minister for Communication and IT of New Zealand. A part of the discussion covered the uptake of the ultrafast broadband which the government in New Zealand expects to be 35-40 per cent by 2019. Unlike Australia, there is no compulsion to change from copper to fibre once the local rollout has been completed. The problem that I see with this model is the overbuild of the network that results in both fibre and copper services having to be maintained for years if not decades to come and therefore the ongoing maintenance of an ageing copper network that will have declining use over time as more people switch over to fibre. The New Zealand government have set a priority for the rollout of the ultrafast broadband to schools, health, businesses and government.

Later on the same day at a meeting with the Hon. David Cunliffe, the NZ Labour economic development and associate finance spokesperson, I was taken through the recent history of telecommunications reforms from 1990 up until the present, including the program of cabinetisation that was undertaken by Telecom NZ. The cabinetisation program is now complete. However, as a fibre to the node system it has relevance to the situation in Australia as the opposition here has often claimed the superiority of this delivery system over fibre.

As a part of the delegation's program we also undertook a site visit to a FTTN cabinet in the Wellington suburb of Churton Park. Although New Zealand has undertaken structural separation in its telecommunications, there is no functional separation and both Telecom and Chorus, the company that has been set up, are subject to a 10-year regulatory holiday. At the site visit I heard from Gerard Linstrom, industry and communications manager for Chorus, the NZ company with responsibility for rolling out the ultrafast broadband in 24 out of the 33 areas that cover New Zealand. The fibre to the node cabinet I inspected had 260 users connected for ADSL and telephone services. But there was a bit of a mismatch because those households fortunate enough to live next door to the cabinet had services up to 70Mb/s, whilst those living further away, up to 1.5 kilometres, had a guaranteed minimum 10Mb/s service but not necessarily higher. The fibre to the node cabinets, with mains power, battery backup, air-conditioning, noise proofing and remote alarms, are a substantial piece of streetside infrastructure. Just down the same street, however, only 50 metres away, I viewed a brand-new fibre to the premises cabinet that was around a quarter of the size with capacity for many more connections. No power, air-conditioning or noise proofing was needed as there are no moving or powered parts inside this cabinet. Installed into the cabinet I saw the micro-ducting that has been installed to take fibre from the cabinet to the street's residential premises. Fibre-optic conductors can be blown through the micro ducting for up to two kilometres at a later date, alleviating the need to pull through draw wires at the time of installation.

Although I was very impressed by this system, the down side was the duplication with the fibre to the node architecture that meant the street will be serviced by both fibre and copper for many years to come. The lack of compulsion to change from copper to fibre has seen low take-up rates in areas passed so far along with the initial delay in the rollout and the slow entry of retail service providers.

The following day I attended a meeting with Nick Manning, Chorus government relations manager, and others at their office on Jervois Quay in Wellington. Whilst there, I heard of the problems in accessing multiunit apartments and of gaining rights of way through properties that were impeding the rollout. Although access for power, gas and water are not treated the same in New Zealand, it is definitely an area that is dealt with much better with the NBN rollout in Australia. I also heard from Chorus as to how the shortage of horizontal drilling equipment, drill operators and jointers was impacting on the pace of the rollout. Chorus are currently using 45 per cent of existing ducting for street access and are aiming to increase this, although this is limited in some cases where conduits and ducts are already occupied by copper cabling that cannot be removed due to government regulation.

Unlike Australia, where the NBN is installing network terminations into buildings passed by fibre, the New Zealand rollout is installing the fibre ducting to the front boundary of premises for connection at a later date when the household takes up a fibre service.

After meeting with Chorus, I was briefed by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, who are tasked with the oversight of the UFB build progress through the publication of quarterly targets. The expectation of a slow uptake by the ministry is shown by the expectation of a 38 per cent residential take-up by 2019. However, their figure is much higher than the 20 per cent take-up by 2020 quoted by Chorus. To me, this slow take-up rate is mainly due the duplication of infrastructure that has occurred with the rollout of fibre and the retention of copper.

The ultra-fast broadband rollout in New Zealand has some parallels with the NBN rollout in Australia. Both programs have the aim of delivering high-speed fibre-optic broadband services to the vast majority of their respective populations as soon as possible, which is to be commended. However— (Time expired)