Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for the question. To borrow a quote from Hugh Bradlow, the Chief Technology Officer at Telstra: ‘Fibre-to-the-home is the endgame; it is the most future proof technology available. It has a capacity that exceeds the other alternatives to deliver a whole range of applications that are restricted by the physical properties involved in a HFC network or a wireless network or a copper network.’ As Larry Smarr, one of the founders of the internet and one of the more eminent people in this field, continually says: ‘We have reached the end of the copper era. We have reached the end of the usefulness of copper and it is time to move to the fibre future because fibre can deliver the capacity.’ It is not just a simple argument around download speeds; it is about delivering the capacity for upload as well. Copper has limitations in this area, wireless has limitations in this area and HFC has limitations in this area.

The benefit of fibre to the home over the other types of technologies that are currently available is that it does not have those same restrictions. In engineering terms there is a minute amount of degradation that moves along, but, in effect, if you pay for 100 megs download, you get 100 megs. If you pay for— (Time expired)