The coalition has been campaigning pretty hard against the NBN since they didn’t win the election last year, but they’ve typically been pretty quiet about what they’d do instead. In an interview with David Ramli at ARN, Opposition Communications spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull has admitted that they will stop the NBN rollout in its tracks should they get into power.
Addressing the question, “At what point does the NBN become to big to stop?” Turnbull explains:
We would stop the construction of the NBN, quickly conduct a rigorous cost-benefit analysis, identify those elements in the NBN infrastructure that should be maintained and integrated perhaps into the new separated network company and identify the areas that are deficient in terms of connectivity and prioritise them and make sure they are addressed.
Turnbull continues the interview by confessing that the Liberal policy wouldn’t be announced until closer to the election, but he does emphasise that wireless is going to be at the centre of their plans to supply broadband to rural areas.
It’s a fascinating interview, and while I disagree with Turnbull on a number of issues surrounding the NBN, there’s no question that the man has a deeper understanding of the industry than his predecessor and his party leader. Head over to ARN to read the whole thing.
[ARN]
Luke
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 3:40 PMJesus Christ… how stupid is this guy, Wireless isnt the answer. The NBN was one of the major reasons Labor got back into power.
Joe
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 9:28 PMThis just illustrates how short sighted people are before going to the polling booths!
Awnshegh
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 4:14 PMBah Humbug.
Martin
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 4:21 PMback in november last year, one of the giz editors was supposed to interview this nut job. whatever happened to that?
I think richard alston is about to loose his title of biggest ludite in the world to this weasel. Seriously, how can the liberals stop something that the public want. what happens when they get into power stop the NBN and IPTV takes off. Oh thats right I forgot only people who plays games and downloads pirated software/pornography want faster internet.
David Firman
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 4:35 PMFFS! There is enough evidence out there to prove current wireless technologies is NOT suitable as the main connection method. F’in idiots!
Charles
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 4:37 PMSurely this policy just guarantees that they won’t be elected, since the NBN was probably the main thing that got Labor re-elected in the last election.
chuie
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 12:34 AMNah not really, otherwise Abbott would never have been able to nail in that “debt and deficit” message as strongly, a contributing factor to the dethroning of Rudd.
It would also be foolish for the coalition to back away from their current stance from a political perspective. By the way, Turnbull has already given justifications for his skepticism about the NBN late last year on the 7:30 Report, which are essentially the same as the ones mentioned here (last one that O’Brien ever did)
Some points the coalition make do hold ground. Why not conduct a cost benefit analysis? Sure, there are arguments saying that while the economic impacts will be looked into while the social implications are ignored; nevertheless with the confidence that Labor has in the positive outcome that this policy will have there is no reason not to conduct one, particularly for an investment of this scope. Additionally the shifty tactics employed late last year, such as blocking a senate inquiry or something along the lines does raise a legitimate question; if this truly is the bullet proof, future proof infrastructure that we all need to have, why is there such little transparency over the issue?
Matt
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 4:47 PMNice – he claims it’s all a waste of money, then will turn the whole thing uneconomical but shutting down/selling off parts of it – losing massive amounts of money in the process!
God hope they don’t get into power.
Blake
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 4:52 PMI can say in my case the NBN was one of two reasons I supported Gillard (the other being that Abbot is a dill) of they supported the NBN and dumped Abbot I’d change
Camps in a heartbeat.
Another Blake
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 9:52 AMThe NBN was why I voted for Labour above Liberal, but I had the Sex Party, Secular Party, LDP, Greens and Senator Online above either.
Votes coming from the smaller parties shows the larger parties what they need to change in order to get voters coming back to them.
attila
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 5:24 PMHeh, he calls out all the people who like to claim that health is one of the great arguments for the NBN – you don’t need fibre to the *home* to make remote surgery possible.
Kris
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 6:06 PMStop saying ‘the public’ want the NBN. Just because you read comments on a tech blog, doesn’t mean it’s true. Hell I think the NBN is a waste of money, and I spend most of my day on the internet.
tim
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 10:25 PMLet me be the first to agree with you.
I spend most of my time on the internet, but paying such a ridiculous sum for the NBN is a waste…
I’d like the higher speeds and better infrastructure, but not for that price.
Any government can start spending left, right and centre. There are a lot of things out there that can be built for the nation, but not all of it is good and worth while.
Mac
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 8:10 PMEvery Party is acting stoopid. Conroy wants to give us a bone-head “Filter”, Coalition want to stop NBN altogether. On balance, the Coalition’s position is the worst. These guys would have canned the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Snowy Mountain Scheme, too! NBN will give Australia an awesome advantage economically, socially, for research, innovation, lifestyle, everything .. and frankly we NEED every advantage we can get. Very smart, aggressive and admirable Capitalists in other countries competing against Australia’s dwindling head-start: Optus is already but a branch of SingTel.
AlterA
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 9:00 PMWhen monkeys talk technology. I have 91.96 Mb/s connection and ping 3ms, no wireless (don’t get me wrong i like wireless) can do/replace that. What a delight to work on the internet… NBN thumbs up…
Alexander Warton
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 10:02 PMJust wanna say that snowy hydro and syd harbour bridge both took place under liberal/liberal predecessor governments for large chunks of their constructions.
Amongst other issues that i have is that, the current issue came from telstra holding a monopoly for 60 years and not allowing for growth of private enterprise (as well as never being competitive, setting opposition prices and other monopolistic practices), now we want to hand the exact power to another govt owned property and in terms screw over the private companys that have put money into copper, fibre optics and all the others.
finally, the other facet (relates to egypt i guess) of the govt thus holding the only web supply in aust (copper will be shut down), which given conroys past stances, scares me.
Totallysour
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 11:08 PMOur “Sputnik moment”? Here here to any advantage in scientific research and innovation!
Aran
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 3:23 AMYeah we don’t NEED it.
It just sounds like you have a grape against the Liberals like a lot of other people here and just Want faster download speeds for yourself. You really can’t justify it in economical terms, or at least it’s very hard to without a cost-benefit analysis which will tell you if it is economically viable or if it’s just going to be a bad investment and give you a massive loan in the end.
Personally I think it’s something the private sector should be dealing with. There’s already a lot of money invested in internet services and it’s very competitive. Optus and Telstra are already offering faster speeds for their cable customers…
The technology is great. Trying to justify spending $43bn on a network that might not give you a greater return and overheating the economy by pumping that money and pulling resources from the private sector is a harder sell.
I think it’s more of an economic question than it is a tech question. It is beyond any doubt a faster network.
P.S. Optus was always a part of Sing Tel…
Another Blake
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 10:05 AMThe way I see it the purpose of the government isn’t to make money, it’s to take in our taxes and turn them into services.
Our internet is absolutely atrocious in some places and there is no way the telcos would lay cable out that far as they’d only lose money on the deal.
The private sector will not give us what we need in this case, so even though the NBN will do little for me (my ADSL2 gives me a fairly decent speed), I think it’s absolutely a good thing for Australia.
opm881
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 10:44 AMThe problem is the private sector had years to do it, and didn’t. Try going out of a capital city and you suddenly realise how dodgy everyone else has it. I live in cairns(which is hardly a one horse town) in FNQ, and we cant get cable here and the lines are shocking, they need to be replaced and have for years, but telstra won’t do it. The same in townsville, the phone lines there are shocking and need replacing but no one will do it, and they wont roll out cable either. The private sector basically picks the place where they can get the most customers for the least cost, aka capital cities, and give them the good stuff and leave everyone else on outdated tech and shocking services,
Aran
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 11:23 PM@omp881
Fiber to the Home won’t be the case for a lot of rural areas. It’ll more or less be the same situation with you getting better wireless capabilities. If Telstra isn’t there I think it would be hard to think that the NBN will be considering Telstra is bound by law to honor the Universal Service law…. or whatever it’s called.
In either case the Liberals never said they weren’t going to invest in the infrastructure of broadband. Which I find annoying when people assume it’s going to be forgotten. Most of the backbone infrastructure that is capping current lines will be upgraded.
Needless to say, Telstra did start rolling a fiber network out in the Melbourne CBD years ago and no one was willing to sign a contract and pay the extra money for the speeds.
So, the Private sector did do something, hell Optus has fiber networks… it hasn’t been greeted with open arms. Also the reason we have caps on our data is more because of the international lines that are built by private enterprise under a joint venture. Which i’m happy to say the Australia, New Zealand and US link will be getting another one thanks to investments from people like the Pay Pal founder. (Correct me if i’m wrong but I think that’s the guy).
I just wish we had have spent it on a VFT (Very Fast Train) :( something people have been calling for since the 1980s.
Joe
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 9:24 PMThis sounds right! Why up grade copper line if people have adsl2+ avalible to them? What about the people stuck on a rim with pair gain! or poor coverage areas for mobile BB. This should be the priority…. and not waste money on a “let’s upgrade everything” approach. Put the money where it’s needed…. Not just to buy votes from people who can’t get porn fast enough!!
brend_n
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 9:37 PM…aaaaand all that would do, Mr Turnbull, is waste even more money. Its like, even if a party does have a good idea (and, maybe, even good implementation of that idea – not that the Coalition would ever admit that if it were to be the case) then the Opposition, once in power, rrrrrips it up. Why?
For the love of God, WHY?
Grumpigeek
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 10:39 PMAgree with Mac’s post.
Both Conroy and Turnbull are acting like complete luddites.
Labor got the NBN right, but Conroy seems determined to undermine it with his idiotic filter and hand victory to the Liberals.
The Liberals have Turnbull, who should know a bit about the industry, but he is living in his past Ozemail days.
He is determined to abandon a half built NBN, which would be a shocking waste of money, and tragically consign Australia to IT oblivion.
I just hope Thodey’s crew can get most of the NBN built before Abbott and Turnbull get a chance to kill Australian productivity.
Scott MacLeod
Monday, January 31, 2011 at 11:33 PMHonestly we need the NBN in the case of comparisons on internet, Australia is well below par with a heap of developing countries higher on the list when talking about quality and speed… That is ridiculous!
But that article has condemned any votes from a lot of business people and the majority of individuals in the tech industry…
Nick
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 1:29 AMSorry but seriously how narrow minded can you be? I thought that they were just hating on the NBN because it was of liberal design I mean I could understand that, I thought they would just re-brand it and continue what has already been started. If they still hold the viewpoint that they are going to scrap the NBN if they get into power then there is no way I will vote for them. I am not too concerned of labor’s proposed internet filter since both the greens and labor said they will block it when they try to pass it.
Noother
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 10:30 AMI myself are on Naked DSL (ADSL2+ with VoIP) with 10Mb/1Mb which I feel is fine for me, I can download stuff pretty fast, and even though there are 4 users in my home each with their own computer, they don’t use anywhere near as much as me.
I do support the NBN though because I have friends/family in areas where they either can’t get ADSL/2+ at all and are stuck with wireless, or they can get it but it is very poor. I’ve used wireless before, my work has around a hundred wireless card users, and most don’t get above 2Mbit, or they suffer drop outs. Some of the newer wireless cards like Telstra Ultimate and Elite do seem to be more stable but the speeds are still crappy, especially around peak times and where there are plenty of users.
Wireless in my opinion should definitely not be a primary internet connection. It is great for those who have to work on the fly, traveling around for work, and good for mobile devices, but as a primary connection, especially with upcoming technologies like IPTV, Cloud Services (Remote Backups, file storage, Applications, etc), high definition media and many other services, bandwidth requirements just keep growing, and a lot of this stuff requires stable connections which wireless is definitely not.
For better wireless, they are still going to have to increase the backbone to each tower, and if the Liberals plan on increasing wireless coverage and potentially try to make it the primary connection, they will need to lay fibre everywhere anyway, since they’d need to install more towers.
With the current state of copper, and the future further degrading of the copper infrastructure, replacing it with fibre seems the best way forward. Having fibre installed to the home, means that new start ups, new technology and content providers can actually look at Australia to build their services first, or at least store more data in our data centres that would normally be accessed overseas, which means it would be faster, take load of international links (would still likely have load increases for other services) and could lead to price drops/quota increases as well as larger freezones.
I hope NBN just keeps on going regardless of what happens at the next election. The very idea of scrapping it is just stupid, you would have the haves and have nots depending on what Liberals do with existing laid fibre. I know if I was to move, I’d be looking for somewhere that had fibre installed.
Daniel Weaver-Koenigs
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 11:44 AMI live in the nations capital and get a connection UNDER 4meg.
How is wireless going to help me besides offering me massive latency?
The next election looks likely to be as much of a choice between a giant douche and a shit sandwich as the last one, politics in Australia today are pathetic.
Joe
Tuesday, February 1, 2011 at 8:57 PMI also live in the ACT (Dunlop) and I am struggling with Telstra wireless at 256kbs! I would be more than happy with an Adsl 2+ connection (hell 2 Meg would be great). But I don’t understand why 100mbs is required for personal use?
Vince
Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 5:22 PMThe 100Mbps speed is the premium/business service, not the minimum. Average people will have options for lower speeds (probably a min of say 10 – 20Mbps) and obviously pay less.
Not to mention these speeds will be available Australia wide.
I live in the NT and have no option but to get wireless if I want net access. You already know how bad wireless is when it comes to latency, speed and connectivity…. but how about value for money? $89 a month for 12Gig sounds like a bloody bargain doesn’t it.
That’s what you can expect from the Liberals plan to make Australia wireless, or in code, look after the city’s and shaft the regional people.
The NBN is the only option for a fair, fast, and (basically) futureproof internet for Australia, end of story.
Dave
Thursday, February 10, 2011 at 12:19 PMWe all agree we want greater speed. And we all agree that for those outside of the major cities Australia’s internet accessibility and speed is pretty woeful. But I ask those advocating the NBN and those who voted for the current bunch of inept politicians based on getting the NBN to think on this…..
You are going to pay up to $10,000 per working person, just to get it. (Kids, the elderly and those on social security aren’t paying for it – YOU are). Then you are going to pay around $2,000+ per year to access it – minimum. And thats assuming there’s no cost blowout.
And what will you get for it? For gamers, they hope it will give them a millisecond advantage over other online gamers. But the increase in speed won’t increase their skill set. For movie piraters, they want to download a dvd in 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes or a song in 3 seconds instead of 30. But it will still take them 90 minutes to watch an hour and a half movie. For the rest of us, we probably won’t notice the difference becaue the sites we are connecting to will still be the same.
As well, the up and download speeds are assuming the connection on the other end will match them. And thats assuming there are no other issues.
Do you realise the NBN won’t work in an emergency?
Optic fibre needs power to work and the NBN is based on fibre. In the recent floods there was no power for anyone affected. In a cyclone, power is usually the first thing to go. (In cyclone Yasi, many people lost power hours before she hit the coast.) In a bushfire, burning trees take out the powerlines and the power poles burn. So you are paying through the nose for a product that is in cetain instances is not just over-rated but useless.
Besides which, just how much speed do you really need? The governments ‘case’ was that it’s needed to drive productivity for Australian business. Bunkum! Yes business needs broadband but they won’t die or even be adversely affected if they don’t have speeds 100 times faster than currently available. And ass to remote medical procedures by high speed broadband, hospitals etc are already hooked into fibre, so upgrading to the NBN aint doing much for them.
Lets actually look at the options and do a fair dinkum cost comparison based on what is needed and will actually work for everybody. Let’s not spend $43 Billion just because we get excited about the speed regardless of whether or not it is actually needed. I’m guessing that there is an option that will give us increased speeds that are available for ‘all’ (both city slickers and bushwhackers from beyond the black stump) that is far less costly than the proposed $43 Billion.
Tom Reynolds
Friday, February 11, 2011 at 4:24 PMDave you need to read the NBN docs. There is a provision in ther for UPS for people who need it (Medical conditions/elderly) and subsidised by the NBN corp.
The rest of your comments are not reply worthy. How about you answer this; how much does Australia spend on welfare per year? (hint it’s more than 3 times the TOTAL cost of the NBN)