Coalition NBN Will Miss Delivery Target And Make Less Money Than FTTH: Report

When you’re trying to reconcile a big, ugly fibre broadband project, the last thing you want is someone looking at your list of “Challenges” to rectify. A leaked report supposedly from Malcolm Turnbull’s “Blue Book” full of ministerially important stuff says that the fibre to the node NBN will make less money than the network proposed by the Labor government and miss proposed roll-out dates. Ruh roh, Malcolm.

Fairfax obtained a leak of the so-called “Blue Book”, and found that some fairly serious challenges await the incoming government with its fibre to the node NBN roll-out.

The advice contained in the Blue Book from experts says that the FTTN roll-out will struggle to complete the first stage of the 25Mbps network deployment by 2016, meaning that the delivery date of 2019 for 50Mbps services might also be pushed back.

The Blue Book says that the 2019 target “could be achievable”, but could slip if 12 significant issues aren’t resolved soon.

Those issues include a massive remediation of Telstra’s decidedly average copper network, assessment of some 60,000 street cabinets and a huge workforce retraining program to get skilled technicians working on the fibre to the node plan. That’s on top of massive regulatory hurdles, too, including council approvals, legislation change and ACCC approval.

Revenue projections contained in the Blue Book also see the earning potential of a fibre to the node network slashed by almost a third by 2021.

If this is all true, we might be waiting longer than expected for our “faster, sooner, cheaper” FTTN network from the Coalition.

Turnbull has lashed out at the report, however, calling it out of date and a massive partisan swing at the current government’s plans.

Check out the full report on Fairfax to see the leaked challenges that lie ahead. [SMH]


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