Lobby Group Tells NBN: Get Rid Of FTTN Already

NBN needs to ditch copper-based Fibre to the Node, says lobby group Internet Australia, saying it is “essential for Australia’s economic and social development” to abandon the technology in favour of Fibre to the distribution point.

And no, it says, it’s not too late.

Internet Australia has been shouting the virtues of FTTd over FTTN for more than a year now.

“It’s a shame NBN won’t admit their use of ageing copper is a mistake that will cost billions to replace”, Internet Australia’s Executive Director, Laurie Patton, commented, “Meanwhile, Australians are suffering with inferior broadband, customer complaints are rising and the worst is yet to come”.

Patton says the issues already plaguing the rollout will be exacerbated as NBN rushes to complete the project, which just hit the halfway point.

“The sooner we abandon FTTN the better,” Patton says. “So we call on the Government to switch to FTTdp immediately, in the national interest”.

When the project is completed in 2020, Internet Australia says NBN will need to ‘upgrade’ all the premises with FTTN, “as it becomes increasingly obvious customers are not being delivered what they want or need”.

“It’s not really an upgrade anyway because they’ll have to rip out all the copper wiring and the so-called ‘nodes’ will be redundant,” Patton says. “Nobody knows exactly how much this will cost us all, but we’re talking billions of dollars”.


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