The Coalition has pledged to deliver cheaper and faster broadband sooner than Labor, claiming to be able to save nearly $10 billion from current government projections but telco experts largely remain clear over which national broadband policy is the best for Australia's short and long-term future.
The Coalition policy promises to use a combination of fibre optics and existing copper cabling to deliver a minimum of 25 megabits per second download speeds to suburban homes. It will roll out fibre to high-demand businesses and greenfield estates.
Many telco experts believe Labor's NBN is the best solution in the long term, as it future-proofs broadband infrastructure and can be easily upgraded to higher speeds.
Mark Gregory, senior lecturer at RMIT University's school of electrical and computer engineering, said the Coalition's policy would harm Australia's economy and not future-proof the country's internet infrastructure. ''They're going to be putting Australia behind the rest of the world,'' Dr Gregory said of the Coalition plan. ''That's going to harm the next generation of Australians. It's also going to harm Australian business.''
It was for this reason Dr Gregory praised Labor's plan but dubbed the Coalition's policy a ''lemon''.
''The Coalition's policy has got so many things that can go wrong with it,'' he said.
Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre, agreed that ''this is indeed a lemon''.
Steve Dalby, of internet provider iiNet, which uses Labor's NBN, said he preferred Labor's plan. ''Fibre-to-the-premises is where it needs to be,'' he said.
Grahame Lynch, founder of the Australian telco industry website CommsDay, took a different view. He said Coalition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull should be given some credit for his plan damning it with faint praise as "a great advance on the Coalition's previous plan".
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