Turnbull's NBN fiasco exposed

In the year Australia was meant to roll ahead with broadband infrastructure to rival other developed countries, the nation has found itself dropping well behind the curve when it comes to internet speeds.

Australia’s average connection speeds rank just 44th in Akamai’s annual State of the Internet report released on Monday, down four places from the previous year’s report which examines internet connection speeds and broadband uptake around the world.

Independent telecommunications analyst, Telsyte’s Chris Coughlan, told Guardian Australia that the drop-off is the result of delay, indecision and policy change on the national broadband network (NBN), the fibre optic network being rolled-out nationally.

“We’ve stagnated,” he said. “Each time there has been a policy change with respect to the NBN it has resulted in a two-year delay in infrastructure being rolled out.”

Under the previous Labor government the initial tender was to build a fibre-to-the-node network (FTTN), but because Telstra did not provide a compliant response, “that basically went out the window, that’s when they changed tack to fibre-to-the-premise broadband,” Coughlan said.

“Because NBN couldn’t initially use Telstra’s copper network, NBN was put in the position of having to build its own network. “That was just four years in the making,” he said.

Then Australia had a change of government which changed approach again, deciding to negotiate with Telstra for the use of their copper, switching the NBN back to its initial FTTN roll-out. 
“The only winner out of all this is Telstra,” said Coughlan. “Each time it opens up the books on renegotiating access to some of their critical infrastructure it gains more from it.”

NBN Co and the government also face more pressure as the US pushes to change the definition of broadband. Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler proposed raising the definition of broadband internet from 4Mbps downstream and 1Mbps upstream to 25Mbps down and 3Mbps up.

The proposed category change “raises more doubts around FTTN if it is not engineered correctly,” Coughlan said.

In order for Australia to move its internet rankings to at least the top 10, Coughlan said “basically, we need to get on and do it”.

Any more delay “would just be dumb” he said.

While many analysts and consumers have been critical of the NBN’s FTTN approach, arguing copper could potentially slow connection speeds by up to 50%, Coughlan said if done well, FTTN can still compete.

“If FTTN is done well – and that means very short local loop lengths – then we can compete, right. However, if the local lengths are not less than 400 metres maximum, then speeds will suffer. Then we will really need to think about FTTP,” he said.