Van Badham theguardian.com, Wednesday 7 May 2014
Lagging speed, inevitable costly updates, the creation of a digital divide ... There are many questions to be asked about the Coalition's NBN plans, but don't expect to get a reply
'Australian people are being denied the quality of essential infrastructure'. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull may not want to answer many questions about the National Broadband Network, but it shouldn't stop Australians from asking them. After all, since last September, Turnbull has reneged on pre-election NBN commitments, admitted to giving misleading statements about Labor's costings, made chummy appointments, ignored expert economic consideration, and infuriated the near-entirety of the professional tech community.
And yet, the minister has been able to dodge much deserved public excoriation. His advantage is administering a policy area that significant chunks of the electorate just don’t understand, as well as speaking to an industry that by practice and tradition is pretty insulated from the broader democratic conversation.
An analysis in layperson’s terms of what Turnbull has been doing with the NBN makes clear how Australian people are being denied the quality of essential infrastructure.
Started by the previous Labor government in 2009, the ambition of the NBN project was investment in the to-every-home-and-office installation of the latest-and-best fibre-based communication cables. These new cables are strong enough to enable a “broad band” of communication frequencies simultaneously and at great speeds. The copper wires through which most telecommunications are presently run (and on which the bulk of the Coalition's NBN policy is based on) were built decades before the internet, and our increasing internet usage tax them heavily. Copper wires also corrode, can cease to work in heavy rain, and parts of the old network consists of wires that are actually wrapped in paper, not plastic.
For a society that’s increasingly running everything from the stock market, to defense systems, education, remote surgery, entertainment, home security and even dating through the internet, powerful and reliable internet service that works when it rains is no small social necessity.
Labor’s plan was to connect the fibre cables house-to-house, office-to-office, in the same way telephones once had to be connected; this is what’s meant by the acronym “FTTP” or “fibre-to-the-premises”. The 7% of premises that geography prevented from the fibre-cable installation were to be connected to the National Broadband Network with satellites and mobile technology. The NBN "roll-out" refers to the physical installation of these fibre cables around the country.
It’s not a cheap project, but major national infrastructure is built by governments because it’s for the national good, and every cut corner compromises that good – not to mention the ability of an improved means of productivity and efficiency to pay for itself.
Why anyone would wish to deny the nation the latest-and-best in essential infrastructure is confounding for an economy that must compete globally, but that’s precisely the policy that the Coalition took to the last election – even though a study from the University of Melbourne found that despite negative media representation, more than 58% of Australians believed that Labor’s NBN would bring them direct benefit.
Despite the widespread approbation of the traditionally politically quiet tech community, the Coalition promoted a “fibre-to-the-node” (FTTN) network instead. Turnbull’s broadband uses the old copper wires to link to fibre cables only as far as a single box on each street, and is the internet equivalent of installing one telephone for an entire apartment building.
Their policy slogan “Fast. Affordable. Sooner” was perhaps misleading; “fast” referred to the speed at which the street boxes would be installed, as the actual internet speeds provided by this system are significantly slower, and subject to copper’s tempermentality. To compare: Labor’s NBN guaranteed an upload speed that is absolutely towering over the maximum of that guaranteed by the Coalition (and that's not to mention that a strategic review of the NBN has found it will not get halfway to meeting its speed targets).
Despite the promise of the inferior system being taken to the last election, what Turnbull is actually providing now in government reneges even on that. The Coalition is currently proposing a “multi-technology mix” that will string together bits of the network with the old and very inferior “HFC” cables from cable-TV.
The tech community is up in arms, with many arguing this would create a digital divide. “This approach will place Australia far out on its own in terms of its national telecommunications infrastructure”, railed tech journal Delimiter. Commentator Paul Budde was more blunt, and called the surprise policy turnaround a “dogs’ breakfast”, while technology journalist David Braue made the point that the Coalition “now faces an uphill struggle to deliver a functionally limited NBN that will already be outdated by the time it's complete.”
It’s precisely for this reason that other countries are staying clear of such a system. It’s why our cousins in New Zealand actually replaced the fibre-to-the-node system they had with a fibre-to-the-premise one – and the reason why the tech community in Australia is anxious about the superior economic opportunities this now means for that country in our region, though Indonesia is also planning for fibre-to-the-premises. The Coalition makes much of Britain having the node system, but British Telecom is beginning to roll out fibre-to-the-premises over the top of it.
The Coalition have declared Australia must spend $12bn for the best fighter jets, yet with crucial infrastructure they are installing a system that evolving technological needs will inevitably demand be replaced with a proper fibre network, with us lagging behind our economic competitors all the way. If you think, like Tony Abbott does, that the internet is just “a video entertainment system” anyway, maybe you’re not alarmed. If, however, you make the connection that everything from emergency management systems to banking security relies on functional telecommunications that can speak to world standards, you might want to take a closer look at what’s going on.
Do not expect scrutiny from those Turnbull has surrounded himself with; the report from the Coalition’s recent Strategic Review had outcomes that dovetailed exactly with Turnbull’s surprise “multi-technology” policy. And Turnbull’s demand that the previous Labor government submit the NBN to a cost-benefit analysis has, now he’s in government, neatly reversed: his NBN will not be subjected to such an analysis, he just wants to “get on with (the) job”.
There are two lessons to be learned from what is emerging as yet another expensive Coalition debacle. The first is that Australia’s telecommunication infrastructure has been made vulnerable to the same Coalition malaise of mismanagement that is tainted with ideologically-laden incompetence. The second is that the Australian tech community has a fight on its hands to retain its international competitiveness and professional vitality.
As one of the most under-unionised professions in the economy, it may be worth considering the impact Australia’s IT workers could have by downing tools, before Turnbull’s policy takes them away.
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