NBN debate in urgent dose of rollout reality

NBN debate in urgent dose of rollout reality: "OPINION

None of the NBN rollout targets - on either side of politics - look achievable, says analyst Tony Brown.

NBN Co Executive Chairman Ziggy Switkowski admitted last week that it would be a “very, very demanding” task for the company to meet Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s aim of delivering 25 megabits per second via fibre-to-the-node national broadband network to all Australian homes by end-2016 – you can almost hear Turnbull’s Labor predecessor Stephen Conroy still chortling from here.

But Conroy should not laugh too hard after all, at the end of his six-year tenure as Communications Minister in June, it had become abundantly apparent that he was simply never going to be able to deliver on his promise of delivering a nationwide fibre-to-the-premise network to 12.2 million premises by 2012 either.

The bottom line – as Dr Switkowski told the Senate Select Committee on the NBN last week – is that the entire NBN project has been bedevilled by the imposition of “heroic targets” – none of which have even come close to being met."

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