Six months and no detail from Turnbull
Stephen Conroy
posted Friday, 3 February 2012
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, today called for the Coalition to come clean on their broadband plans.
“Six months ago today Malcolm Turnbull addressed the National Press Club on the National Broadband Network. For the rest of 2011 and already in 2012 he has been silent on any policy detail,” Senator Conroy said
“In one speech, three media releases and 15 tweets this year on the NBN he has continued his negative campaign and not provided an actual broadband policy. Meanwhile, his coalition partners continue to call for fibre to the home in regional Australia, while his leader tells Australia this week we should invest in last century road and rail infrastructure not 21st century broadband.
“Today, Mr Turnbull tweets a link to a Financial Times article about BT’s fibre to the node deployment. This is the same story he told us about in December.
“But he gives no detail on how it would be, or even if it can be, delivered in Australia. How many powered cabinets will be required to get within 400 metres of every premise? What is the actual speed that customers get rather than just ‘up to 80 Mbps’? How much will it cost?
“The Coalition needs to come clean – what is their actual policy, what technology do they propose to use and what will it cost.”
Questions Mr Turnbull does not answer
POLICY
- How will the coalition achieve the structural separation of Telstra?
- How much will prices increase in regional Australia without a cross subsidy? How much will his “voucher” system for regional Australia cost?
TECHNOLOGY
- How many households does Mr Turnbull plan to serve with HFC?
- How many households does he plan to serve with FTTN? How many FTTN nodes does he plan to build?
- How many households does he plan to serve with wireless?
- What does he really think the requirements are for bandwidth in 2020?
- When does he expect his network will need to be replaced by FTTH (he calls it a migration path)?
COSTS
- How much will his network cost?
- Why does he consisently misrepresent the $35 billion capital cost of the NBN?