Turnbull's Botched Broadband

Malcolm is a well read, well informed, highly intelligent man with excellent communication skills and a good working knowledge of information technology. He is also a well trained and highly experienced barrister who can argue that black is white, and at the drop of a hat can argue that black is in fact black, it always was and it was never suggested that it was otherwise.

Before Malcolm became a serially disappointing Prime Minister, he was a very effective communications minister who had been instructed by Tony Abbott to 'demolish the NBN' and before he saw the opportunity to knife his leader Malcolm was a very loyal servant of Captain Abbott.

Turnbull argued that with a mix of technologies (old and new), he could deliver a cheaper, good enough service faster. Many technology experts said FTTP (fibre to the premises) was vastly superior to FTTN (fibre to the node)... here is just one example from 2011.

Cartoon by David Pope

There were many warnings about abandoning the FTTP roll out plan, but Malcolm knew better, so he told us. But the real question... was did he really believe FTTN was a smarter option, or was he following his client's instructions and destroying the NBN?

In 2016 we have the benefit of hindsight and the ability to look at Malcolm's track record... what he promised Vs what he delivered.

Cheaper? Well Malcolm's cost projections have already blown out by 100%. And that is achieved by keeping the old technology which will need to be replaced within 10 years at an even greater cost.

Faster? Well Malcolm won't see NBN Co.reach his target of every user having access to 25 Mbps by the end of 2016... that is now projected to happen by 2020. 

Independent analysis by Rod Tucker from the University of Melbourne suggests that sticking to FTTP in 2013 would've led to similar costs and time frames as Turnbull's botched network.

At every step along the way it seems we are paying the same and waiting as long as we would have in the original FTTP plan, but we will have a far inferior product.

Cartoon by Cathy Wilcox

One of the persistent critics of the Turnbull plan was Nick Ross, formerly technology editor at the ABC... an organisation Turnbull also had oversight over when communications minister.While Turnbull claims in public that he supports the freedom of the ABC... there is compelling evidence that in private Turnbull sought to gag Nick Ross. And in the same article (link above) Nick goes into great detail how much interference was run to protect Turnbull's position on the Coalition's NBN policy.

But bad news can't be suppressed forever evidenced by this recent article on the ABC which underlines the telecommunications mess created by Turnbull and delivered by Ziggy Switkowski

Putting aside Turnbull's failings as communication minister (and now as PM), what kind of future have we been locked into?

The infographics below suggest problems ahead.

Much slower speeds than our international competitors... slower than even Russia.

Capacity constraints which will limit our access to technology and information. At a time when we are transitioning to more and 'smart devices' the internet of everything will be something our network will struggle to support.

We'll be saddled with speeds which won't meet our needs to 2025 and beyond.

Malcolm Turnbull keeps saying the this is an exciting time and that our future is tied to innovation. When the truth is we will be constrained by infrastructure bottlenecks created by Turnbull policies and rather than making it exciting to be an Australian, will make it frustrating to be in Australia... accelerating the international brain drain.

​Australians will continue to do great things, they might just have to do them overseas thanks to the poor policy decisions of Malcolm Turnbull.It begs the question as to why Malcolm is so excited about our near term future prospects. Or is it just words to get a bad government past the next election?

Cartoon by John Spooner

by Mark Enders