Damian Ivereigh, chief executive of Launtel, a Launceston-based provider, said in a blog post that the Australian Government was prepared to spend $50 billion on 12 submarines that would probably be obsolete by the time they were built; given this, why could a similar amount not be spent on infrastructure that would be a vital part of Australia's economic future?
Ironically, the subs would become obsolete partly due to the fact that they would use similar signal processing technology to that used for the fibre-to-the-node connections which the NBN Co is providing for a majority of the populace, he pointed out.
Ivereigh said he did not care which political party was willing to build a proper fibre network that guaranteed Australia's future.
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"Are we going to wake up in 10 years and say 'Thank heavens Turnbull and Abbott didn’t spend all that money on the NBN. That would have been such a waste of money. Clearly the Internet was just a fad anyway'?"
While 5G would definitely help in improving the broadband speeds, Ivereigh said it would only make a dent. "A fixed-line pure fibre network is the only technology that comes even close to being able to do the heavy lifting we will need."
He blamed Turnbull for the NBN fiasco, saying he was the one who had agreed to Abbott's desire to "bury the NBN' and brought about the "complete neutering and bastardisation of the original NBN vision".
When construction of the NBN was begun in 2009, the Labor Party was in office and it envisaged fibre being rolled out to the premises for 93% of the populace, with the remaining 7% to be supplied with connectivity through either fixed wireless or satellite.
The rollout became a political issue when the Coalition Government that took power in 2013 decided to change the technology of the network to what it called a multi-technology mix.
The MTM includes fibre-to-the-node, HFC cable, satellite, and wireless, apart from fibre-to-the-premises which is being provided only to new dwellings.
As the MTM plan and the connections provided have come under increasing criticism, fibre-to-the-distribution-point, which considerably reduces the copper lead-in to premises — what the network builder NBN Co calls fibre-to-the-curb — has been introduced as well.
"The political arguments about whether Australia needs gigabit Internet is, and always has been, completely irrelevant," Ivereigh said. "What Australia needed (and still needs) is infrastructure that delivers Internet fast enough and reliable enough for us to forget about our Internet connection. We should treat it like water and power – trusted infrastructure that is just there and never gets in our way."