Labor Shadow Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement on Thursday that the Federal Government needed to come clean on "the extent to which Australian taxpayers have been fleeced" due to the decision to use HFC as one of the technologies for "the second-rate NBN".
Rowland pointed out that in April 2016, NBN Co, the company rolling out Australia's national broadband network, had reached a deal to pay Telstra $1.6 billion for its support of aspects of the rollout.
At that time, the NBN Co was planning to deploy HFC to four million homes.
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"The Senate has given NBN Co several opportunities to clarify this has occurred - but NBNCo has so far refused to do so."
In November last year, the NBN Co decided to suspend the provision of NBN connections on HFC for what it said would be anything from six to nine months, while it fixed technical issues that were affecting the speed that the network could deliver.
HFC connections were resumed in June this year.
Rowland pointed out that the underlying build cost of HFC on the NBN had increased by "a staggering 64% since 2015".
"In contrast, over the same period, countries such as New Zealand, the UK and the US have reduced the cost of deploying fibre-to-the-premises by between 40% and 50%," she said. "On every measure, the Liberals’ disastrous decision to adopt HFC has left taxpayers and consumers worse off.
"It’s time the Morrison Government came clean about what the true scope of the impact."