'No interest' in demolishing NBN: Turnbull

James Riley
Thursday, 30 September 2010 00:41

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

Shadow communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull has "no interest" in demolishing the National Broadband Network, and if the Coalition were to form Government before then NBN is completed, it would make the best possible use of the infrastructure already built.

Mr Turnbull told ABC TVs Lateline that Coalition plans for the national fibre network if it won Government at the next election would "depend on how much has been built, where it is and what its value is."

"The fact is that I am not interested in demolishing the NBN, I am interested in exposing the hollowness of the Government's justification for the NBN." Mr Turnbull said. "And that, I suppose, will demolish their shabby and empty argument (for it)."

"But as far as the infrastructure is concerned, whatever has been build, if we come into Government, we will obviously have to make the very best possible use of it," he said.

But halting the construction of the NBN when it was only partially completed would destroy the business case of the retail service providers using it, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told the program.

Just as he argued during the election campaign that the pricing and service offerings in Tasmania on the NBN could not be sustained without a national roll-out, Senator Conroy said the packages and prices offered to customers on a partial network would collapse if the roll-out was not completed nationally.

"The pricing and the structure in Tasmania only works if it is a part of an integrated national network, where there is a cross subsidy across the whole country - one price for the same product to everybody," Senator Conroy said.

"If you stopped the project now, Tasmanians who are using the National Broadband Network would be faced with dramatically higher prices and worse speeds," he said.

"And that is exactly what would happen to the tens and hundreds of thousands of Australians who might be using the network by the time of the next election."

"The entire business model collapses. All of the packages, all of the speeds, the download limits, the prices would collapse if the Opposition stopped and froze the project," Senator Conroy said.

Mr Turnbull renewed the Opposition's calls for a cost benefit analysis to be carried out on the project before it proceeds further.

"If the question is how do we ensure than everybody in Australia gets the same speed of broadband as the best broadband in our cities - and I think that is the fair question - then what a cost benefit analysis would do is to say 'how do we most effectively achieve that goal?'"

"Then you would weigh up the option of improving or remediating our existing network, which would cost a fraction of $43 billion, or do you could go down the route of trashing our existing network, trashing that investment and building a new one," Mr Turnbull said.