National Broadband Network: the questions that should have been asked

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 09 September 2008 15:57

Opinion and Analysis

A UK study has found that national deployment of fibre to the cabinet (the cheapest technology option) would cost £5.1bn - three or four times more than the telecoms sector spent deploying today's broadband services - and that fibre to every UK home could cost as much as £28.8bn. For Australia, these numbers are less important than the questions that were asked.

Back in June I railed against the Rudd Government's mad rush to award the National Broadband Network contract as soon as possible on the basis that there had been a lack of fundamental research that, were it not so serious, would be laughable.

I contrasted this with the UK approach, and the occasion for that comment was the release by the Broadband Stakeholders Group (BSG) of two well researched reports examining the many facets of the complex, costly and far reaching implications of extending fibre deep into the telecommunications access network.

Those two reports: "A Framework for Evaluating the Value of Next Generation Broadband" and "Models for Efficient and Effective Public Sector Intervention in Next Generation Broadband Access Networks"   have now been joined by a third: "The costs of deploying fibre-based next-generation broadband infrastructure" commissioned from Analysys Mason.

All its modelling is based on the UK, a country with three times the population of Australia in one thirtieth of the land mass (OK much of Australia is unpopulated so let's take Telstra's figure for Next G - 99 percent of the population and two million square kms. That still makes the UK only an eighth of the populated area of Australia (0.25m sq kms v 2m sq kms).

The report was funded jointly by the BSG and by the UK Government's Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR) (Now there's an interesting idea: A government department focussed on regulatory reform!). Its aim, according to BSG chairman, Kip Meek, is " to provide a key quantitative input into the independent review of next-generation broadband infrastructure and services being conducted by Francesco Caio at the request of BERR." He adds: "The report is therefore intended to be used to inform the debate surrounding various next-generation broadband issues."
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