Gyppedsland: NBN's too hard basket meets 'install different'

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 09 August 2011 11:44

Opinion and Analysis

The news that several towns in Gippsland will miss out on a piece of the moral broadband challenge of our generation is joined by the NBN Co shifting responsibility for getting consent to get the fibre connected from itself, to ISPs, although renters will still need the landlord's consent.

Australia's ABC has reported that 13 Gippsland towns are 'likely to miss out of fibre optic internet', with those towns seemingly having been buck-passed into the NBN's too hard basket.

The ABC quotes NBN Co's GM of 'External Affairs', Trent Williams as noting decisions around the areas that get fibre are 'around land density and cost efficiencies and a whole range of factors - the amount of premises that there are etc', and that 'so when we get to the other 7 per cent that aren't going to be able to get fibre optic cable, then we're looking at a mix of either fixed wireless or satellite services."

Naturally, wireless technologies are getting ever better all the time, and as those areas directly unserved by fibre will have their NBN wireless networks presumably directly connected to the NBN infrastructure at the closest cabled spot to the uncabled area.

For those so remote that even NBN-connected wireless networks won't reach, satellite connections will be the fallback.

In separate news, Fairfax Media reports that the NBN Co has transferred responsibility for fibre installation consent from itself to the ISPs that will be connecting customers to the NBN network.

Fairfax Media's report quoted an NBN spokesperson speak of 'installing different', where that person stated that: 'NBN Co always intended to go about installing the National Broadband Network different in second-release trial sites and the full-scale roll out.'

While its report quotes the Tenant Union still calling for NBN connection installation to be mandatory so that tenants don't need to risk seeing permission for the free NBN connection denied, to avoid another 'Brunswick' which disappointingly saw much lower levels of consent and installation for the NBN than other areas.

Naturally, if installation were mandatory as a replacement for your existing telephone connection, the country and its premises would be cabled properly, rather than having patches of properties across Australia unconnected to what is supposed the be all, end all and mother of all national broadband networks the planet has ever seen.

So, as the NBN Co fluctuates between NBN Woe and NBN Go, NBN progress is, well, progressing. It'll still take quite some time for it to reach most of us, but the NBN is here for those in the first areas to get switched on.

As always, the future is already here, it just hasn't been widely distributed yet, or in NBN form, not yet widely re-distributed.

You'll just have to be patient, but one day, NBN will mean 'new broadband now' for you, too.