TURNBULL’S NBN ANOTHER DUD FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Senate Estimates this week has revealed that Western Australia will receive the highest proportion of the lowest quality NBN connection, Fibre to the Node (FTTN). The state breakdowns of technology type shows that WA is getting a much higher share of the poorest form of broadband than other states.

 

In WA 60% of households will get broadband through the old, faulty, and low-speed copper wire technology, whereas in Queensland it’s 44%, in NSW it’s only 40%, and in Victoria it’s 34%.  That means that Western Australian households and businesses, which already face the greatest challenges in terms of distance and time-zone, will be lumped with an overload of the slowest and most faulty broadband.

It’s particularly concerning at a time when many services and related personnel are being consolidated in the eastern states, which means people in WA will increasingly be forced to rely on digital access and communication.  If anything, WA needs to be at the upper end of the broadband quality scale, not bumping along the bottom.

 

I know from questions I’ve asked in hearings as Deputy Chair of the NBN Committee that future upgrades of the network will depend on revenue.  Yet it’s also clear that FTTN will be most vulnerable to cannibalisation from emerging 5G mobile technology, leaving parts of the FTTN footprint unlikely to raise such revenue.  That could mean that WA is stuck as a broadband backwater, with no prospect of remedial upgrades.

 

This is another indication of the systemic flaws in the Turnbull government’s approach to the NBN.  A nation-building project that should enable innovation and remove inequality based on geography and distance is instead at risk of locking-in a harmful digital equality between east and west.