“It’s a shame NBN won’t admit their use of ageing copper is a mistake that will cost billions to replace”, Internet Australia’s Executive Director, Laurie Patton, commented, “Meanwhile, Australians are suffering with inferior broadband, customer complaints are rising and the worst is yet to come”.
Based on Fastmetric.com only 19% of Australian are currently receiving more than 10 mb/s download speed. From my own experience helping people in Perth with their NBN connection, Some of my clients are getting less than 50% of the speed promised by the NBN package they purchased. My advice to every client who is getting ready to “upgrade” to NBN is if your speed is good, then hold on to your ADSL and cable connection as long as you can. If you must, which almost all the providers are pushing people to switch to NBN, then pay for the lowest package and upgrade to a higher package once the speed is at least 70% of the speed promise. In theory, even with FTTN most Australian should be able to get up to 100mb/s but because the government opt to use old existing copper wires that degrade the speed even more. I have seen some clients with 3 mb/s average download speed on NBN. The question is why should we be satisfy with 3mb/sec speeds when our tax dollars, our time, and money are spent on technology that will give us a slower connection?
When I am looking to purchase a home, the connection and type of wires laid in their area is a big factor in the house I would buy. If you own a home in an area in which there are no plans of fibre optics being upgrade, then your house value and appeal will go down. We are already starting to see that trend in the UK and USA where most home buyers are starting to value neighborhoods that have high speed connections.
The Australian government opting for FTTN (Fibre to the Node) is a costly mistake that each Australian will pay for in one way or another. It has an impact on how tax money is spent and the future of of Australia’s economics. The government should of used FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) which would cost roughly 10% more but would be more future proof than FTTN. We will end up spending twice as much on upgrading the country’s internet infrastructure after all is said and done.