Internet Australia, the peak body for users in the country, has told the government to allow NBN Co to abandon its rollout of fibre to the node so that it can minimise the amount of money it needs to borrow in order to complete the NBN.
The government announced on Friday that it would be loaning NBN Co the $19.5 billion it needs to complete the rollout. The loan would be on commercial terms.
In May, the government's budget papers indicated that NBN Co would run out of money this year and would need to borrow between $16.5 billion and $26.5 billion to complete the project.
At that point, the government said it would not offer any additional funding and NBN Co would have to raise money from the private sector.
{loadposition sam08}But that plan appears to have been scrapped. The $19.5 billion is to be repaid by 2020/21.
Internet Australia chief executive Laurie Patton said there were concerns in the community about the limited FttN speeds being delivered to customers.
He also said there was advice from IA's technical experts that FttN would need to be replaced in 10 to 15 years, if not sooner.
Patton said NBN Co should "be encouraged to use future-proofed technologies that will provide for our long-term broadband requirements without the need to incur massive upgrade costs even before the business becomes profitable".
"The way it looks now, at the time when they have to repay the government they will need to borrow more money to rebuild the FttN network".
He said IA believed the NBN Co "should move to new technology options that weren't available when the government instructed it to abandon its fibre-to-the-premises model in favour of copper".
"NBN Co recently acknowledged that it cannot use the Optus Pay TV cables and has decided instead to deploy more advanced fibre to the distribution point (FttDP) technology, also known as fibre to the driveway or, as NBN Co is now calling it, fibre to the curb (FttC).
"If they have decided that FttN is not good enough for the people who were to have the NBN delivered via Optus cables then surely they should use FttDP for everyone? Otherwise, we will be creating a new digital divide - people with the fastest up-to-date service and others stuck back in the 20th century."