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Internet Australia chief Laurie Patton has again called for NBN Co, the builders of the National Broadband Network, to dump its copper-based (FTTN) rollout in favour of a return to fibre, despite company just announcing more than one million premises are now ready for connection via the FTTN network.
On Friday, when NBN trumpeted the FTTN milestone, Patton issued his own statement suggesting it was time for the Government to “bite the bullet” and allow NBN to dump its copper-based (FTTN) rollout in favour of a return to fibre and a “21st Century, future-proofed broadband network”.
According to Patton, as long as the FTTN rollout continues Australia is creating a network that will have to be re-built in 10 to 15 years’ time, if not sooner.
“It amounts to one million homes with an inferior service that will need to be rebuilt in about a decade and a big bunch of very unhappy customers who will soon discover that compared to those on full-fibre (FTTP), or even fibre to the kerb (known as FTTdp), they have been consigned to a broadband ghetto,” Patton says.
{loadposition peter}The IA chief also notes that NBN Co has recently conceded that the Optus Pay TV cables are unusable and announced that they will deploy FTTdp instead.
“If FTTN is not considered good enough for the people who were to get the NBN via Optus cables how can it be good enough for anyone else?”
The NBN is being rolled out progressively towards a 2020 scheduled completion date, using a mixure of technology including fibre to the node (FTTN), hybrid fibre coax (HFC), fibre to the premises (FTTP) and fibre-to-the-basement (FTTB).
