The Federal Opposition’s Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has revealed information on his party’s alternative to the Government’s National Broadband Network (NBN).

 

Mr Turnbull delivered a speech to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia (CA) where he took questions regarding the Opposition’s alternative to the NBN scheme.

 

Mr Turnbull said that the Coalition would promise fast broadband to the public well ahead of the planned 2020 completion date of the NBN.

 

To achieve a fast and ubiquitous service, Mr Turnbull said the Coalition would take a number of steps, including;

 

  • Request that the Productivity Commission find a best practice method to deliver broadband in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
  • Keep using copper infrastructure so that broadband can be used further afield.
  • Keep download speeds to between 50Mbps to 60Mbps and uploads between 5Mbps and 10Mbps. What Mr Turnbull described as adequate to any required task or application.
  • Renegotiate the $11 billion deal with Telstra to decommission its copper and hybrid fibre-coaxial network.

 

Mr Turnbull attacked the Government’s deals with Telstra, saying that the move to decommission existing network infrastructure was pointless and costly.

 

"The decommissioning of the HFC networks, or disallowing them to be used, is completely nuts. That is economic vandalism. These are networks that have many years of life in them," Mr Turnbull said.

 

"There will be costs associated with a change of plan, but they will be tiny compared to the savings that will be achieved," he said.

 

The Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Steven Conroy attacked the plans, calling them “half-baked” and an “inferior, patchwork network” that would render Australians “second class citizens.”

 

“Mr Turnbull claims his plan will be more cost effective and that any costs resulting from changes to the NBN would be dwarfed by the savings. But he hasn’t even put a cost on his proposal. He needs to stop misleading the Australian public and come clean on costs,” Senator Conroy said.