Indeed the former government got so exasperated with the slow progress of the network construction that it invented the preposterous “commenced or connected” figure for homes passed – in order to make it look like the build had progressed much further than it really had. For his part, Dr Switkowski has quickly concluded that there is simply too much to be done – Telstra negotiations, re-designing the network, resolving construction problems - to realistically meet Mr Turnbull’s 2016 target – and has wasted no time in making that publicly clear. From his time heading up Telstra, Dr Switkowski knows better than almost anyone that deploying fixed-line telecoms infrastructure in Australia is a long, grinding process and it is impossible to deliver quick results. Although missing the 2016 target will take some political flesh off Turnbull he now has an excellent opportunity via the NBN Strategic Review – due for completion shortly – to come out and be brutally honest with the public about how long either an fibre-to-the-node rollout or a fibre-to-the-premise rollout would actually take. The biggest problem for NBN Co under Conroy’s stewardship was not just trying to meet unachievable targets – but also having to persuade people that it could somehow meet them.

Mr Turnbull and Dr Switkowski can now re-set the NBN project with realistic and achievable goals – a huge benefit to NBN Co – and to finally educate the public on what a huge and demanding project is actually being undertaken here. Every market has its own unique deployment challenges so no comparisons are perfect but looking at the UK Openreach were building around 300 fibre-to-the-node street cabinets per week on average – but were using a sizeable engineering force of around 3000 of their own engineers in addition to outside contractors to build the network. If NBN Co gets similar engineering resources then it should be able to deliver around 1200 street cabinets per month – about 14,400 per year – meaning that it should take about five and a half years to deliver the reported 80,000 cabinets required. So, as long as Mr Turnbull starts his alternative rollout by early 2015, then he should deliver 90 per cent of cabinets by late 2019 – and be completing the network by mid-2020 – about six months behind his current projections. This will in itself be extremely tough, as it depends on NBN Co obtaining planning permission for street cabinet installations from local councils – as well as getting power supplied to the cabinets by electricity firms - both of which can be problematic. A question would still remain over the speed delivered by that date, as they depend greatly on the quality of Telstra’s last-mile copper network in individual areas, with some claiming that many parts of the network will not be able to deliver the 50 Megabits per second promised by 2019 speeds.

Assessing the timetable for a full fibre rollout is much more complicated but what we know for sure is that NBN Co’s Corporate Plan included deployment projections that were ridiculously ambitious and at odds with what most other telcos are delivering. At present NBN Co is passing only around 4000 homes per week with fibre-to-the-premise – but at peak rollout in 2016 NBN Co is supposed to pass 6850 premises per day – some 34,000 per week – and actually connect 6083 premises per day – that’s 30,415 per week. Compare that to the current situation in Europe where Orange in France is currently connecting some 6000 subscribers per week to its full fibre network whilst Telefonica in Spain is connecting around 4000 per week. Orange management say they are trying to accelerate the deployment to 8,000 homes connected per week but add that reaching this figure would represent the fastest FTTP network deployment so far achieved in Europe. Whilst it is true that operators like NTT West and NTT East in Japan have achieved faster FTTP connection rates that those of Orange or Telefonica there are massive differences in the Japanese deployment compared to the NBN.

Even if NBN Co. were able to surpass every European telco and connect 10,000 FTTP homes per week – remembering that this means actually installing equipment inside subscribers’ homes - then it would take 17 years to connect the 8.5 million homes it needs to connect – meaning a completion date of 2030. However, given the huge geographic spread of Australia – which places a huge strain on the availability of skilled engineering resources - it could easily be argued that NBN Co. would do well to match the Europeans and reach 5,000 FTTP connections per week, meaning a national FTTP network could take around 30 years to actually complete – taking completion out to 2043. There are no easy answers and no short-cuts to building out broadband networks on this scale, these projects take time and massive resources to deliver, and a big injection of reality into the debate would be beneficial to everybody – especially NBN Co. as they are the ones who are left bearing the scars of “heroic targets” being set. Tony Brown is senior analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media. Follow IT Pro on Twitte