Turnbull's NBN more pain than gain

The National Broadband Network’s convoluted journey to completion has hit another pothole and this time it’s the poor condition of the Optus HFC network that’s the culprit.

The revelation comes as no surprise, given that the questionable quality of both the copper and the HFC networks was destined to deliver cost blowouts and deployment delays. Specifically in relation to the HFC, both the Optus and Telstra networks were developed in the early and mid-1990s and rather quickly abandoned as viable broadband infrastructure. Optus had wanted to use this infrastructure to make a quantum leap in broadband, however, Telstra successively overbuild the Optus network and in the process killed Optus’ business model. That was Telstra’s main objective and with the job done it paid very little attention to its HFC network for the next 15 years.

Optus’ HFC strategy was mortally wounded in the war and the HFC service simply limped on from there. To bring these two unloved networks into the modern era was always going to be expensive and the cost benefit of the exercise seemed negligible given that these networks would have to be replaced by FTTH (Fibre to the Home) networks.

In his book, Born to Rule, the unauthorised biography of Malcolm Turnbull, Paddy Manning mentions a piece Turnbull wrote on Gough Whitlam where he stated: “that the PM was surrounding himself with yes-men.” It would seem that Turnbull has fallen in that very same trap when he took on the communications portfolio, surrounding himself with ‘yes-men’ happy to accept the multi-technology mix as gospel.

While I can understand the political realities Turnbull had to negotiate at the time, if he truly had the interest of the nation on his mind he could have formulated policies that would have maintained the FTTH as the end goal of the NBN – something he has mentioned to me on several occasions he also believes. Unfortunately, he has stubbornly stuck to the MTM model, which may have seemed the cheaper and quicker option at the time but is starting to unravel now.

The MTM with its own delays and cost blow outs is likely to haunt the Coalition over coming years as NBN Co faces a litany of problems, most of them directly related to the shift to the MTM. Let’s be honest about it, the FTTH NBN process, initiated by Labor, had its own share of serious problems, but Turnbull could have deployed his formidable acumen in fixing them, without needing to pursue a technologically poorer option and creating the unwarranted disruptions.

As far as I am concerned, Malcolm Turnbull rates amongst the best leaders that this country has ever had. He brings a powerful intellect and much needed maturity to many of the important debates we as a country need to have. Alas on the NBN, Turnbull has inexplicably decided to pursue a short-sighted policy that, as the Optus blowout highlights, is likely to deliver more pain that gain.

Paul Budde is the managing director of BuddeComm, an independent telecommunications research and consultancy company, which includes 45 national and international researchers in 15 countries.