Industry pressure on the major political parties for the National Broadband Network to shift to a full fibre (FttP) network has intensified, with Internet Australia calling for an urgent review of the rollout strategy in the wake of trenchant criticism of the Coalition’s NBN policy by the exchief of NBN Co, Mike Quigley.

IA chief executive Laurie Patton now says there is so much “uncertainty and disagreement” over the NBN strategy and costings that an urgent review is needed to establish some clarity to address industry concerns.

Quigley savaged the Coalition’s current NBN strategy in an address to the Melbourne University Networked Society Institute at Melbourne University on Wednesday, warning that the current copper-based FttN strategy would end up costing more than the original fibre-optic model.

Quigley said the Coalition had made a “huge miscalculation” with the network’s use of copper access technologies and that to spend billions of dollars to build a major piece of national infrastructure that “just about meets demand today”, but doesn’t allow for any significant growth in that demand over the next 10 or 20 years, without large upgrade costs, was “incredibly short-sighted”.

According to Patton, there is now “real and genuine concern in technical circles and in the public arena. This is arguably affecting confidence in the project and potentially causing people to be hesitant to sign up".

Patton renewed IA’s repeated calls for a review of the NBN and its belief that only a fibre-based broadband network would provide the Internet speeds and reliability of service needed in the 21st century.

“Internet Australia has consistently argued that we are building a technically inferior network at a time when Australia has well justified ambitions to become a leading innovation nation.

"We've fallen to 60th on global speed rankings, from 30th just a few years ago. This slide relative to our peers will continue even as the NBN is being built so long as we rely on the current technology mix. New Zealand is out-performing us and Singapore, arguably our biggest regional competitor, already delivers broadband speeds 100 times faster than ours."

Patton says a recent survey of Internet Australia’s members found 80% of respondents were “dissatisfied or extremely dissatisfied with the so-called multi-technology mix (MTM) model that has seen fibre replaced by copper and the inclusion of the old HFC cables used for Pay-TV".

“The Internet is an essential service that will underpin Australia's social and economic progress and that means all Australians must have reliable, affordable access to a high quality, high bandwidth broadband service for both upstream and downstream traffic wherever they live and work.

“If the Internet is to reach its potential for good it is essential that we make it available to everyone. The ability to participate in our digitally enabled future is becoming a basic right of all Australians. Gaining employment, dealing with government, and engaging in a wide range of community activities will increasingly require digital skills.

“We need to build our economic and social future around a connected world where everyone has access to the Internet and knows how to use it.

“The solution is simple. Whoever wins the upcoming election should hold a review of the strategic technical direction that NBN Co is now pursuing and make public the true costs associated with this nation building project, independently verified.”