IA CEO Laurie Patton told iTWire today that the argument that Australia can build the nbn faster using copper doesn’t make sense to him and he has repeated previous comments that a copper-based network is already out of date.



“Why should it necessarily take longer to build (nb n) just because you use fibre? It’s a matter of resources and money surely?,” Patton questions.



“They could have built the Sydney Harbour Bridge much quicker if they had only built two lanes. Conversely, it would have taken much longer if they had only hired half the workforce and insisted on keeping the annual budget expenditure below an artificially nominated amount for political reason,” he adds.





But, Patton is quick to say that his call on our political leaders to look at fibre instead of copper is not an attack on the government but, rather, he is expressing serious reservations by IA on the wisdom of going with copper.IA simply wants a re-assessment of the nbn rollout and hopes to stimulate further discussion at the political level, and in public, on the nbn.As iTWire reported earlier this month , a new leaked internal document reveals secret trials of low-cost fibre-to-the-premises program by nbn.The document said nbn had successfully trialled a multi-technology local fibre network, which uses cutting-edge, thinner optical fibres combined with flexible joints and other improvements, in two Victorian sites over 18 months from July 2014.And, according to the document, the advanced technology that can bypass the ageing Telstra copper wire network from the node to the home is claimed to cut per-premises construction costs in half.As Laurie Patton observed then, “this new leak brings into question whether it’s now time to have another look at the multi-technology mix model.“The point was always that fibre-to-the-node was supposed to deliver the network sooner and for less cost. But it now looks like it might be coming close to the same price.“We always knew that technology and improved implementation processes would gradually bring down the cost of FttP," Patton said.And, as we reported last December , Patton was outspoken then about copper versus fibre for the nbn build, and Australia’s quest to be an “innovation nation”. As he commented:“We’ve moved from a state-of-the-art fibre to the premises (FttP) strategy to the so-called Multi-Technology Mix (MTM), which heavily relies on using the ageing Telstra copper network and the not so old, but not very , Hybrid Fibre-Coaxial (HFC) networks originally built for pay television.“Both will require considerable remediation work before they are fit for purpose and there is a solid argument to be put that in the end we’ll have to replace much of them at some point anyway.”“Meanwhile, we are told that our future rests on innovation. Internet Australia agrees. We have consistently drawn attention to nbn issues in this context, including the fact that we are way down the list of broadband enabled countries. Average connection speeds of 7.8Mbps saw Australia sitting at 46th position on global rankings in the third quarter this year. Surely an innovation nation needs to do better than that?”Now, Patton still wants a rethink by government and stresses that he doesn’t think it is too late for a change of heart by our politicians.