November opened with a closely-watched Telstra's investor day - the first in years that wasn't full of heated debate about the company's participation in the NBN - where the company laid down its plans to capitalise on the NBN. The company announced it will trial fixed-wireless NBN services and expects to launch them in mid 2013, then said that it's expanding its view of the Retraining Funding Deed, suggesting that the $100m in funding - part of its agreement with NBN Co - could be extended to more than the 6500 staff initially earmarked for training. Telstra also announced that it's offering NBN services to its wholesale customers

and is ready to take orders for NBN voice and broadband services.

Telstra wasn't the only ISP positioning itself with respect to the NBN; iiNet, which recently purchased ACT-based TransACT, took a moment to boast that its own fibre-to-the-home (FttH) network had more customers than the NBN. M2 Telecommunications, which recently bought Primus Telecommunications and is making a strong play for the NBN, signed reseller AudioCodes to resell its multimedia gateway. Internode launched its NBN phone service, while others warned that medical alarms will need to be upgraded to work over the NBN.

NBN Co picked up a significant new asset by winning over former Telstra CIO John McInerney as its own CIO. The company conceded that it still doesn't have a strategy for connecting apartments to the NBN, but progressed with its satellite strategy by announcing a ground station to be built at Broken Hill, NSW. The rural Victorian city of Ballarat East was added to the NBN rollout, as were regional areas of Victoria and Western Australia. On similar lines, many in the country Victoria town of Warrnambool were begging to be fast-tracked for the NBN after a fire at a Telstra exchange cut off communication services across western Victoria. And residents and businesses in the early-release site of Kiama, NSW are already counting the network's benefits.

Media companies are proving eager to get involved with the NBN. FetchTV is positioning itself to capitalise on the rollout, while the ABC is bullish on the prospects for the NBN to improve online video delivery. It's none too soon: reports suggested that NBN users download up to four times more data than users on ADSL2+ services. This may be reflected in an AusBBS move to drop its 12Mb/s NBN services due to lack of interest.

That shift towards faster services would seem to contradict the statements of shadow education minister Christopher Pyne, who came out swinging against the NBN by arguing - incorrectly - that no Australian has yet connected to the NBN at 100Mb/s. Fellow Coalition member Luke Hartsuyker had his own angle of attack, arguing that the government could improve coverage in many rural blackspots with the "very minor, incremental cost" of installing mobile repeaters on NBN Co's wireless towers (one of which was, after an appeal by NBN Co, permitted to go ahead in Scottsdale, Tasmania).

Even as Tony Abbott praised the work Malcolm Turnbull is doing to promote the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node (FttN) vision (and was, interestingly, contradicted by Alan Jones), telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said NBN critics were "like climate deniers" and spawned a debate amongst industry figures that took an interesting turn when Budde came out and said "the Coalition's NBN plan is starting to look interesting". This raised some eyebrows among those who noted Budde has long been an outspoken critic of the Coalition's alternative NBN policy.

In an interesting pre-election twist, one survey suggested that most Australians believe Abbott won't cancel the NBN if he's elected. The extent of his potential outlay became clear as Turnbull, who took several occasions to slam what he called "parochial" and "NBN cheerleader" media reports that question his fibre-to-the-node strategy, finally put a rough price on his FttN plan, suggesting in an ABC Lateline debate that it would cost around $15b if the Coalition weren't saddled with existing Labor contracts. That didn't stop some critics suggesting that there were huge problems with the Coalition's policy, but at a broader level many people feel average consumers still don't know enough about the network rollout.

The Lateline appearance sparked renewed controversy over the NBN, with some supporting Turnbull's criticism of the NBN Co's practice of measuring the rollout's progress in terms of homes under construction. Also controversial was an ABC Tech's report suggesting Telstra's copper network was "rooted"; the report drew criticism from Turnbull and Telstra but ex-Telstra technicians came out of the woodwork to confirm the network is in a woeful state.

Much was made of NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley conceding that FttN is a "viable" option, but Quigley came out arguing that changing the NBN's rollout would be like turning a supertanker and would be nowhere near as cheap as Turnbull has suggested.

Meanwhile, the ACCC sought comments on Telstra's proposed NBN migration plan. And, after two years of consultation, the competition regulator finalised its list of 121 points of interconnect on the NBN and came out saying that NBN Co would not be allowed to charge exorbitant rates to recover expected financial returns. Meanwhile, NBN Co set its business-grade broadband pricing and targeted it at small businesses; some observers said it was a 'rip-off' and NBN Co came out swinging to defend itself.

They weren't the only ones crying foul: controversy arose as reports suggested subcontractors had issues with the rates they were paying for NBN Co subcontractors and were finding the projects untenably expensive. NBN Co was also embroiled in a war of words after it claimed inconsistencies with third-party data sets were causing problems in planning its rollout; data providers fought back by saying the company was trying to do things with their data that it was never meant for. And NBN Co's ongoing battle with NSW, which centres around getting access to the state's electricity poles for overhead NBN cabling.

Suggested reading:

- ABC Lateline debate between Stephen Conroy and Malcolm Turnbull (ABC)

- Is remote and rural Australia being dudded by the NBN? (The Conversation)

- NBN expensive now, worse in the future? (ZDNet)

- Planhacker: Ultimate NBN guide, November 2012 (Lifehacker)

- The difficulty with 'doubt' in the NBN (ZDNet)

- Time is on Turnbull's side (Business Spectator)

- Who is the cheapest plumber in town? (BuddeComm)