We're focusing so much attention on whether Noah's rain gauge is working that we're ignoring the fact he's building an ark.

Yesterday, NBNco released its June rollout figures. The overall picture was that the project was pretty much on target as expected. Naturally, media stories have appeared which suggest that the project is failing. Is it?

The original plan was to have 341,000 premises passed with fibre by the end of June: 286,000 Brownfield (existing locations) plus 55,000 Greenfield (new builds). At the end of March this got revised down to 190,000 - 220,000. in the end it hit 207,000.

The Fin points out NBNco is fudging the numbers by redefining what premises passed means: passed should mean being able to connect to it, which is broadly true. Semantic arguments like this have popped up previously when NBNco makes any announcement. Was the Fin right?

In this instance there were relatively-high numbers for premises passed but customers still couldn't connect to it. Apparently this comes down to MDUs - Multi-Dwelling Units which means apartment blocks, town house clusters, strip malls and industrial estates. It's long been known that each MDU essentially needs its own bespoke design to allow homes and businesses within them to connect to the NBN and that this is a horribly complex business. Key problems include getting in touch with Strata management, getting them to approve designs and implementations plus dealing with the haphazard quality of wiring (within these buildings) which is owned by Strata and not Telstra. Such issues will affect all broadband policies.

So a lower number of potential connections for buildings that the NBN passes isn't too surprising and the MDU excuse seems legit. The alternative is that NBNco is lying. However...

ZDNet points out that the rural wireless rollout was significantly lower than expected. Here's what NBNco told ABC Tech:

On wireless: there were teething problems that we never hid from, e.g. longer-than-expected timeframes for constructing sites in remote locations. We're now on top of them. We retain our confidence that the project will finish on time. We also think fixed wireless will be impacted positively by the doubling of speeds to 25/5.

However, a silly excuse was given to ZDNet by NBNco - basically that the Fixed Wireless figures were revised down to 37,000 in March but the company didn't tell anyone.

Derp.

In fact as Josh Taylor points out:

NBN Co CEO Mike Quigley was specifically asked four times by Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham in a Budget Estimates hearing at the end of May whether NBN Co would reach 70,000 premises with the fixed-wireless network, and Quigley did not seek to correct the figure. "So you do not expect to make 70,000, but you do not have a revised target?" Birmingham asked. "We do not know. Until we have finished the counting - in fact, this is one of the things I guess we have learned in this, senator," Quigley said. "We probably should just say that some of the things are very difficult to predict. This is the plan of what we going to do. I think we are putting up, largely, the number of towers that we intended to put up in this period. The question is: How many premises can you end up covering?"

Double Derp.

It's difficult to defend NBNco on that one. Holding anything back from an historically hostile press, that seeks to throw the project under a bus at every possible opportunity, is like asking for an additional free kick in the face. As such, not only do we have NBNco actually meeting its targets only to be greeted with "well they only just did it" - shades of the old soccer goal celebration catcall, 'Oi, Jones, you scumbag, if that had been a yard higher, you'd have missed!' - the headlines focus on claims of misdirection.

Anyhow, here are the figures:-

Conclusion

These are fair calls from The Fin and ZDNet but the whole sorry saga illustrates realities within modern Australia. It matters less what you do and more on how you convey your message to the media.

After three years, the bulk of Australia still doesn't have a clue what the NBN is for. Who's to blame? The media, the government or NBNco? I've criticised NBNco before for this, however, when the company tried to run a mild advertising campaign, it got slaughtered for wasting tax payer's money. So advertising is not something it can do. However, communicating directly with the press uses the other branch of Marketing - Public Relations or PR. Being less-than-forthcoming about a significant drop in Fixed Wireless figures seems daft. While it would be understandable for the bulk of the company to want to ignore things like that and get on with the task at hand - one that it's actually doing pretty darn impressively, frankly - there should be people at the company who anticipate such things and think only about what the press will think.

I wrote similar about the government's failings in the PR department when Albanese got the Comms portfolio. What better time for both parties to get its act together than right now?

As for the media, I'll let you be the judge.

Noah

Personally, I'm just tired of seeing all the incessantly-negative articles and poisonous politics. Sure the rollout needs scrutinising - and there's not a lot wrong with the analysis of the latest figures. But we've now reached a point where, as a nation, we're focusing so much attention on whether Noah's rain gauge is working that we're ignoring the fact he's building an ark.

What's more important; continually scrutinising whether NBNco's massive nationwide infrastructure rollout is a bit late or establishing whether cancelling an FTTH-based policy would have disastrous consequences on Australian businesses, healthcare, aged care and the social wellbeing for all Australians?

If the so-called NBN zealots end up in a position of saying, 'I told you so' then something very bad indeed will have happened.