I've have been asked a few times in the last couple of months whether I work for NBNco. Let me put this forward first; I've never been paid anything by any one in relation to the National Broadband Network, or NBN as it is known. I don't work in the technology industry. And I don't blindly vote for one party over another. If I was offered a job tomorrow, I would turn it down. How else could I keep an objective view in relation to the largest infrastructure project Australia has ever undertaken? It is a fascinating topic.

Just recently, Tony Abbott (Federal leader of the opposition) stated that if elected, he would 'pause' the NBN. And in the same breath, stated it was an 'unnecessary While Elephant'. I'm unsure if you have ever looked up the true meaning of White Elephant, but suffice to say if on the off chance the NBN was one, you definitely wouldn't want to 'pause' it.

Also, the National's Peter Hall recently committed $5million in funding for Technology Enabled Learning Centres (TELCs) to regional TAFEs, citing the cost of travel, relocation and accommodation for students that study there. What Mr Hall failed to mention was that of the people who need such a service the most, remote and rural students, many don't have access to internet speeds that could support such a service from home. Internet speeds that the National Broadband Network is now beginning to provide, and moreso once it is complete. The irony here is that that the National's broadband policy is closely aligned with that of the Liberal party. The same Liberal party whose leader in the weeks before, stated that the NBN was a White Elephant, which needed pausing.

This isn't the first contradiction to present itself to those who are abreast of the whole National Broadband Network discussion. The opposition leader and his communications minister have often been at odds with each other as to what their actual stance is. Where once they stated the NBN should be On Budget, later Malcolm Turnbull admitted it was acceptable for it to be Off Budget; Where once it was stated 'we don't need those speeds', the minimum speeds that the Coalition think we will need, has grown every year; Where the Leader of the opposition thinks it's a White Elephant, his communication minister is looking at varying ways to deliver said White Elephant; Where once they had a fully costed policy ready to go, later it was stated that they couldn't provide a costed policy until they had access to information privy to NBNco and the current government. The Coalition's broadband stance is nothing less than entertaining. The likes you'd see of any Punch and Judy, or Abbott and Costello show in days gone by.

So why do we need Fibre to the Home? And why can't other technologies be utilised? Well contrary to what the Coalition have been saying, it is neither cheap nor fast to do so. To utilise HFC as Mr Turnbull suggests, requires massive investment. Investment that both Telstra and Optus publicly stated they wouldn't provide long before the idea of any NBN was put forward. A cost that the Tax payer would have to provide, on budget, at the expense of roads and hospitals. Add to that, that HFC was actually designed to deliver TV, one way, not broadband, both ways. It's an ok medium, but you wouldn't want to spend money to let more people access it.

I don't naively believe that the current NBN plan couldn't be improved. But if you take time to look at the figures, it is neither cheap nor fast to do so. FTTN, VDSL, Top Hats, they all sound like options until you start to run the numbers. Their install cost, power consumption, and maintenance issues, all quickly eat away any cost saving that you might achieve. The maintenance bill alone on any copper system was estimated at $700 million per annum. And that's before we factor in the electricity costs to turn it on. Each node, under any Fibre to the Node system, requires a (battery backed-up) powered connection. The line has to be 'active'. Telstra initially estimated that we would need 70,000 nodes around the country to provide any form of decent improvement on what we have now. That is seventy thousand new cabinets on your and my streets, drinking the power, from the solar panels that were just installed on our roofs. And this is all before we consider the next upgrade, which will have to be sooner rather than later, under any system that uses copper.

And then we have wireless, our beloved wireless. Well currently we have around 16,000 to 18,000 mobile towers in Australia (depending on which source you use). It's estimated we need around 64,000 more of these to provide the bandwidth that we need in the short term future. Every one of these towers on your and my streets will be powered to run, and then cooled with air-conditioning units. Nearly everyone would need some sort of fibre connection to provide the data, and some sort of power backup system in event of power outage. As you can begin to see, it is hardly a cheap or fast option, for the supplier and/or the consumer.

Australia's Telecommunications infrastructure has failed to keep pace with the needs of Australians since the day that Telstra was privatised in 1997. Many other countries are moving ahead with Fibre to the Home, and contrary to any belief otherwise, we do need those speeds.

Please don't take my word blindly on any of the above. Do your own research. I suspect you will use a little search engine called Google, and a little video application called YouTube. All while being plugged into a hard line. It's easy to hear the cries of 'cheaper and faster', but before you believe any of it to be true; you have to do the math. And math isn't in the habit of contradicting itself.