As arguments on the national broadband network continue, some people have taken matters into their own hands

More than 15 years ago, an optic-fibre cable was laid from Sydney to Melbourne. It went through public and private land, up hill and down dale at a time when ordinary users and businesses were only starting to understand the potential of the great, rambling beast known as the internet.

When it came to our area, a community-minded farming family refused to let the cable be laid through their farm land unless a connection was made to our local town.

For years, the cable lay idle and its ownership changed as local business, council and community groups tried to figure out a way to use it without pouring in great chunks of capital not available to a country town.

In the meantime, a young tree-changer family arrived, attracted by a local historic building, the work of TG Barnes, an enterprising businessman who was shot dead by the notorious bushranger Johnny Gilbert in 1863.

Stephen and Wendy Byrne set up a cafe business in their Barnes building and threw themselves into local community development sector, volunteering their time and skills. An interactive kiosk providing tourism information was installed in their Barnes Store.

Stephen Byrne outside his Barnes Store in Harden Murrumburrah. Photograph: Gabrielle Chan

Now Byrne has put together a deal with a local investor and technical expert Geoff Peach of TUPS Company to provide wireless to Harden Murrumburrah. He is offering speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) download and upload through their South West Wireless company. The town centre will have free wireless for locals and visitors, access to Quickflix movies, free audio and video conferencing. From there plans start at $19.95.

In contrast, the national broadband network, which is not coming to our town any time soon, is offering us 12Mbps download speed and 1Mbps upload speed. Our small community can only ever hope to get fixed wireless under either Labor or the Coalition.

The guts of the technology that will provide this information revolution is contained in three 20ft shipping containers, at a set-up cost of $500,000. TUPS has already set up a similar network in Gunnedah. If our town service works as it does in Gunnedah – it will be switched on before Christmas – it raises questions about the very nature of the NBN.

It has all been negotiated at a time when the debate over the NBN has become even more politically fraught and, frankly, impossible for the lay person to negotiate. Most of the public debate does not even concern the 7%-10% of Australians who live in rural and remote areas.

The latest strategic review, released last week, shows the Coalition’s revised NBN model will cost $11bn more than than the $29.5bn promised during the election. It will not deliver the promised speeds of 25Mbps until 2020 and even then, it will not reach many small, rural communities. The same review suggested Labor’s scheme of 93% optic fibre would cost $73bn, $29bn more than the former government promised. We will never know.

Under both parties, 3% of rural and remote Australians were going to get broadband through satellite and 4% were going to get fixed wireless. Two new dedicated satellites will be online by 2015 to increase capacity.

Though most of the NBN white noise will be around total cost and the difference between Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) compared with Fibre to the Node (FTTN), there are several key issues for rural Australians.

The most basic of these include the question over whether there is a universal right to receive reasonable internet connection and speed in an online age, a principle which was the basis of the universal service obligation for telephones in the postwar period. If a city dweller can receive 100Mbps right now, should I be happy with my current rate of 6.8Mbps download and 1Mbps upload?

Mark Gregory is one who believes rural Australia will be left behind by the Coalition’s NBN plan. Gregory is a senior lecturer in electrical and computer engineering at RMIT University who disputes the conclusions of the strategic review, carried out under the new Coalition management of the NBN Co.

Gregory feels the Multi-Technology Mix (MTM) plan – including FTTN and HFC – will not deliver the requirements needed for regional Australia to keep pace. In larger regional towns where Labor promised FTTP, a FTTN connection will not cut it because the copper connection from the node to the premises “is shot”.

“There are those who were always going to get satellite or fixed wireless but those on the edge of regional towns were going to get FTTP,” Gregory says. “These people will be the big losers [in the Coalition plan], all people on the edges who will now have to move to fixed wireless. Like any wireless system, there is a limited capacity, with slower download and upload particularly between 9-5pm.”

While he applauded Harden’s initiative (suggesting a statue be built the local farmer who insisted on the connection), Gregory believes a long-term solid network is essential.

“What you get from fibre is stability, reliability and connectivity – connection speed is just one of five important things,” he said. Those features also include capacity, traffic management and quality of connection.

He rejects arguments put by the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and his NBN Co chair, Ziggy Switkowski, that it is impossible to predict what will happen with both technology and demand.

“Both statements [regarding technology changes and demand] are false,” he says. “Engineers across the board have a clear understanding of demand over the next 30-40 years. What do you think we have been doing all these years?”

Then there is fellow IT academic, Tom Worthington of the Australian National University, who compared the difference between the Labor and Coalition plans as the difference between a Lexus and a 10-year-old Camry.

Yet Worthington had an optic-fibre 100Mbps connection put into his new apartment block in Canberra 10 years ago and has now disconnected it because, being constantly on the road, he prefers his mobile wireless. (He does have a superfast connection in his office, where he teaches students in remote locations around the world.)

Worthington believes we need to be clearer about what we want to use the high-speed connections for. It’s all very well to say we need telehealth in the bush, but will staff be trained to fully utilise tele-consultations?

I can offer just one slice of rural experience. At a local level, we have been working hard to get onto the fibre because every country town needs an edge to survive. Agriculture is a great industry but most towns want other industries that will provide more jobs for their children, increase earning capacity for their local businesses and provide critical mass of population to be economically sustainable. If Harden can offer high speed to a range of small to large businesses, along with low rent, low housing costs and high quality of living, what’s not to love?

At a personal level, on our slow speed, we could not think of doing something as mundane as downloading a movie. We still have a quaint thing called a DVD rental store in the main street – $7 a night for a new release.

There are all sorts of ways our demand is limited because we just don’t bother with products that require fast speeds. Assessing our account, Switkowski’s reviewers might consider our demand to be low but it is only because greater practical use is not an option.

At the same time, our local project has raised questions for me as to whether it is possible for the market to offer other solutions rather than wait for a network that may never arrive. Granted, we have that gold mine of optic fibre running through the town already, an asset not available to most rural towns.

There is also the question of Australia’s size and sparse population, compared with the ease of delivering high speed to smaller developed countries in Europe and elsewhere. No one doubts the predicament of the government.

When this argument was happening over laying copper wires for universal telephony after the war, regional populations mustered their political forces to insist they were provided with a universal service obligation. Though it was a larger population then and rural representatives had more pull, there is enough of a network connection out here to muster a new electronic campaign.

It just may be a slow one.