Labor's NBN to have cost $72.6bn: Coalition NBN Review

The Coalition's national broadband network (NBN) strategic view has pegged the overall cost of rolling out Labor's Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) National Broadband Network (NBN) at $72.6 billion, with a completion date of June 2024.

According to the report, the Coalition's Fibre-to-the-Node (FTTN) version will be rolled out by calendar year 2020, at a cost of $41 billion.

The strategic review, carried out with the assistance of the Boston Consulting Group, Deloitte and KordaMentha, states that the 2016 target set by the Coalition pre-election is not achievable.

However, the Coalition is sticking with the 2019 target saying that the optimised mix of technology proposed by the review will deliver access to download speeds of at least 50 Mbps to nine out of ten Australians and 100 Mbps to seven out of ten Australians.

The review states that the current NBN corporate plan overestimates revenues up to 2021 by $13 billion.

It also highlights that under the current NBN process the rollout of the brownfields Fibre-to-the premise network is 48 per cent behind the planned premises passed in the corporate plan.

The Coalition is hoping to achieve its targets through a mix of technologies, with the HFC network brought back into the mix and FTTN forming the bulk of the rollout.

However, there is room for more FTTP, with the review stating that the multi-technology approach in the fixed line footprint could be in the range of:

FTTP to up to 26 per cent of premises

FTTN/Delivery Point/Basement to up to 50 per cent of premises

HFC to up to 30 per cent of premises.

Cost benefit analysis panel installed

The coalition has also got the ball rolling on the cost benefit analysis, installing a panel of experts to provide advice on NBN regulation, policy and competition issues.

The panel, to be chaired by Dr Michael Vertigan, consists of Alison Deans, Henry Ergas and Tony Shaw.

The panel is expected to present its report to the government within six months.