Comms Day Fletcher casts doubt over NBN fibre take up

The predominantly fibre-based NBN is a costly exercise that will not necessarily lead to higher take up across the board, according to Liberal member for Bradfield Paul Fletcher.

Fletcher, a former Optus senior executive, compared Australia’s OECD statistics of fixed line broadband penetration with those of various other countries, in a bid to show that “high fibre does not mean high take up.” He cited communications minister Stephen Conroy’s December 2010 media release, in which Conroy said Australia’s drop to eighteenth place in the OECD rankings was “further evidence that Australia has lacked vital investment in fixed-line broadband infrastructure.” Australia, according to the June 2010 survey, has 23.4 fixed broadband subscriptions per 100 Australians.

But Fletcher argued that fibre was not necessarily the answer. He noted that the Netherlands, ranked first with 37.8 subscriptions per 100 people, had only 0.9 of those services as fibre; 22 were DSL services, with cable subscriptions making up the rest. “Incidentally, DSL and cable are the principal technologies used for fixed broadband in Australia today,” he added. Fletcher gave a further example, second-placed Denmark, which has only 4.4 fibre services per 100 people.

“In fact, of the ten countries ranked highest for broadband penetration in the OECD survey, half have less than 3% of their services delivered over fibre,” he said.

However, Fletcher noted that Japan, which has 55% of its total broadband services delivered over fibre – the highest in the OECD survey – is only two places ahead of Australia in the OECD rankings with 26.3 services per 100 people. Fletcher reasoned that Australia’s $36 billion fibre network was therefore “neither necessary nor sufficient to achieve a high penetration of broadband services.”

“If our policy objective is to have as many Australians as possible using broadband services, the data suggests that spending big on a national fibre network offers no certainty of meeting that objective,” he declared.