If ya like your internet fast and ya content streaming, you’ve probably been a little frustrated by the National Broadband Network (NBN). The project has been a little bit of a political football between Labor, who initiated it, and the Coalition, who took it, wound back the original plans to take fibre optic cable right to the home and instead proposed a lesser program of fibre-to-the-node (FttN).
Meanwhile, Australians have been sitting around looking at that buffering wheel spin around while old blokes who probably don’t use the Internet for a great deal except Excel spreadsheets and porn discuss the future of Australia’s bandwidth needs.
ABC’s The Business reports that a series of leaks show the NBN has fallen way, way behind even where it was under Labor, with 29,000 installations completed in February against a target of 94,000. Something is obviously not working.
Now, Laurie Patton, CEO of Internet Australia, says that the Coalition need to abandon their mixed approach – using both fibre optic and cable – and go back to just using fibre. Apparently, NBN Co are experimenting with a sexy, thinner fibre optic cable that slashes the cost of installation significantly.
But NBN Co chief Ziggy Switkowski says nah. Our boy Ziggy loves him some copper network. He also reckons the program isn’t behind schedule at all. He told The Business:
“Since those newspaper reports appeared two, three, four weeks ago, the progress in terms of copper has been fabulously fast. So I stand very confident that we are going to hit the milestones that we have had approved,”
So while these blokes debate the finer points, we’re just here trying to stream ultra HD footage of skateboarding fails without waiting for it to buffer. How much longer can we be denied?
Source: ABC The Business.
Image: Getty Images / Rafe Swan
