Prior to the election, the Coalition promised that it would be able to deliver 25 megabits per second worth of funny pictures of cats, Miley Cyrus video clips and torrented Breaking Bad episodes (as well as, I dunno, education stuff for schools ‘n that) Australia-wide, via its version of the National Broadband Network by 2016. A strategic review of the NBN released this week, however, has now found that in that timeframe, the government will only be able to deliver those speeds to 43% of premises, and the cost will be 40% high than predicted, blowing out to $41 billion.
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull communicated ministerially that the inability to meet the targets set out before the election was a result of the coalition not having access to the full details of NBN Co., the company building the network: “We were really confident that goal could be achieved, but we overestimated, clearly, the ability of the NBN Co to deliver.”
The NBN has been something of a thorn in the Coalition’s side since before the election. It was criticised for being laughably slow compared to other countries and relying on the already outdated copper wiring of the current network, while Labor’s NBN would have seen world-leading speeds using fibre-optic cables. Then, two days out from the election, the #NoFilter blunder went down, the Coalition issuing an internet filtering policy document, then defending it, then withdrawing it, then issuing a reworded policy, all within the space of a few hours.
Via Yahoo. Lead image by Stefan Postles via Getty
