Fibre to the bush?

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="@ The Australian Cartoon"][/caption]

It is no doubt that the highlights of today, I mean these day, would be about the new plan of the Australian national broadband network. Yesterday, Kevin Rudd's government has announced the plan to deploy a fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network, which will connect 90 per cent of Australian with a 100-megabits-per-second (Mbps) broadband. I was a bit surprised when looking at its ambitious goal of 100Mbps, nearly 100 times faster than almost all services on offer now including my house's package, and its enormous investment of $43 billion. The PM described this plan as "the biggest infrastructure venture in the nation's history".

The Government will set up a state-owned company holding at least 51 per cent stake and invite the private sector into the remainder. The "Aussie infrastructure bonds" will also be issued. Five years after this eight-year project's completion, the Government will sell its entire holding. Telstra, the nation's biggest telecommunication company and the owner of the nation's biggest coaxial cable network passing 2.5 million homes, was signaled that it could take a stake in the new broadband company by possibly offering its existing network in return for equity. (I will post another entry about what is behind this Telstra's bid.)

By deploying FTTH networks, this plan will take many advantages over the government's previous fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) based network plan. FTTH involves a fibre-optic cable direct from a telephone exchange to the customer end instead of copper-wire telephone network using in FTTN, thus there's hardly restriction on the download speeds. FTTH will be provided to residents in the city and towns with population of more than 1000. The remaining, accounted for 12 percent of Australians, who live in towns with fewer than 1000 residents, and on farms and in remote areas will have access to the wireless and satellite technologies with broadband speeds of up to 12Mbps. The whole plan will be carried out progressively over eight years, starting in Tasmania. It is expected to create about 25,000 jobs each year.

However, the Opposition Leader attacked Kevin Rudd's government for some reasons. Warren Truss, leader of Nationals, accused the government of welshing its election promise. It should be reminded that one of Rudd's core election promises was to establish a super-fast national broadband network which is accessible to almost all the Australians. Last year, the government issued a tender for rolling out a fibre-to-the-node service to 98 percent of the country with download speeds of 12 Mbps. Moreover, it is argued that the new broadband network plan will take people living in the countryside away of the new fast net's advantages.

But I think the much more complicated reason, behind all these things, is the Rudd Government's effort to re-nationalise Telstra, which was privatised a decade ago while still holding a monopoly on network infrastructure.

Update (9/4):

This is a screenshot taken by Linh, my friend in London. His broadband speeds are 20 times faster than my broadband's current speeds and 50 times faster than it was last year. I'm living in a desert island.

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="823" caption="Broadband speeds in University College of London's campus"][/caption]

Updated (7/4/2015): Déjà vu on the "Fibre-to-the-bush"

On April 7, 2009, PM Kevin Rudd promised Australians of telecommunications that would change our lives.