[LINK] Just 16 per cent tipped to take up NBN

Bernard Robertson-Dunn brd at iimetro.com.au
Mon Jun 7 10:12:06 AEST 2010


Just 16 per cent tipped to take up NBN
Matthew Denholm
The Australian
June 07, 2010 12:00AM
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/just-16pc-tipped-to-take-up-nbn/story-e6frg6n6-1225876225571

ONLY 16 per cent of homes and businesses passed by national broadband 
network fibre-optic would choose to connect to it, even after 15 years.

The surprisingly low estimates were prepared by the Tasmanian government 
and have been released to The Australian under Freedom of Information 
law, in a ruling by state Ombudsman Simon Allston.

Also released are documents showing Tasmania initially wanted the NBN 
rolled out mostly via wireless technology - rather than fibre - as a 
more cost-effective delivery method.

This would appear to support criticisms of the Rudd government's 
eventual NBN plan for relying chiefly on more expensive optic fibre to 
deliver high-speed internet.

Tasmania was chosen as the first state to benefit from the rollout of 
the $43 billion NBN, partly because of its submission, elements of which 
have been released to The Australian.

The state-owned power retailer Aurora insisted the data was of "limited 
relevance and usefulness" because it was based on an NBN model different 
to the one adopted by Canberra.

Under the current NBN, the rollout to 200,000 premises in Tasmania is 
entirely via fibre to the premises, or FTTP, with only an unspecified 
mop-up of areas outside this "footprint" to be serviced via wireless.

However, the original plan pushed by the state government would have 
seen wireless as the means of delivering NBN to 155,940 premises, while 
FTTP was to be used to deliver it to 131,800 premises.

In an "explanation" by Aurora chief executive Peter Davis released with 
the data, the company suggests such differences render the data "not 
relevant".

However, some of the data relates solely to estimates of the demand for 
connection to FTTP. And these are extremely low.

A table entitled Estimated Connected Premises (2009-2023) lists the 
estimated number of FTTP connections by the end of a six-year NBN 
rollout to be just 14,011.

This is only 10.6 per cent of the 131,800 premises proposed to be passed 
by FTTP. Even after 15 years, in 2023, the table estimates that only 
21,332 premises, or 16 per cent of the those passed by FTTP, would be 
connected.

Aurora, however, played down the significance of the low demand estimates.

"The . . . estimates are not projections of take-up rates; rather they 
were used as inputs into a financial model which estimated the financial 
implications of an assumed take-up rate," Dr Davis said.

"The take-up rate assumption in the financial model was conservative . . 
. and . . . based on the fact that under the model proposed there would 
be very strong competition for broadband customers."

A spokeswoman for federal Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy said the 
take-up rates referred to in the Tasmanian submission had "no relevance 
to the NBN currently being rolled out".


-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Canberra Australia
email:	 brd at iimetro.com.au
website: www.drbrd.com




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