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

[Brendan Scott]

I have blogged that the costings for the NBN don't take into account likely changes to the copyright law over the next five-ten years (ie carrier liability = direct cost, chilling effect and 3 strikes = depress uptake of services) and therefore the NBN is likely to be more expensive/take longer to amortise than costed. 

http://brendanscott.wordpress.com/2010/06/01/iinet-and-the-sinking-of-the-nbn/


On 06/07/2010 10:12 AM, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
> 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".
> 
>