[LINK] ‘Gig State’ to rival NBN: NSW plans fibre rollout

[David Boxall]

What blasphemy is this? Next thing you know we'll have a state wanting 
to buy in to an airline!
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The New South Wales government is planning to roll out its own fibre 
broadband network that could undercut the NBN in regional areas, despite 
the federal government pushing a new regional broadband tax.

The $51 billion NBN is approaching its June completion deadline, but the 
NSW government last week confirmed it intends to own and operate its own 
high-speed network in several regional towns, which would compete 
directly with the federal government’s mixed-technology network.

The news comes as the Morrison government’s proposed regional broadband 
tax, which is designed to help subsidise the cost of maintaining the 
NBN’s regional infrastructure, is set to go before Parliament.

The tax on retail providers of $7.10 per month per non-NBN fixed-line 
broadband user will come into effect on July 1, if the Regional 
Broadband Scheme Bill passes the Senate this week.

The funds would be used to prop up NBN Co’s loss-making fixed wireless 
and satellite networks in regional and remote Australia.

A spokesperson for Morrison government Communications Minister Paul 
Fletcher said the scheme would “provide long-term sustainable funding 
arrangements in place to provide essential broadband services to 
regional, rural and remote Australians”.

“Regional broadband services will be superior under the proposal because 
there will be a stable, long-term funding base, so NBN Co can invest in 
regional Australia with certainty of a secure funding base,” they said.

“In metropolitan Australia, competition will now occur on its merits as 
all competing fixed-line carriers are required to equally contribute to 
the costs of regional broadband.”

‘Gig state’: NSW to ‘overbuild’ NBN with regional FTTP
The NSW government’s ‘Gig State’ pilot project, first mooted earlier 
this year, will see fibre-to-the-premises and high-speed open access 
wireless infrastructure rolled out to an estimated 50,000 homes and 
businesses in seven towns: Wagga Wagga, Parkes, Dubbo, Cobar, Nyngan, 
Narromine and Trangie.


‘Gig State’: NSW is planning to rollout regional FTTP. Source: CommsDay
The state government will pour $100 million into the project, which is 
spearheaded by deputy premier John Barilaro, as part of $400 million 
earmarked for regional telecommunications.

In a pitch to industry last week, the Department for Regional NSW 
confirmed the state would own any infrastructure it funded, 
telecommunications news site CommsDay revealed.

The briefing materials “studiously avoid any references to the NBN”, 
CommsDay reported, but the “terms of the new network appear framed with 
competition against the NBN in mind”.

“Gig State models a range of ideal wholesale and retail prices below NBN 
equivalents, and specifies no CVC-style usage charges, nor installation 
charges for end customers where they commit to 36-month
contracts,” CommsDay’s Grahame Lynch wrote.

“This would be near impossible for NBN Co to match due to its national 
averaged price policy and its commercial need for access prices to meet 
the legacy market with usage charges to make up the slack.”

Labor’s communication spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said the ‘Gig State’ 
plan would undercut the NBN.

“NSW taxpayers potentially overbuilding infrastructure within the 
fixed-line NBN footprint is both an inefficient use of taxpayer money 
and undermines the economics of the NBN,” Ms Rowland said.

The federal government’s regional broadband tax would “likely tax the 
very network that John Barilaro wants to build”, she said.

“If the NSW government wants to address the inferior broadband imposed 
by their federal counterparts in regional areas, they should co-invest 
in a framework to upgrade the NBN, not unnecessarily overbuild it,” she 
said.

‘Political football’:  NBN needs fibre fix, experts say
Building a parallel broadband network to the NBN is “a waste of 
resources”, and taxpayer money would be better spent upgrading the NBN, 
University of Melbourne professor of electronic engineering Thas 
Nirmalathas said of NSW’s ‘Gig State’ project.

“In my view, NBN should be approached to expand fibre solutions where 
there is unmet broadband demand using fixed wireless and satellite 
broadband offerings,” Professor Nirmalathas said.

Instead of overbuilding, state goverments could offer subsidies to 
upgrade the NBN and increase its fibre footprint, he said.

NBN Co has “now developed better control over design and build”, 
Professor Nirmalathas explained, which means upgrades to FTTP “can be 
explored as opposed to setting up a whole new way of building another 
network”.

Independent telecommunications analyst Paul Budde called for a 
bipartisan approach to upgrading the NBN to a full fibre network.

“Globally, there is now a good understanding that if you want to be 
competitive in the economy, and if you want to provide the proper 
services that people want in general, then you do need to have that 
quality broadband network,” Mr Budde said.

It’s just a matter of fact that the NBN is a second-grade network. It 
doesn’t provide fibre all the way.’’
Mr Budde said the telecommunications industry had repeatedly asked the 
federal government to “come up with a plan” and a timeframe for 
upgrading the NBN to a full FTTP network.

However, the NBN has become a “political football”, he said.

“Obviously there is this political problem that if [the government] say 
‘and now we’re going to extend it to fibre-to-the-home’, people will say 
‘Why didn’t you do it in the first place?'” Mr Budde said.

“So it’s still this political football, and particularly [Communications 
Minister Paul] Fletcher continuously blaming the previous government for 
the NBN. It’s now 10 years ago.”

The coronavirus crisis presents Parliament with “an ideal opportunity to 
serve the public and society” and “come up with a bipartisan plan” to 
upgrade the NBN to an FTTP network, Mr Budde said.

A spokesperson for Mr Fletcher defended the Coalition’s 
multi-technology-mix NBN.

“The MTM has made broadband available to millions more homes and 
businesses than would have otherwise been the case under Labor’s 
approach,” they said.

“Under Labor’s plan, there would have been only seven million fixed-line 
premises able to connect. Instead, we now have four million more homes 
and businesses [11.36 million] able to choose a high-speed broadband 
service rather than trying to work from home on ADSL with average 8Mbps 
download and close to 1Mbps upload speeds.”

https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/tech/2020/05/12/nbn-regional-broadband-tax-gig-state/

-- 
David Boxall                    |  Australia's problem isn't fake news,
                                 |  it's fake government.
http://david.boxall.id.au       |                        --Ross Gittins
                                     Sydney Morning Herald 27 March 2017