From today's herald sun.
THE 'gigabyte geeks' expecting a Shorten Labor government to go back to a Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy future of an all-fibre 'Rolls-Royce' version of the National Broadband Network have in fact been sold a 'gigabyte pup'.
Labor leader Bill Shorten and 'his Conroy' shadow communications minister Jason 'the blackest day in Australian sport' Clare have actually ditched the all-fibre 'back-of-a-drinks-coaster/$100 billion-plus blank cheque' all-singing, all-fibre FTTP-NBN.
Further, Shorten and Clare have actually accepted not just the increasingly built reality of Malcolm Turnbull's much cheaper but just as effective and far, far more quickly delivered MTM (Multi-Technology Mix) NBN, but they have accepted both its logic and its functionality....
Under the original Rudd-Conroy FTTP-NBN, some 93 per cent of all 12 million premises in Australia would have been connected by fibre to their external wall. Sheer, utter madness. You might just as well have promised a tramline to every home....
Under the Turnbull-Morrow MTM-NBN, the connections will be split 20 per cent FTTP, 38 per cent FTTN/B (Fibre-To-The Node or Basement), 34 per cent (mostly Telstra's) HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coaxial), and the last 8 per cent wireless/satellite.
All that Shorten-Clare are promising is to increase FTTP to 37 per cent and to cut FTTN/B to 21 per cent. That is to say, 83 per cent of the footprint or the Shorten-Clare NBN would be left exactly unchanged from the Turnbull NBN.