The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack.
However they didn't argue this.
They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but one which was sub-par on almost every metric except cost. This just doesn't make any sense to me, especially because they tried to sell it to the public by suggesting that things like "Why invest so much in fibre when it may be surpassed by another technology in the near future". There was also a lot of clever wording around how their version would be "delivered cheaper, faster, etc than the alternative" - I have no doubt these words were chosen because it sounds like the data rates themselves would be faster, whereas they actually meant it the build could be completed faster.
A friend and I have a theory that the rollout was deliberately train-wrecked by the Liberal party to avoid Labor getting the long term political kudos for having started the project.
>The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties.
There is no Australian political party with any momentum that is pro-small government. The Liberals just like making themselves and their friends rich, but they don't have any strong ideological backing. Especially considering 90% of Aussies are pretty content with the level of government involvement in stuff that would send shivers down the spines of most yanks.
FTTP or FTTN aside, aiming for 93% coverage in a country as sparsely populated as AU was a terrible idea to start with.
I understand the need to support rural areas but the the majority of the initial budget was to cover non-metropolitan areas and while the govt has been messing this up, private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.
That's actually not the problem. Australia has a similar percentage of people in cities and large towns as somewhere like the US.
The low population density of Australia makes backhaul and overseas transfer of data more expensive, and the last 2-5% of people might be very expensive to get. But the original goals of the NBN were well thought out and modeled properly.
private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.
Hu? You mean how they used copper put in place by telco incumbent Telstra, most of which were built when it was government owned? And how they relied on government mandated access to the copper lines to enable that?
Or are you talking about the small private fibre rollouts? Because they don't cover "huge swaths of the population".
However they didn't argue this.
They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but one which was sub-par on almost every metric except cost. This just doesn't make any sense to me, especially because they tried to sell it to the public by suggesting that things like "Why invest so much in fibre when it may be surpassed by another technology in the near future". There was also a lot of clever wording around how their version would be "delivered cheaper, faster, etc than the alternative" - I have no doubt these words were chosen because it sounds like the data rates themselves would be faster, whereas they actually meant it the build could be completed faster.