Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

Well, he was not able to get his friends on the crossbench to do that, but the fact is that without that cost-benefit analysis, we simply end up having an argument about this rather than having some very hard numbers.

If the proposition is that we should have fibre-optic cables deep into the network, we agree. The question is: how deep, how far? Alcatel-Lucent, the big telecom vendor, have got a good summary of this. They say that fibre should go to the furthest economically viable point. We agree with that. If you can achieve the bandwidth requirements that people need, as quickly as possible and at a lower cost, thereby making it more affordable, without taking the fibre right into the house, that makes sense.

As for the honourable member saying that fibre to the node is an African model, I did not know that the United States was in Africa; I did not know that Britain was in Africa; I did not know that Germany was in Africa. What an extraordinary statement, notwithstanding the rather unpleasant slur against Africa. The fact of the matter is that the approach that we are proposing it is one that is consistent with the practices of the major telcos around the world. By that I mean the honourable member down the back has never heard of Deutsche Telekom or British Telecom or AT&T or Bell Canada.

Government members interjecting—

The Labor members are shouting because they know this project is failing. But the fact is that the honourable member does not know remotely what he is talking about. British Telecom have passed 19 million premises in their broadband upgrade, 10 per cent with fibre to the premises and the balance with fibre to the node.

Mr Mitchell interjecting—

If the honourable member wants to doubt that he should get in touch with Mike Galvin, who is heading the rollout. They cannot cope with the truth.

The honourable member for Lyne said that the Cisco report says by 2016 our network in Australia will be overwhelmed. It says nothing of the sort. What it actually says is that by 2016 it expects average speeds on fixed line broadband in the Asia-Pacific to be 41 megabits per second, and that is very achievable under our policy. Indeed, we see most of the premises under our policy having 50 megabits per second or better. The report sees the speeds for handsets being on average 3.9 megabits per second. The proposition that the network is going to be overwhelmed has no basis of fact in that report.

The real issue of congestion in the future is not going to lie in the last mile to the home. If we get into office that will be addressed within a few years and by the end of the next parliament everyone in the fixed line footprint will have at least 25 megabits per second, most will have 50 or better. We expect to build plenty of fibre to the premises, and wherever it can be done cost-effectively we will do so—greenfield sites and others that appropriately qualify. But the real congestion is going to lie further back in the network. This, I regret to say, is what the honourable member for Lyne simply does not understand. The NBN is not a complete telecom network. It is a customer-access network. It connects an exchange, called a point of interconnect, to the customer's premises.

I ask every member and anyone listening to this speech to check their line speed when you get an opportunity and then seek to download something from iTunes or some other service of that kind. I would be very surprised if you do not find that your rate of download is a lot less than your line speed. The reason for that is that in a telecom network the rate at which data is transmitted, at which signals propagate over the network, depends on the slowest link and the rate of the server to which you are connected. You may have 50 megabits per second between your house and the local exchange, but how much congestion is there behind your exchange back into the core of the network? How much congestion is there on the international cable? What is the rate that the server you are connecting with in the United States or wherever is delivering data? If it is very popular, you may be getting a very low rate of download.

If the honourable member is trying to say that we need to have more capacity in the core of the network and the backbone of the internet then he is absolutely right, although it is a penetrating glimpse of the obvious. But it is not a problem that the NBN will address, because the NBN is a last-mile customer-access network. So, yes—the NBN, under our approach, will certainly eliminate the last-mile bottleneck, but the questions of congestion will then be further back in the network. It will depend on how much capacity your retail service provider has bought, back into the core of the network, and all of the factors I mentioned.

So we do need more fibre. We do need it to the furthest economical point. But it is a great pity that the member for Lyne, after all these years, is still so confused on this important issue.

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