Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Minister for Urban Infrastructure) Share this | Hansard source

Fibre to the node is very widely used around the world by companies like AT&T, British Telecommunications and Deutsche Telekom, and one of the reasons they use it is the speed of the rollout. This was precisely the point that the management team of NBN, together with extensive consultancy advice, arrived at. One of the key considerations was getting the rollout achieved and delivered quickly. And, of course, that is now what is happening. Look at the rate of rollout compared to the performance of the previous Labor government, which, as I have mentioned, managed to connect barely 50,000 people to the network in six years. They spent $6 billion, but they connected barely 50,000 premises to the network. We are now at a point where some 3.2 million premises are able to connect and the total number that are actually activated is 1.417 million.

The shadow minister asked about fibre to the distribution point. Obviously, that is an option that is being used, and we have announced that some 700,000 premises are planned to be served by fibre to the distribution point—some on the Optus HFC and some going beyond that.

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