AJ SadauskasRemember a few years ago, how Tony the Terrible promised us that reusing old copper wires in the National Broadband Network would make it cheaper?
How Tony made his rival, Malcolm Turnbull, the Communications Minister, and then forced Malcolm to go along with it, even though he almost certainly knew it was BS?
And how the stenographers in the Canberra Press Gallery all went along with it uncritically, and claimed a Fibre-to-the-premises NBN by Julia Gillard was an example of wasteful spending?
Well, the NBN is now ripping up many of those old copper wires and replacing them with fibre.
And the NBN is paying a small fortune to ISPs for service problems on those old copper lines:
"NBN Co’s bill for rebates to its retailers related to fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) service problems jumped sharply in the last quarter of 2025, just as its copper replacement program started to enter high gear.
"Rebates that the national network builder had been paying to its RSP customers related to FTTP services had been steady since the beginning of the year, peaking at about 23,247 by the end of September quarter, according to data it lodges with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
"However, in the final December quarter of the year NBN Co reported paying 32,411 rebates related to FTTP service problems - a jump of nearly 40 percent on the previous quarter.
"An NBN Co spokesperson told iTnews that in the first half of the 2026 financial year it converted 287,000 premises from copper connections to fibre. taking its upgrade total to more than a million.
"However, the company conceded that some connection technology shifts in the field were proving to be less straightforward than others.
...
"NBN Co wants to minimise further investment in copper that would drag investment away from new fibre deployments which, it argues, are inherently more reliable and cheaper to maintain."
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-pays-up-as-fttp-service-levels-wobble-624801
#auspol #telco #NBN #Telstra #Optus #TPG #Australia #news #broadband
How Tony made his rival, Malcolm Turnbull, the Communications Minister, and then forced Malcolm to go along with it, even though he almost certainly knew it was BS?
And how the stenographers in the Canberra Press Gallery all went along with it uncritically, and claimed a Fibre-to-the-premises NBN by Julia Gillard was an example of wasteful spending?
Well, the NBN is now ripping up many of those old copper wires and replacing them with fibre.
And the NBN is paying a small fortune to ISPs for service problems on those old copper lines:
"NBN Co’s bill for rebates to its retailers related to fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) service problems jumped sharply in the last quarter of 2025, just as its copper replacement program started to enter high gear.
"Rebates that the national network builder had been paying to its RSP customers related to FTTP services had been steady since the beginning of the year, peaking at about 23,247 by the end of September quarter, according to data it lodges with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
"However, in the final December quarter of the year NBN Co reported paying 32,411 rebates related to FTTP service problems - a jump of nearly 40 percent on the previous quarter.
"An NBN Co spokesperson told iTnews that in the first half of the 2026 financial year it converted 287,000 premises from copper connections to fibre. taking its upgrade total to more than a million.
"However, the company conceded that some connection technology shifts in the field were proving to be less straightforward than others.
...
"NBN Co wants to minimise further investment in copper that would drag investment away from new fibre deployments which, it argues, are inherently more reliable and cheaper to maintain."
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/nbn-co-pays-up-as-fttp-service-levels-wobble-624801
#auspol #telco #NBN #Telstra #Optus #TPG #Australia #news #broadband
Pickr
𝙳𝚊𝚒𝚕𝚢 𝙵𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚠𝚛𝚊𝚙
Quokka
wifi_freak
Dwight Walker