It’s not just the government’s fibre optic broadband plan that’s hurting Australian broadband prices.
With the NBN only getting under $80 million in subsidy for its first four years of operation, the cost of running a household on a $1,200-a-month NBN plan has jumped from about $700 a month in the early 2020s to more than $1.5 million in the first quarter of 2019, according to data from data firm Networks Australia.
While this may seem like a significant price hike, the price increase is actually driven by the NBN’s increased capacity.
“The NBN has been expanding its footprint, and with it, the total number of connections,” Andrew Robb, the chief technology officer of Networks, told The American Conservatives.
“As a result, the number of people that can connect to the NBN has increased by almost half.”
This means NBN customers will have more capacity available for faster speeds, but it also means NBN’s broadband pricing has increased over time.
“This is not just a result of the NBN.
It is a result in the overall rollout of the project,” Robb said.
“In the first year, the first 4G rollout was a very competitive one.
That’s because, at the start of the rollout, NBN promised to have 50 per cent of the country’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections by 2020. “
But the first four months were very competitive for all NBN users.”
That’s because, at the start of the rollout, NBN promised to have 50 per cent of the country’s fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections by 2020.
But that’s been revised down to 15 per cent by 2020, and it’s likely that NBN’s fibre will only get to 25 per cent in the 2020s.
“At the end of the day, there is only so much capacity that NBN can offer and there’s a limit to how much that capacity can be provided to any one user,” Robb explained.
The Government’s fibre NBN is not as strong as promised, according the NBN Co chief executive.
“We don’t know the full extent of the costs associated with the NBN,” Robb told The Australian Conservatives.
So while the NBN is supposed to be able to deliver up to 1.5 billion premises by 2020 (a figure that’s now being revised downwards), NBN’s actual rollout has only seen a fraction of that capacity.
The NBN Co’s chief executive Andrew Robb says the Government’s NBN is only getting to 25% of the nation’s fibre capacity.
Photo: Justin McManus The NBN Co is the federal government’s telecommunications infrastructure company, and Robb said the rollout’s slow is due to the way NBN is managed.
“It’s an inefficient system,” Robb observed.
“When you have a system like this where the infrastructure is managed efficiently, it doesn’t have that level of capacity, and that has a cost.”
The Government has promised to roll out its fibre NBN to every Australian by the end, but NBN Co said the service will be slower than expected because it’s only receiving the majority of the fibre’s capacity.
Robb said NBN’s rollout will have to be more flexible than the previous government’s.
“I would argue that there’s enough flexibility in the system that NBN could deliver to the market as promised,” he said.
While the Government claims the rollout is going well, Robb said it’s not always fair to compare the rollout with the government-sponsored NBN rollout.
“A lot of the things that NBN has done have been in a way designed to benefit the government, which is the government that is responsible for the NBN, rather than the government who is responsible to NBN,” he told The Christian Science Monitor.
“They’re getting a lot of subsidies.
They’re getting preferential treatment, which gives them a huge advantage.”
And there’s been a lot more of these things in recent years.
“That means they can change their way of doing things in a manner that is consistent with their political priorities.” “
NBN has to work on the basis that it’s a government project,” the AFP’s senior communications officer, Peter Walsh, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
“That means they can change their way of doing things in a manner that is consistent with their political priorities.”
But Robb said there was a risk NBN’s current structure is unfair to customers.
“If you look at the NBN itself, it’s very well designed, it works very well, it meets its obligations, and I think people are happy with that,” he added.
“People are happy to pay for the service.”
The NBN is set to deliver its fibre to every home and business in Australia by the year 2020.
“For the first time in history, Australians will have access to the most reliable, high-speed, affordable, high definition internet,” NBN Co CEO Bill Morrow said in a statement.
“Our network will also deliver the fastest internet speeds in the world.
The rollout of NBN will improve access to quality, affordable broadband