Improvements to the National Broadband Network promised by the federal government could see Australian internet speeds crawl up the global ranking from its current spot — number 71 — to the top 30, an expert has said.
The prime minister announced on Thursday that next week’s budget will include a $2.4 billion equity investment in the NBN over four years, which is supposed to expand full-fibre access to 1.5 million premises by 2025.
Australian internet speeds are poor by international standards. With a median speed of 52.46 Mbps according to the Speedtest Global Index, the country’s web connections are only slightly faster than Mongolia and Belarus and a bit slower than Palestine, Oman and Italy.
UNSW Business School associate professor Rob Nicholls said “we would expect to be in the top 30 or top 40” when the effects of the change is felt within a few years.
“This is a really important shift,” he told Crikey.
Countries in that bracket include Malaysia, Finland, Brazil and Israel.
Improving the NBN was an election promise made by Anthony Albanese, who has criticised the former Coalition government’s decision to opt for a multi-technology model using the existing copper network instead of running fibre directly to premises.
Albanese’s office said on Thursday the new investment would “benefit over 660,000 premises in regional Australia, and mean around 10 million homes and businesses across Australia will have access to speeds of up to one gigabit per second by late 2025.”
The impact of the NBN improvement will make a practical difference for consumers, Nicholls said.
“For those 1.5 million premises, the difference they will see is they can watch a whole Netflix movie without getting any buffering,” he said.
And while the Albanese government has lamented that the decision not to go for full fibre earlier has meant Australia has fallen behind, Nicholls believed the country would have a good chance of catching up to other countries with a comparable GDP.
“This is probably the best time to do it, with the prospects of recession in many countries,” he said.
“Australia is not looking like it’s going into recession, so this is a good time to catch up.”
When Turnbull was given the NBN demolition job he promised that the jury/jerry rigged hybrid system he was pushing would be “sooner, cheaper and more efficient” than fibre.
He actually said faster but, faced with the technical impossibility of copper carrying signals faster than fibre, lawyered it to mean ‘sooner’.
Of course it proved to be none of those, not fish nor fowl nor good red herring.
The Minister for Communications, straight out of 1984.
You would almost think he was doing some influencers or donors or legacy media a favour; really duped regional people.
Was there something about Telstra still getting to charge for copper to the house? Might have dreamt it but ringing a vague mental bell.
Possibly, ‘Finance 101’, increasing/maintaining income streams from existing assets, and protecting that ‘value’ for ‘shareholders’, as long as possible….. e.g. another sector fossil fuels….
Just another dot point on the long list of the ways rupert has ruined everything.
Wow. I’m on 2-way satellite, but Telstra has just put up a new tower a k away and my daughter tells me that means we will be able to stream – whatever that is. As soon as Western Power connects the tower to the grid. Whenever/whatever. I’d be happier if AusPost could get a small package across the country in under a month. Like the old days. Useful stuff. Actual. Not BS.
I just tested my speeds. I live in regional Victoria about 50kms south of Bendigo. My download speed is 11.4Mbps and the upload speed is 0.87Mbps. So to have the speed of a third world country would be wonderful.
But you kept on voting for the National Party…so stop sooking
The LNP’s politically-driven dismantling of the ALP’s world class fibre to the premises, standardised network is a terrible example of playing politics and taking the nation backwards.
Approx 12-15 months prior to the election, after many years of installing fibre to the node, promoting multiple technologies and criticising fibre to the premises, Fletcher announced they were investing a couple of billion to install fibre to the premises. Strangely, the timing coincided nicely with Murdoch launching his delayed Binge and Kayo streaming services.
The blowout of the LNP’s cost estimate from $29 billion to around $57 Billion – an extra $28 Billion of taxpayers money is such a disgrace. It has also been a cash cow for various large national installation and maintenance contractors. No wonder the original CEO of the NBN said this should be subject a royal commission.
And now we need to spend another couple of billion to improve it.
The LNP ensured it is not a world class network subject to standardised transmission, installation, testing and maintenance – all factors which lower network operational costs and enhance quality – but a hugely costly mish-mash of technologies. Then add the LNP’s promotion of multiple suppliers and retailers of termination point equipment! So many players, so much potential fault finger pointing and maintenance confusion. I understand that many communications specialists happily apply the technical term – a dog’s breakfast – often.
The Oz public was totally ripped off by the LNP – Abbott, Turnbull, Fifield and Fletcher should have been crucified publicly and consistently shamed. Various communications & IT specialists, and mainstream journalists were altogether too shy to address a story with multiple LNP negatives / failures.
They sold it to a mass of older non digital voters as a cost saving measure a la household budget, without the same voters understanding the technical consequences.
A link to a link in your story takes us to an earlier Crikey article: “How many years (and how many PMs) will it take to fix the NBN?”
The answer it seems, is nine years, but only one PM. The voters just have to do the right thing.
I am one of the unlucky Rural residents saddled with Wireless NBN that has a speed of 25Mb/s (ie not much faster than ADSL1). Wireless is being upgraded to 50Mb/s, but unless my OLD antennae fails NBN refuse to upgrade the service. (Just waiting for the next Lightning strike!).
Would move to low orbit satellite, but cost is a little high atm…