Australian NBN FTTN Plan Kills ADSL in Adelaide

An Adelaide DSL subscriber will soon be reduced to using satellite instead of DSL due to the recent decision for the Australian NBN project to deploy FTTN instead of FTTP. In this case the customer can't be connected to the proposed VDSL solution as part of the 'mixed technology' due to his location. The NBN tried to defend their decision to downgrade the NBN rollout from FTTP of the inferior FTTN solution saying that the speed of install and deployment being of greatest importance is a higher priority than connecting customers to the superior fibre technology. For some customers this will result in a significant downgrade of internet connection. This comes after the Australian government negated private enterprise from expanding their fiber networks which would compete with the NBN but would have provided a greater fiber network coverage significantly faster.

Effectively NBNCo is replacing the aging copper network with a fibre backbone with copper DSL on the final mile to households. This is similar to saying in the 1930's that we don't have the money or the time to build the Sydney Harbour bridge so we'll just build a smaller wooden bridge to hold us over because a steel bridge would cost too much. In this case they are saying that it is better to build a cheaper copper ended network than a full fiber network.

“Our priority is to provide access to the NBN to all Australians as soon as possible in the most cost-effective way with an upgrade path to meet future demand. A faster rollout of the network leads to earlier activations and revenue opportunity.”

“A full Fibre-to-the-Premises rollout will take significantly longer to complete than the Multi-Technology approach. This means delayed revenue opportunity and an inability to take advantage of a ubiquitous network in the next four years.”