Then the conservative gov opposition ran a campaign (bolstered by incumbent telcos and Rupert Murdoch of Fox fame) that fibre was unnecessary and it'd be much cheaper and quicker to provide a patchwork mix of different modalities, the idea being that fibre would never be necessary.
The reality is that the opposition just needed to run on a campaign that was "not what the Gov wants to do".
Long story short, opposition won government, and ended up buying back (at a premium) a whole bunch of old copper infrastructure from the major telco whom they'd sold the infra to decades earlier. The costs of mismanagement and using such a patchwork mix blew the whole project out and here we are 10 years later with the "quicker cheaper" STILL not finished rolling out.
Where it has been deployed, it's suffering under loads that it can't keep up with - I'm currently getting 1.5 Mbs down 0.72 up.
We would have saved $11 Billion if the original FttP rollout, which had just begun, was allowed to proceed.
The valuations of Murdoch's decrepit coax network and Telstra's ancient copper network have skyrocketed, now that they have been forced back in as the last mile delivery to the home.
I read recently that given better pricing of fibre rollouts nowadays, it would take $7 Billion to rectify this failure for most of Australia, by completing the FttP network that got cancelled.
Political lies and/or gross incompetence resulted in spending 20% more than fibre to the home, and ending up with unreliable much slower copper to the home, and harder to maintain mish mash of complexity via grab bag of mixed technology in use now.
I did get one tiny bit of schadenfreude from the whole thing: I had lengthy debates with a coworker about whether the NBN is worth it or not. He said it's a waste of money. My position was that even if it improved the economy just 1%, it would pay for itself in no time at all.
Now, in the middle of the pandemic where everyone is working from home, I have gigabit NBN fibre-to-the-premises. He's on 2 Mbps ADSL v1 with 10% packet loss.
If you want to see how to build a national broadband network, look across the ditch at what the UFB gets you. AUD$89 for 100mbps, versus NZD$85 for 1 gigabit.
(Orcon in NZ, and TPG used in AU for comparison purposes)
In theory yes but the 'national broadband network' has been nothing but a giant political mess and used as a tool to misinform and manipulate voters. It has resulted in ridiculous overblown budgets and a subpar below global standard product. I live 7km from Sydney CBD and I still have ADSL2 with 9mb down and 200kb/s up which gets 75% packet loss anytime it rains. The NBN was established/announced in 2009, it’s now 2020 and I am still waiting..
Anyone who is under the impression that the Australian government plans to maintain ownership has their head in the sand. This is a paid for tax payer network infrastructure project which will be packaged and sold off to private business in 5 years time so that private business can reap the rewards for the long term. This is what happened to our previous common network infrastructure provider Telstra.
100% of the blame lies with those two men. Nobody else.