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The federal government is tipping in another $3 billion to ‘finish’ the NBN

- January 12, 2025 3 MIN READ
NBN
Photo: NBN Co.
The federal government will make another $3 billion equity investment into the National Broadband Network (NBN) to national fibre-to-the node (FTTN) network as Labor and the Coalition begin campaigning ahead of an election due by May.

NBN Co will contribute more than $800 million to the plan to upgrade around 622,000 homes and businesses nationally – 2,400 suburbs and towns, with a majority in rural and regional Australia – still using copper wire (FTTN) with optic fibre by 2030.

That will give 11 million properties access to speeds of up to 1GB per second – 13 times faster than the current average of 76.64 Mbps. That’s around 94% of premises on the fixed line network.

Evoking shades of the (ultimately unsuccessful for the ALP) 2016 “Mediscare” campaign, prime minister Anthony Albanese declared that “only Labor will finish the NBN and importantly keep the NBN in public hands”.

The opposition have not proposed selling the NBN, and put simply, the business is not worth the $35 billion taxpayers have spent on it over the last 15 years, and no sane government would want to book a $10 billion-plus loss in flogging it, while no sane private buyer would want a company already losing more than $1 billion a year.

But Albanese is trying to push through legislation in the Senate to keep the NBN private during the final session of parliament before the election.

“Keeping Australians connected at an affordable price is a vital national project. Rolling out high speed internet builds Australia’s future,” he said.

“Labor built the NBN, just like we built Medicare and superannuation. Peter Dutton wants to dismantle it, just like he wants to undermine Medicare and other services Australians rely on.”

The prime minister offered a history lesson with the announcement asking people to thinking about how important the NBN was during Covid, promising “high speed internet at an affordable price” – although many would ponder if around $1000 a year for 100Mbps broadband fits into the affordable category.

“Then take yourselves back just a little while, where the last time the Coalition were seeking government they said that they would stop the rollout of fibre, keep a copper-based NBN, because it was all about, according to Tony Abbott and Coalition leaders, all about just downloading videos and movies,” he said.

“They didn’t understand that the NBN is about productivity, it’s about driving the economy, it’s about creating jobs, it’s about how we live our life, it’s about telehealth, it’s about education services. It’s absolutely critical to the way that a modern economy and a modern society functions.”

History buffs will fondly recall that 15 years ago, when the initial plan was released the Coalition under Tony Abbot opposed the idea, before pivoting to say they’d to do it cheaper and faster with FTTN. The changes delivered an NBN that was neither, with the project costing around two-thirds more, $20 billion, than predicted.

NBN Co’s new CEO, Ellie Sweeney, described the upgrade as “the final piece in the puzzle” following Labor’s $2.4 billion 2022 upgrade of FTTN for 1.5 million homes, which is due to be completed by the end of this year, which is on time and on budget.

“Australians are consuming more data than ever before. This investment is not just in faster and more reliable investment, or more reliable internet, it’s about making our NBN network future ready to meet the growing demands in the digital age,” she said.

“What we’re seeing in terms of the rise of Gen AI, the explosion in data, virtual reality, augmented reality, streaming in 4K and 8K, more connected devices and data hungry apps. A decade ago the average Australian home had something like seven connected devices and we consumed about 40 gigabytes of data on average every month as the average Australian home. Today the average household consumes more than 10 times that amount and we have something like 22 connected devices on average. Within the next decade we expect that number will go to 40 internet connected devices and over 1,100 gigabytes of data being consumed in the average home per month.”

Accenture modelling suggests the FTTN upgrades program a 10-year $10.4 billion cumulative uplift in GDP.

The NBN carries more than 80% of the nation’s internet traffic.