Five Years of Broadband Policy Failure from Labor

Paul Fletcher’s Broadband Briefing

Five years after Labor announced its broadband policy, Australia’s broadband penetration ranking has dropped and Labor’s policy has made zero difference to the broadband service received by 99.9 per cent of Australians.

Labor’s broadband policy was announced on March 21 2007, by Stephen Conroy, Kevin Rudd and Lindsay Tanner.

They promised to roll out a fixed broadband network delivering 12 Mbps to 98 per cent of the population over a five year period.

Five years later, it is clear that Labor has failed to deliver on every aspect of that promise.
Stephen Conroy promised the new network would be substantially private sector owned and funded, with public funding capped at $4.7 billion.  He is now building a one hundred per cent taxpayer funded and government owned network – the total cost of which looks likely to balloon well in excess of $50 billion.

He promised a competitive selection process - but hopelessly mismanaged it before abandoning the process in early 2009.

He promised a fixed network to 98 per cent of the population – but NBN Co now plans wireless and satellite in rural and remote areas, with only a smaller percentage to get a fixed connection.

Conroy told us that his plan would end Australia’s ‘broadband backwater’ status – quoting June 2006 OECD figures in his policy announcement showing Australia ranking seventeenth for broadband take up.  The most recent OECD survey (June 2011) ranks Australia twenty first in fixed broadband penetration.

There is virtually nothing to show for the taxpayers’ money Stephen Conroy has splashed up against the wall.  His government owned NBN Co has received $1.36 billion in equity – funded entirely by taxpayers – and racked up losses exceeding $400 million.

Yet in January this year NBN Co disclosed that a grand total of 2,315 homes are receiving a service on its fixed broadband network. That’s less than one tenth of one percent of the ten million premises which this new network is supposed to serve.

It’s been five years of broadband policy failure from Labor.

Paul Fletcher’s Broadband Briefing is an occasional email briefing note on various aspects of the broadband policy debate.  Paul is the Liberal Member for Bradfield, a former senior executive at Optus, and author of Wired Brown Land: Telstra’s Battle for Broadband (New South Books, 2009.)