Australia - National Broadband Network - Comparisons with broadband plans from AT&T and BT

Synopsis

In August 2012, the Coalition Opposition has provided further insights into its plan for the future of the NBN if they win the elections in 2013.

According to the Shadow Minister for Communication Malcolm Turnbull: ‘If you want to look at an example, BT offers 76Mb/s down, and 19Mb/s up. That’s the same approach that AT&T took in the US… and it’s a proven one’.

The Opposition continues to pursue its policies based on the aging copper and coax cable networks. Interestingly, in the USA AT&T and Verizon are both closing down copper-based networks and there is a worldwide decline – including in Australia – in coax cable broadband connections. Yet the Coalition believes that these old networks are the future for Australia.

BuddeComm has argued on several occasions that these ageing networks still have some life in them and that they can be used in a transition phase. However, so far the Opposition has not provided a long term vision for Australia’s telecoms needs, and the only details they are providing are shown to be short-term, cheap solutions that are most certainly not going to future-proof the country’s broadband requirements.

So let’s have a look at the AT&T and BT examples

Key developments:

Fibre-to-the-Node (FttN), Fibre-to-the-Home (FttH), U-Verse, DOCSIS 3.0, VDSL, HFC

Companies covered in this report include:

AT&T, BT, KPN