It has been a week of conflict with the National Broadband Network. As we’ve come to expect, nothing much of substance happened with the roll-out of the actual fibre, but there was plenty of spirited debate when it came to public policy.
Malcolm Turnbull responded to criticism over his Twitter debate with a broadband-impoverished small business owner by posting a reasoned, rational article on his blog. That probably hasn’t stopped many passionate NBN advocates as thinking of him as the Anti-Christ, of course.
The Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network released its interim report on Wednesday afternoon, with 150 pages of full-on attack against the Liberal Government’s allegedly politcally driven strategic review of the NBN from December last year. The Committee’s three Liberal members weren’t happy, as you’d expect, and inserted a 30-page dissenting statement at the end of the report.
Earlier in the week, TPG and NBNCo traded harsh words over TPG’s continued competition for customer dollars. TPG’s build-out of a fibre-to-the-basement network for the country’s half a million apartment blocks is unwanted competition for NBNCo’s chair Ziggy Switkowski, who wants the government-owned network to enjoy a monopoly for some time after its construction.
TPG also launched its own plans for customers on the regular National Broadband Network; its cut-rate $59.99 plan offers unlimited downloads at 12MBps speeds, where the iiNet equivalent costs $20 more.