It’s been about 2 and a half years since we first heard about the National Broadband Network although back then it was a much different beast than what it has become. Initially the NBN was mostly going to be a project that was only given initial seed funding from the government with the rest to come from private industry backers. That proposal fell flat on its face when none of the bidders were able to provide a serious proposal and it then transformed into a fully government funded project, to the tune of $47 billion. Keeping the project alive was one of the key points in swinging the election towards Labor’s win, albeit at the cost of deploying to regional towns first instead of major cities as it was planned.
The initial stages in Tasmania have been rolling out for some time and the stage 2 deployments in select regional towns on the mainland have also started. Just last week however brings news that the first 14,000 residents who have been connected to the NBN can now sign up for plans with their respective ISPs, signalling the beginning of the commercial NBN:
From tomorrow, the 14,000 residents whose homes have been passed by the National Broadband Network’s first release site roll-out and aren’t already locked into alternate contracts with their internet service provider will be able to order an NBN service.
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“The launch of commercial services over the fibre network in the mainland First Release Sites marks a significant milestone for the delivery of the NBN. It is the start of a new era of service and competition as providers begin to offer a range of different plans over our open-access wholesale network,” NBN Co head of product development and sales, Jim Hassell, said in a statement.
From just an idea to first light in under 3 years is pretty good by government standards, especially when the project is scheduled to run for at least another 5. The competition for consumers has also begun to heat up as well with iiNet undercutting Internode, forcing them to rework their plan (it now currently stands at the same price, but with 30GB of data). This is great news for us consumers because it means by the time the NBN is available to a much wider audience prices will probably be forced even lower once the economies of scale start to kick in.
Even at these early stages however the current plans available are quite comparable to their ADSL counterparts. For example I’m on an ADSL2+ connection with 250GB of data (one of their older plans I believe) with a $10 “power pack” that makes my uploads not count and gives me a static IP address. The NBN equivalent is their silver plan, which is 25 down/5Mbps up, comes in at $74.95 for 300GB a saving of approximately $20/month over what I’m currently paying. For the same price I can get the top tier of bandwidth along with an extra 50GB of data, which is quite amazing for a service that’s only available to 14,000 people.
How long it will be before such services are available to a good chunk of the Australian populace remains a mystery however. The current rollout map only goes up to Stage 2 which is only a few dozen locations and I haven’t been able to source any rollout plans past that. From the rumours I’ve heard major cities should be the next stage after the current one, but even then rollouts in those areas will take a long time to complete, especially if the TransACT rollout in Canberra is anything to go by.
All of this is pointing towards a very bright future for Australia and the NBN. No future government would risk cancelling a project that is this far under way, especially with the potential benefits for both consumers and business. The pricing being competitive with current ADSL plans means that there will be a real incentive for people to switch to the NBN once it becomes available and it will only get better in the future. I’m really looking forward to being able to be part of the NBN once it becomes available, even though I know it will be a long time coming.
