This was to be a great infrastructure. National broadband services to every home and business in Australia. Originally proposed by the Rudd-Gillard government in 2010 it was eventually commenced with promises of 100 Mbit/sec to increase to 1Gbit/s. While the Rudd government had proposed a modern optical fibre telecommunications network to provide it to 93% of population but it was later changed to copper to the node.

It became a major factor in the 2013 election. Both Tony Abbott, the then leader of the opposition, and Malcolm Turnbull, who was the shadow minister for communications and broadband, combined to state that in government they would abolish the NBN. They later changed this to being agnostic towards it, which happened in 2012.

When Abbott was elected in 2013 fibre was allowed only to those areas already being worked on. Then they paused new developments. As Minister of Communications Turnbull formed a … Read More

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