One name every 3.5 sec on NBN petition

A PETITION calling on the incoming coalition government to save Labor's national broadband network has garnered more than 116,281 signature in five days.

AN internet petition set up by a Liberal-voting student to save Labor's national broadband network (NBN) has become Australia's largest ever online petition.

The internet appeal is roaring along, but still has some way to go before becoming Australia's largest ever petition, which was submitted to federal parliament with 792,985 signatures in 2000 calling for an end to rising beer prices.

The NBN petition calls on the incoming coalition government to scrap its plans to create a fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) network in place of Labor's existing fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) approach.

Created by Queenslander Nick Paine on Change.org less than five days ago, the petition overtook Australia's previous biggest online petition just after 11am (AEST) on Wednesday with 116,281 signatures. The prior one had 116,280 names.

That's one signature every 3.5 seconds.

The former frontrunner was a campaign to pressure advertisers to boycott radio shock jock Alan Jones in 2012 after he said former PM Julia Gillard's father "died of shame".

Mr Paine, 20, is a supporter of the coalition, but says no party is perfect.

"I personally just don't believe their policy reflects the best option for Australia and I don't think it reflects in general the majority of Australians' views," he said.

"There's no reason to just sit back and see what happens, you've got to try it out and stand up for what you believe in."

Mr Paine said it was the first online petition he's started.

"When I actually started the petition, the signature goal was about 1000 to 5000, and it blew past that within a day and I've been upping the goal ever since."

Labor's FTTH network connects every home and business with optical fibre cables, which provides download speeds up to 1000 megabits a second (Mbps), upload speeds of 400Mbps and aimed to be completed by 2021.

The coalition's FTTN policy, which will rely on existing copper lines, will provide the majority of homes with download speeds of 50Mbps and upload speeds of 5Mbps by 2019.

The capital cost of the NBN under the coalition's plan is $29.5 billion, against Labor's $44.1 billion.

Comment has been sought from the incoming coalition government's communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull.