Founding NBN chief Mike Quigley’s simple indictment of the multi technology NBN

THE founding chief executive of the NBN has pointed to a pair of simple stats that show the fundamental problem with our NBN rollout.

National Broadband Network CEO Mike Quigley talks at business conference at Surry Hills in Sydney.

THE first chief executive of the National Broadband Network Mike Quigley has delivered a scathing critique of the Coalition’s current multi technology rollout strategy and pointed to evidence that a majority of the NBN will quickly become obsolete.

In a rare public speech at University of Melbourne overnight, he called the current rollout “backward-looking” and “incredibly short sighted,” saying the current state of the project is “such a pity”.

His speech coincided with an article published in The Conversation which continued to attack the Coalition’s decision to use the decaying copper network and PAY TV cable (HFC) in its plan.

Mr Quigley took the job as founding NBN chief in 2009 and retired before the Coalition came to power in 2013. He pointed to a pair of simple statistics that he believes demonstrate the inadequacy of the multi-technology mix which relies predominantly on fibre-to-the-node connections instead of the original fibre-to-the-home.

Since Mr Quigley took the job in 2009 the internet usage of Australians (the amount of data downloaded) has increased ninefold, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

Mr Quigley also pointed to a forecast conducted by Cisco which predicted global broadband speeds will nearly double between 2015 and 2020.

It’s clear the trend is going in one direction, and for him, the combination of these stats amounts to an indictment of the NBN’s current technology strategy that will certainly need to be upgraded in the future.

Australia’s internet use has consistently increased in recent years.

The use of copper under the Coalition’s plan to make the final connection to the home means that download speeds for such installations will be capped at a maximum of 100Mbps.

Likewise, the PAY TV cables known as hybrid-fibre coaxial are currently unable to deliver the same speeds as fibre optic cable. Earlier in the year NBN co trialled its HFC cable in the Queensland region of Redcliffe with users achieving average download speeds of 84Mbps — hailed as a huge success by the taxpayer funded company.

But Mr Quigley says both technologies will ultimately see Australia left behind.

“The debate in the United States and Asia is about gigabit per second speeds, not about whether 25MBps or 50Mbps is sufficient,” he wrote.

The Coalition regularly points to the fact that a majority of the data packages purchased by customers already connected to the NBN are lower-tier packages as proof the network is sufficient for the nation’s needs.

But for the man originally appointed to steer the ship, it’s an argument that entirely misses the point and shows a “complete lack of understanding” about what the original NBN sought to do.

“It seems especially curious that a government that styles itself as the innovation and infrastructure government should argue this,” he wrote.

“Gigabit services are just starting to emerge elsewhere in the world, so the applications that can take advantage of this type of speed are in their infancy. But we all know they are coming.”

Mr Quigley who came out of retirement to head up the NBN and gave his first year’s salary of $2 million to charity was seen by many as somewhat of a visionary for the ambitious national project. But for him, and many others, it’s a vision that has been left in tatters.

NBN rollout plans announcement attended by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Senator Stephen Conroy, Anthony Albanese and Mike Quigley.