Leaked documents reveal it could cost up to $641 million for NBN to fix ageing Telstra copper network

LEAKED documents have revealed it could costs hundreds of millions of tax payers dollars to fix the NBN’s ageing copper network.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas) NO ARCHIVING

LEAKED documents have revealed that the national broadband network needs to spend $641 million to repair parts of the copper network the government bought from Telstra.

The figure in the documents obtained by The Australian is nearly ten times the cost that the NBN had originally expected to spend in repairing the ageing copper network and is part of the reason why the whole price tag has exploded from $41 billion to now up to $56 billion.

It was also revealed in the documents that another $520 million will need to be spent by the NBN for connecting homes and businesses that are at a large distance away from the nodes. With the fibre-to-the-node technology that the government is deploying, speeds can drop significantly the further you are from the node, which is that green box you often see on street corners.

If the repairs aren’t made to the network, the documents claim that download and upload speeds would not be able to live up to the speeds promised by the government for the network.

The NBN admitted in August that despite spending $11.2 billion buying the Telstra copper network they weren’t able to test the quality of the copper, which will make up about 38 per cent of their network.

This cost blowout comes just a week after documents revealed that the NBN might need to spend another $375 million rebuilding another part of the network.

The documents claimed that the Optus HFC network is “not fit for purpose” and nearing the end of its life, while other parts of it are simply already oversubscribed and wouldn’t be able to deliver on the speeds promised by Prime Minister Turnbull and his government.

These new plans would see the Optus network rebuilt with either Telstra’s HFC or fibre-to-the-node technology, which was originally planned for 38 per cent of the network. On top of the huge cost blowout, which is already expected to be $15 billion over budget, the NBN will be missing the rollout targets of 633,000 premises in 2017 and 2018, which will now have to wait until 2019 at the earliest to be connected.

The NBN said the documents were from their regular assessing of multiple scenarios but would not go as far as saying to news.com.au that the replacement of the HFC network wasn’t going to happen.

On top of these two most recent cost blowouts, the coalition’s multi-technology NBN which was meant to be significantly cheaper than Labor’s all-fibre network has had its estimated costs soar.

Originally estimated at $41 billion to construct, the price tag has now blown out to between $46 billion and $56 billion, with the likely cost sitting at around $49 billion. The NBN says their new cost measurements are now proven to be accurate.

The government has committed $29.5 billion to construct the NBN, meaning the NBN Co will need to raise money from next year to make up for it.