MyRepublic slams NBN: ‘a s*** network’

A NEW internet provider dubbed the Telstra-killer has taken aim at the NBN, calling it ‘s***’ and ripping into the government.

Stefan Sojka from West Ryde is frustrated with slow internet speeds available in his area. Picture: Troy Snook

The National Broadband Network Co has hit back at claims by a new internet player that the government’s $41 billion project will provide a “s***” service for Australians

Start-up MyRepublic has been heralded a Telstra-killer, and now the Singaporean company set to shake up Australian broadband has taken aim at the NBN.

MyRepublic is due to launch its broadband service next year providing super-fast broadband at a cheaper price than existing local providers.

In an interview with Fairfax media, co-founder Malcolm Rodrigues slammed the NBN service, labelling it “s***”, and predicting it would cause Australia to fall behind.

Nine thousand staff are currently working to roll out what will be one of the largest infrastructure projects in Australia, with a goal of servicing every home and business in Australia by 2020.

“I don’t know what [the government] is doing on the other policy fronts but on this they’ve completely stuffed it,” Mr Rodrigues said.

“More and more Australians will leave the country looking for jobs and you’ll continue to be a resource based economy — the hope of building IT jobs and a digital economy will kind of be more difficult to achieve.”

Mr Rodrigues criticised the use of fibre-to-the-node technology, which the Coalition government ordered after taking over the project from the previous Labor government.

He said MyRepublic would deliver speeds 100 megabits per second, and criticised the slower speeds offered by the NBN.

“On FTTN we’ll market 100Mbps and when people come over we’ll say ‘sorry, thank your government [because] you’re on a shit network and the most you can get is 20-30Mbps, but we will continue to lobby your government to turn it into a fibre-to-the-home one and as soon as you get there we’ll get you a free upgrade to fibre’.”

The NBN has said its trials have so far delivered positive results and says speeds from trials have been “extremely encouraging”.

The project’s public affairs manager Tony Brown said the criticism from MyRepublic was unfair and inaccurate, and defended its use of FTTN.

“Our early experience is very positive and speeds will be very strong speeds. This company is coming from Singapore which is a very small market, smaller than Sydney. We’re doing a far, far bigger network here and we’ve got to explore different avenues to deliver better broadband to far more people,” he said.

Mr Brown said predictions that the NBN would deliver speeds of 20 — 30Mbps at most we’re “absolutely inaccurate”, and he said there was “very, very little demand” for such high speeds, the network would be more than capable of delivering them.

“The trial speed we’re getting are way higher than that, most subscribers are getting 100Mbps and even those further out are getting well above 50. The idea is not accurate.”