Albanese splashes $3 billion on pre-election NBN upgrades

More than 600,000 homes and businesses will be eligible for fibre broadband upgrades after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced $3 billion in extra funding to “finish the NBN”, with the network again looming as a potential flashpoint for the coming federal election.

Albanese said work on the upgrades would start immediately, with premises reliant on ageing copper technology to be given the option to upgrade to full-fibre, which is significantly faster and has greater capacity.

The NBN has served as a political football for its whole existence, and the upgrades – which are set to be completed by the end of 2030 – would give 94 per cent of Australians access to full-fibre connections, aligning with Labor’s original vision for the project under then-prime minister Kevin Rudd more than a decade ago.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said work on the upgrades would start immediately.Credit: AAPIMAGE

Albanese accused Opposition Leader Peter Dutton of wanting to privatise the network and “dismantle” it.

“Keeping Australians connected at an affordable price is a vital national project,” Albanese said on Monday. “Rolling out high-speed internet builds Australia’s future.

“Labor built the NBN, just like we built Medicare and superannuation. Peter Dutton wants to dismantle it, just like he wants to undermine Medicare and other services Australians rely on. We’ll upgrade the NBN to make it faster – and make sure it stays affordable.”

“This government will not be lectured when it comes to cost of the NBN,” says Communications Minister Michelle Rowland.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The government has committed up to $3 billion on the upgrades, alongside more than $800 million from NBN Co.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland pointed to modelling by Accenture suggesting the fibre upgrade program will provide a $10.4 billion cumulative uplift in GDP over the next decade.

“I will not be lectured, and this government will not be lectured, when it comes to cost of the NBN,” Rowland said at a news conference in Canberra.

“Peter Dutton was a senior minister in a government for nearly a decade which said they would complete the NBN for $29 billion. It blew out to $58 billion and, in the meantime, they reverted from fibre to copper and wasted tens of billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.”

The Coalition government under former prime minister Tony Abbott scrapped Labor’s full-fibre rollout in 2013 in favour of a cheaper mix of technologies. At the time, Abbott said: “[We] are absolutely confident that 25 megs is going to be enough, more than enough, for the average household.”

The opposition’s communications spokesman, David Coleman, was contacted for comment.

NBN Co’s chief network officer, Dion Ljubanovic, said the latest set of speed upgrades would lead to a “data explosion” for many customers, who would be able to take advantage of speeds of up to a gigabyte a second.

Monthly data use has grown tenfold in Australia over the past 10 years, skyrocketing particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and growing each year since.

Australia’s average fixed broadband download speed is ranked a lowly 82 on Speedtest’s worldwide index, behind Oman and Czechia, and just above Uzbekistan.

“The upgrades are definitely part of enabling Australia to move higher in those standards,” Ljubanovic said. “What we need is for these customers to move over onto that full fibre service, which provides the highest bandwidth, the highest capacity and the most resilient service that is available. There’s no two ways about that.”

More than half of the fibre upgrades will be in regional Australia, where the NBN is facing fierce competitive pressure from Elon Musk’s satellite broadband system Starlink, which many rural Australians say is often more reliable.

The upgrades span 2400 suburbs and towns nationally, and will be free for end users as long as they sign up to a plan that is 100 megabits a second or faster. NBN Co is encouraging users to register their interest via the NBN Co website.

The government has been manoeuvring to make the NBN a political issue heading into the next election. In a move that took industry observers by surprise late last year, the government introduced legislation that would ban any privatisation of NBN Co and keep the nation’s broadband infrastructure in public hands for the foreseeable future. Opposition communications spokesman Coleman called that bill a “sad stunt”.

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