The petition grossly oversimplifies the difference in approach between the major parties. The NBN will still be built under the new government, NBN Co. will still exist, the debate isn't so much about FTTN vs FTTH (terms that most Australian's aren't familiar with) nor about copper vs fiber.

It is about the tradeoff between delivering higher speeds and the time taken to implement. The coalition plan is prominently technology agnostic[0]. The reason why Australia ranks 40th[1] globally with an average broadband speed of 4.1Mbit is not because we haven't rolled out fiber to every home, but rather because of mistakes made during deregulation and the delays in implementing a new plan have meant that large sections of the population have fallen behind international standards and are unable to access even a decent ADSL service, let alone a better VDSL or fiber based service.

This has left the country in a situation where because of a lack of basic service, 47% of the country currently access the internet using mobile broadband[2]. This is beyond unacceptable.

The two approaches to solving this problems are 1) build a nation wide network that delivers a satellite and wireless service to 7% of the population and a fiber to the home service to the other 93% of the population. ETA 2021. or 2) set a bandwidth target of delivering at least 25Mbit and up to 100Mbit to all households by 2016 and then upgrade to 100Mbit by 2019 using a mix of technologies

The 25-100Mbit by 2016 plan would bring Australia into the top 3 or 4 nations worldwide for internet access speeds, where we belong (neither plan would solve high bandwidth prices - the NBN only reaches from your home to your nearest point of interconnect, it does nothing to resolve the current poor state of internet bandwidth/backhaul access in Aus which has a lot of existing broadband connections struggling with international speeds).

The new approach is about applying the best technology to fit the situation and to get more bandwidth out sooner. This means that in new housing areas (known as greenfields) where new trenches have to be dug fiber to the home will be deployed (this doesn't change). In remote areas it will be a mix of satellite and wireless service (this doesn't change). In existing suburbs (brownfields) there will be a mix of fiber to the home, fiber to the basement, and fiber to the node with VDSL (and later GFast) delivering the last hundreds of meters.

There is yet another rollout case that is the most complicated and that is multi-dwelling unit's (or MDU's) - apartments, town houses, retirement villages, office buildings etc. The old plan was that in these instances the existing copper within a building would be pulled out and replaced with fiber. The problem is that co-ordinated the millions of residents, strata bodies, building co-ops, owners, etc. is a bureaucratic nightmare. When Optus and Telstra rolled out their HFC networks in the 90s they bypassed many of these residences because of the problems it involves. I think even the most strident Labor NBN supporter would concede that MDU's require a new plan and a different approach (not coincidently a report by NBN Co. on the MDU problem was due out a couple of months ago but its release was delayed until after the election).

This is why technological decisions should not be dictated by online petitions that at best oversimplify the situation and at worse misrepresent it. I was hoping that with the election now behind us that the toxic partizan debate surrounding the NBN would be over and that people that are best suited to finding a solution - engineers, network architects etc. could set about working out how to achieve the aim of delivering 25-100Mbit to Australian by the end of the first term of this new government.

The solution is using a mix of technologies - FTTH in new areas, FTTN in existing areas, an option to upgrade to fiber for businesses, fiber to the basement in MDU's, satellite and wireless in remote areas, etc. Whatever works, just get more bandwidth out there sooner.

As a technologist I can only support using a practical approach to finding the best solutions to hitting targets.

Off course we all want fiber to the home, off course we all want gigabit speeds, but there is a much more immediate problem of solving the blackspots in existing services. It is about taking smaller steps and delivering more bandwidth to more people sooner rather than a clean slate approach of an entirely new network, and all the risks that involves.

I personally know many people who are stuck using 3G modems to access the web and who not only have terrible data speeds but also have usage caps that are a few gigabytes a month. I struggle to explain to them why my area, where I already have an ADSL2+ service at 16Mbit+, is on the roadmap to receive an NBN service this year while their area, closer to the city than I live, is scheduled to start construction of the NBN in 3 years time.

I think it is much more important to get at least 25Mbit to those 47% of households before I get my connection upgraded from 16Mbit to 50 or 100Mbit.

There are no doubt still a lot of problems with the new plan. I wouldn't count myself as an ardent supporter of the coalition plan (I don't think I even like the very idea of there being an NBN and an NBN Co., but I digress), but I do believe that taking immediate small steps to solve the most critical problem is much more important than rolling out fiber to every home. What is certainly the case is that many, many people are overreacting to the change in government and the new broadband plan. The sky definitely isn't falling and we aren't tearing out what was built and dissolving NBN co. I wish more and more Australians would take a more pragmatic and less partizan approach to the problem.

As an aside, the coalition policy document [3], at 37 pages, is definitely worth a read. It goes into all of the background into how they made their decision, their research, etc. It is articulated, thought out, thoroughly referenced and well researched - I recommend everybody with an interest in the NBN read it and contrast to how this petition is presenting the 'problem'.

see also: "Will FTTN advances delay FTTH?": http://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/print/volume-30/issu...

on how advances in squeezing more bandwidth out of copper (a technology that is far from dead or antiquated) is causing more telco's to forgoe ambitious FTTH plans in favor of FTTN.

[0] http://www.afr.com/p/technology/turnbull_cut_price_broadband...

[1] http://www.news.com.au/technology/state-of-the-internet-aust...

[2] http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/03/aussies-nuts-for-mobile-br...

[3] http://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/assets/Coalition_NBN_polic...