The NBN’s huge fixed costs require that nearly every Australian household subscribe to the network in order for it to be financially viable. However, as more homes abandon the NBN in favour of wireless options, including 5G mobile and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system, the NBN’s fixed expenses are shared across a diminishing subscriber
There’s a lot of places that are still on copper and you can’t get 100 megabits (unless you want to spend $10,000+ to have fibre installed). Not out at Woop Woop either, suburbs of regional cities.
I know a few folks in that situation - likely people who the originally designed fibre roll-out would have hit, but instead got a substandard connection.
I’m not so sure it’s a full death spiral though, one would hope that the fibre retrofit can catch a lot of these up.
Yeah, I should have said, I’m definitely not convinced of the narrative the article is selling. Like you say, as fibre is rolled out, people will come back to the NBN when they can get connections that are as fast (if not faster) and more reliable for cheaper. And the NBN is a government project, so they don’t have to worry about cash flow in the meantime.
Star link offered faster speeds than NBN for me in my apartment 15km from the city centre. Fucking embarrassment. It was pretty new too, but it had all copper in the building.
Yup, have some relatives who live in the outer burbs of Perth and they get worse speeds on turdbulls fibre to the node mess than they did on ADSL . They are considering 5g and musk net at present. Thanks Malcolm!
Meanwhile I’m pretty happy with gigabit fibre to the home for $100 a month. The low upload speed of 50MB/s still has me scratching my head.