Let's put things in perspective, over the same 10-year period the Australian Government will spend...
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The Biggest NBN Myths Debunked
The NBN is an investment NOT an expense.
The overall cost of building Australia's new information super highway is $37.4 billion over 10 years which will ultimately be repaid by the NBN company with an expected return on investment of 7%.
Government investment is not using your tax money and is instead funded by $30.4 billion of debt, through the issuing of Australian Government Bonds.
The NBN will repay those bonds at a higher rate than what Government is paying on debt. It is estimated that by 2034, the entire Government investment will have been repaid by the users of the NBN network and no associated debt.
Now we can see that the NBN is an infrastructure investment that will pay for itself over time, let's look at the other economic benefits for Australia.
IBM has projected that up to 35 percent of Australia's $4 trillion revenue in 2050 will be in industry areas that are powered by the NBN.
Public Healthcare - $1.2 Trillion (will NOT be repaid)
Public Education - $500 Billion (will NOT be repaid)
Defense - $200 Billion (will NOT be repaid)
NBN - $37.4 Billion (will BE repaid)
According to Cisco Systems latest 2016 Forecast for Australia (VNI - Visual Networking Index)
Between 2011 to 2016, IP traffic will grow 6-fold, a compound annual growth rate of 45%
The average global fixed broadband speed is forecasted to grow nearly fourfold, from 9 Mbps in 2011 to 34 Mbps in 2016. Australia can't afford to get left behind.
In 2016, the gigabyte equivalent of all movies ever made will cross Australia's IP networks every 8 hours.
Your home bandwidth requirements will grow substantially greater as you connect more devices.
According to Cisco's predictions - In Australia, there will be 5.7 networked devices per capita in 2016, up from 4.0 per capita in 2011.
With exponentially growing technology in the areas of e-health and e-education it's never been so important for Australians to have access to high-reliable broadband speed.
FACT: Thus-far, more Australians have taken up NBN's top fibre plan (100Mbps) than any other plan. Yes, Australians really do want the speed and data the NBN can provide.
"It will cost up to $1,000 to get connected!"
NBN Co will install fibre into your home free of charge.
There is no need to rewire your home unless you want hardwired access at other points in your home and you don't already have it.
Otherwise at the very most you may need to upgrade your wireless router which will cost you between $100 and $300. However, many plans from ISPs will likely include the router for free as part of the plan, as the do currently with many ADSL plans.
"Fibre technology will be obsolete in 5 years. Mobile broadband is the way forward."
No matter what developments happen in the future, the capabilities of the mobile
spectrum are limited as its a finite resource that is already in danger of being
stretched to its limits in some countries.
South Korea, the country with already the fastest broadband in the world, is spending US$26 billion on upgrading their old 100Mbps network in order to deliver speeds of 1Gbps, the same as the Australian NBN can deliver.
This is rolling out even though South Korea already has a 4G wireless network.
Australian residential fibre plans will start out with a max of 100Mbps but top end NBN business plans are already slated to 1Gbps. Symmetrical 1Gbps/1Gbps will be available in about 2 years for business plans. The technology is controlled by the units plugged into either end of the fibre which are easily upgradable.
The average cost of mobile broadband, per megabyte is more than 10 times higher than that of fixed broadband connections, with only a quarter of the speed. This makes mobile broadband both impractical and expensive for high volume use.
"Other countries haven't built an NBN, so we shouldn't either."
Fibre-To-The-Premises or Home (FTTP/H) is being rolled out in 60 countries around the world, including...
"No one is going to sign up for the NBN and it's going to be too expensive"
In July 2012, after 10 months of commercial services being available, the take up rate on fibre is around 17% which is way ahead of the global experience.
This means that the NBNCo's average revenue per user will be much higher than originally estimated. If the trend continues at the current rate, it is likely that the consumer cost of accessing the NBN will come down significantly over time, as the network will pay for its own construction faster than the NBNCo had been anticipating.
Decommissioning of the Telstra copper network will necessarily see people move onto the NBN for fixed line phone and internet services - providing higher quality service, and more features such as voice and fax in the cloud.
14,000 users have already signed-up with a 17% take-up rate
The NBN is the most exciting infrastructure project to happen in Australia in many decades. Australia's potential with the NBN is enormous. It will impact not only on the economy but on every aspect of our society and the quality of our lives.
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