Bill Shorten Promises Australia Super Fast 'Game of Thrones' Torrenting

Bill Shorten has announced a $57 billion plan to bring fibre-to-the-premises broadband to two million Australian homes under the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Finer details of the plan have not yet been revealed, but Labor says that "a very substantial proportion" of the targeted homes will be in regional and country Australia. The plan will equip homes with fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections, which are significantly faster than connections from nodes and the current copper network.

Fibre-to-the-node connections describe clusters of fibre optic cables running to distribution points, called nodes, which are placed at various locations around the country. Copper cables then connect these nodes to homes and offices. A building's distance from the node determines how quickly it receives internet signals. By comparison, fibre-to-the-premises connections take the fibre-optic cable directly into homes. Such a network is significantly more expensive and time-consuming to install, but guarantees much faster internet speeds.

The Coalition's NBN plan, which is based around fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) connections, offers speeds of 25 to 100 megabits per second. Labor's FTTP plan will give users connection speeds of one gigabit per second—ten to 40 times faster.

While FTTN connections are slower, they are generally cheaper to install. However, Labor says that they can provide two million homes with FTTP connections for roughly the same price as the Coalition's plan.

Deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce rejects that Labor's NBN infrastructure can be installed for the same price as the Coalition's. "If you let the Labor Party plan go forward you're going to be waiting longer and paying more," he told the ABC. "We have connected more houses in the past month than Labor connected in six years."

And Labor leader Bill Shorten appeared to contradict his own party's costings on the ABC's Q&A, saying that Labor's $57 billion rollout could come in $3.4 billion above the Coalition's plan. Much of the plan's funding, $29.6 billion, will come from taxpayers.

The Coalition's current NBN plan has been criticised for delays in its rollout and cost blowouts, as shadow communications minister Jason Clare pointed out in Sydney while announcing Labor's plan. "It's a mess. It's a mess. And the worst part of this is that at the end of the day when it's all said and done, what [Turnbull] is building is a network that's not going to set us up for the jobs of the future," he said.

Clare also mentioned the towns that would benefit from the Labor's plan included Byron Bay, Lismore, Grafton, Batemans Bay, Kingscliff, and Jindabyne. New connections would also be installed on Tasmania's east coast after Labor promised to upgrade the area following the Coalition's plan to service the area via satellite.

Bill Shorten said the Coalition's plan had gone $16 billion over budget. "Malcolm Turnbull's second rate NBN is holding Australia back," he said. "You can't have an innovation boom while you are still buffering."

Australia currently sits at 60th in the world for internet speeds, falling from 30th three years ago because many countries are rapidly upgrading their internet access. The NBN rollout is expected to be completed by June 2022.

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