Senate scrutiny has revealed NBN began dumping some of its HFC footprint for copper as early as October 2017 – only fifty days after the release of its Corporate Plan, and a month before the public announcement that the HFC rollout was being halted due to ongoing dropouts and unreliable service.
Source: 2018 Corporate Plan – released on 31 august 2017.
This evidence suggests 200,000 homes had already been dumped from HFC and converted to copper by that time, a disconnect between what was communicated to the public and what was happening on the ground.
Labor calls on the Turnbull Government to end its copper deployment which has become a liability to both consumers and taxpayers.
If NBNCo finds itself being crippled by spiralling HFC costs, then at a minimum the HFC they plan to dump should be switched to Fibre to the Curb.
When Turnbull's fall-back option is to deploy more copper, it shows how short-sighted and desperate his multi-technology mess has become.