In fact, fast internet has become a necessity in our lives, just as the telephone became for our great great grandparents over 100 years ago. Back then they argued in Parliament that Iron cable would suffice and copper at 10x the price could never be justified except over very long distances.

Back then computers were analogue and the concepts of networks only appeared in sci-fi of the late 40’s, but here we are, still living off the decisions made then.

So here is the rub, at $60 Billion, the Fibre to the Node network being rolled out now is obsolete technology. Everybody knows it, at best it will “suffice” for a maximum of 25 years. There is no upgrading it.

Yes, we may eke out a little more speed, but copper as a transmission medium is finished. We are waffling on about 100Mbps, but South Korea is normalising 10Gbps and working on 100Gbps to each home.

Much like the arguments about copper all those years ago, we do not need those speeds yet, but given that we are only just coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the iPhone, is anyone willing to say what speeds will be “normal” in just 10 years?

Can we imaging Bellingen without copper to each home, the majority of us use the copper for recreation; we don’t really need it to survive.

But it allows us to participate in a modern community and culture, and brings equality.

The original concept of the NBN, to bring fibre to each home was never the product of a “back of a napkin” sketch. It had been conceived over the previous 10 years.

Indeed, Barnaby Joyce wrote a paper stating copper was redundant and fibre to the home was required back in 2005. The original NBN rollout was expensive, but all the trunk lines were being laid and the first suburban installations were being trialled. 

Just as the government changed and FTTN was being cut in, skinny fibre had come into play and the price of the rollout fell dramatically. Ideology won out however, and under the promise of “faster and cheaper” we pressed on, sacrificing outcomes for politics.

FTTN proved to be far more expensive and complicated than envisaged by Canberra. It did not have 10 years of consideration behind it, and it has failed miserably. Speeds are no longer guaranteed and FTTN is being quietly dropped for FTTC (almost Fibre to the Premises).

The Multi Technology Mix (including FTTN) is still flopping  about though, and as a result of political direction, over a third of Bellingen and Dorrigo townships that are central, and with sewers, have been cut out of the wired rollout and put onto fixed wireless.

A further third of Bellingen town has been left on FTTN and the remainder put onto FTTC. If you are on FTTC, you won the lottery. Stable, fast and low latency internet is coming your way, as for the rest, we have to wait and see, but it is not something that we will be using in 100 years, let alone 10.

We have a small opportunity to try to change the outcomes and get FTTC for the town footprints. We will be creating form letters that can be down loaded from the Bellingen NBN Facebook group and the Council Create. Hard copies are at the Council’s administration centre.

To date no town has managed to influence the NBN lottery, so we need every business and resident to demand equality within the towns and equality with the cities.