If your government had decided to install a national, open-access fiber-to-the-home network to 93 percent of all residents, if the installation was free, and if the fiber hookup had no effect on your existing phone or cable service and committed you to nothing... wouldn't you take it?
Not if you live in Tasmania, where the Australian government's ambitious new National Broadband Network is getting underway with its first fiber deployments. The government-created NBN Co. has the right to dig up streets and trench along rights-of-way, but to install that "last-mile" connection to a home or apartment it needs permission—and Tasmanians have been slow to offer it.
According to local news accounts, only half of the homes and business in the first dig zone have given permission to access their property. That led to this week's rather pathetic press release from NBN Co. in which the CEO basically begged "residents and businesses within the Willunga and Kiama First Release Sites to sign up."
Those who don't accept the free install when crews pass through their area will need to pay for an install at some later date if they need service from the network.
And they will need service, eventually. Under the government's plan, the incumbent telco Telstra will turn over its old copper phone lines to the government, and all of these will be disconnected within eight years. Telstra, along with other telecommunications and Internet companies, will then compete by offering IP phone service and 'Net access through the new fiber network. Consumers can pick their choice of provider.
As Communications Minister Stephen Conroy put it this week to Australia's ABC News, "Ultimately with the agreement we've reached with Telstra we will be disconnecting the copper, the only fixed line connection. The only way to make a fixed line phone call will be on the national broadband network so we ultimately will have to connect every single home in Tasmania."
But people's reluctance to sign consent forms could add serious costs and delays to the entire project. And if everyone will be hooked up eventually, why not just make the fiber installations mandatory now?
That's the direction in which Australia is moving. Conroy and the Tasmanian Premier, David Bartlett, are now both talking about ways to shift to an "opt-out" model in which the NBN Co. has the right to install on your property unless you explicitly object.
Opposition figures in Tasmania have been pushing the idea for more than a month. "I am sure there would be plenty of people that would not want the government rolling up onto their property and installing fibre without permission," said MP Michael Ferguson. "Nonetheless it would be an enormous cost to the community if we only do get half of our homes connected to the fibre."
To make the change, though, the government would need to alter its laws, so the process could take time. In the meantime, NBN Co. desperately wants people to sign consent forms by August 31 to get their free fiber line and optical network terminal.
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