National Broadband Network users who choose to pay thousands of dollars
out of their own pocket for a high-speed internet connection are inadvertently
paying to upgrade their neighbours' connections as well as public
infrastructure, the ABC has learned.
Charmian Gaud decided she needed a faster internet connection at her
Williamstown home, in Melbourne's west, than the NBN provided fibre to the
node.
She paid $6,500 to have her home hard-wired to the NBN connection point
about 80 metres away from her house.
Her household is one of 260 around Australia that have chosen to fund
their own fibre to the premises (FTTP) connection, under the NBN program
Technology Choice.
The option is available for people who want FTTP, but do not live in an
area earmarked to have it rolled out for free by the NBN Co.
She was surprised to be told by the installer that the five homes in
between her house and the connection point would now be able to get FTTP
connections to their homes at a much cheaper price, as she had paid for most of
the necessary infrastructure.
The ABC understands these houses would now only have to pay about $2,000
to connect to NBN fibre.
"I was quite angry — that's just not fair you know," Ms Gaud
said.
"You've essentially been asked to pay for street furniture. You
have some ownership because you've paid for it … but you have no rights. That's
how I feel about it."
Homes that are on the other side of her house, further away from the NBN
connection, will also get a discount because the infrastructure is now partly
built at Ms Gaud's expense.
"Because the fibre is now in the locality there's a good chance the
price will be cheaper for the second applicant," he said.
He said if people in the same area came together to fund the fibre
connection to all their homes at the same time, their individual costs would
come down.
Neighbours using
infrastructure she paid for
But adding salt to the wound for Ms Gaud is the fact she tried to get
her neighbours together to make a group FTTP application to bring the costs
down.
Over several months, she doorknocked dozens of neighbours and dropped
leaflets in their mailboxes to encourage a group application.
She had four households who were interested, but when they received a
quote of $14,000, the others in the group decided not to go ahead.
Ms Gaud decided to forge ahead alone because she believed it would
improve the value of her property and deliver faster internet speeds.
"Personally I thought it was better to go up to
fibre-to-the-premises to have something that's reliable and future proof,"
Ms Gaud said.
She is frustrated that these same neighbours will now be able to get the
NBN more cheaply if they choose to go ahead with FTTP.
Ms Gaud believed if other homes in her area proceeded with building FTTP
and utilised some of the infrastructure she's already paid for, she should get
a partial refund.
She said the same should apply if NBN Co or
subsequent governments decide to upgrade the infrastructure in
the area at no end cost for users.
"The components that are on the street … I think there should be a
contract on that, and then if someone else uses that there's actually a refund
to the person who's started it out," Ms Gaud said.
But NBN Co said that would not happen.
"The Tech Choice program is operated entirely on a cost recovery
basis by NBN Co, it is not designed to operate at a profit," the company
representative said.
"We have no plans to introduce a refund mechanism to the Tech
Choice program at this point."
All homes will be connected to the NBN in some form by 2020.
In some areas, NBN Co is building FTTP, but in most it is only building
fibre to the node (FTTN) or fibre to the curb (FTTC), which utilises some of
Australia's ageing copper network or cable television lines.
In other more remote areas it is using NBN fixed wireless and Sky Muster
satellite services.
People can choose to upgrade to FTTP at their own expense — the most costly to be built to date
is $217,800 at Shaw in Queensland.
Quotes for the hard connection have even gone
beyond $1 million.
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