Background:

The big $43 billion promise

Cast your mind back to 2009. Kevin Rudd is prime minister and we’re fresh off the pain of the GFC.

The government announces the biggest public works program in Australian history... the National Broadband Network (or NBN).

The original plan was to run fibre all the way to your house in 93% of Australian homes, schools and businesses. The promise? 100 Mbps download speeds, scalable to 1 Gbps, which was faster than most countries were offering at the time.

The budget? $43 billion.

The timeline? Done by 2020.

The pitch was that it would pay for itself through wholesale revenue. A government owned company called NBN Co would own the pipes and then retailers like Telstra and Optus, would pay NBN to access their pipes and on-sell to consumers.

But by 2013, the original plan was going to blow out to $70-plus billion and wouldn't be done until the mid-2020s. So, a "cheaper'' model was brought in.

The new pitch? Build part of the cables with fibre to the node. The cost? $29.5 billion and done by 2019.

By 2019? Costs had blown past $51 billion.... and the government was still in the middle of paying for it.

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Where we're at today:

What's actually broken?

Today, NBN is connected to more than 12.1 million Australian premises.

Its total cost to date? Over $57 billion... with the final tally nudging up to $70 billion once the remaining copper upgrades are done.

That doesn't mean we've got the fastest internet either.  Australia ranks around 43rd globally for internet speeds, with Cambodia and Latvia just ahead of us.
And as of mid-2025, only about 2.6 million premises are on genuine full Fibre to the Premises (FTTP). That's around 22% of the 12.1 million connected... far from the 93% percent FTTP promised back in 2009.

So, what's actually broken?

The "cheaper" 2013 plan meant running fibre to a green box on your street. Then old copper wire carries the signal to your house. But copper degrades over time, so the further from the box, the slower your connection.

FTTN connections were supposed to deliver 50 Mbps, but the ACCC found they were actually delivering less.
And then there’s NBN Co’s massive financial hole. NBN Co posted a net loss of $963 million in FY25. That's a company who has never made a profit.

The cost of building the network had to be absorbed into wholesale pricing - which retailers pass to you. The NBN needs high prices to survive. High prices push customers toward alternatives.
Enter: 5G home wireless.

Telstra, Optus and TPG are all offering home internet over their mobile networks. No copper, no NBN, often cheaper… and the speeds that rival or beat a standard NBN plan.

Around 500,000 Australian households have already ditched the NBN entirely for 5G home wireless. And that number is growing every quarter.

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Where to from here:

The pipeline has a payroll problem

So, the uncomfortable question is whether NBN actually has a future at all?

There is a real scenario where the Australian government finishes spending $70 billion on a fixed-line network... and then a big chunk of the population simply don’t use it.
Because the NBN was built for a world where fibre to your house was the only way to get fast internet. But that world lasted about a decade. And it took a decade for Australia to build.
So now, NBN is being stress-tested by competitors it was never designed to face.
All that said, it's still possible for NBN to thrive. Full fibre is still the most reliable fixed-line technology available. And as data usage doubles every few years, then a well-built FTTP network will still matter.
But that doesn't diminish that fact that we're about to finish a $70 billion infrastructure project into a market that's already moving past it.
So, the NBN his looking like a cautionary tale about what happens when you spend too much time... and money... in a very fast changing technology landscape.