The Australian Government is totally fine with the state of the NBN

It's no secret that many people aren't happy with the NBN right now, with reports that only one quarter of FTTN users can reach 100Mbps, resulting in some telcos offering reduced rates for their highest speed tiers.

The Australian Government however, doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong, having mostly dismissed a report from the Joint Standing Committee on the National Broadband Network released in September last year in its official response to the matter.

"The Government is disappointed that after considering 191 submissions; holding 15 public hearings; receiving testimony from 179 witnesses; and undertaking three site visits, the Committee's majority report and recommendations indicates a failure to understand the fundamentals of the NBN."

The comprehensive Joint Standing Committee report detailed a number of problems currently facing the NBN, and also offered some suggestions that could potentially help alleviate some of these issues.

Connecting to the NBN: what to expect

Many of the suggestions were met with a "The Government does not support this recommendation" response, including one which would see the Government "direct and enable NBN to complete as much as possible of the remaining fixed line network using FTTC (fibre to the curb) at a minimum (or FTTP), and require NBN to produce a costed plan and timetable under which that would be achieved."

To this, the Government also said that it "remains committed to the Multi Technology Mix (MTM), which will see rollout of fast broadband as soon as possible, at affordable prices and at least cost to tax payers."

It wasn't all bad news however – the Government did support some recommendations "in principle", including one to "ensure by appropriate regulation that end users are informed of, or can easily access and are directed to, clear information about the maximum attainable layer 2 speed of their NBN infrastructure/service on a per premises basis."