A response to 'Broadband facts, fictions, and urban myths', by Prof. Rodney Tucker

This paper responds to an earlier paper by Prof. Rodney Tucker, 'Broadband facts, fiction and urban myths' (Tucker 2010), which suggested that many of the criticisms of Australia's NBN superfast broadband project were founded on myths. This paper argues that the 'myths' Prof. Tucker cites are in fact legitimate criticisms. It points out that there are numerous examples of the benefits of technology being overestimated. For fibre broadband, high penetration in other countries has frequently depended on very aggressive pricing, perhaps because there are still no 'killer apps' that require it. Nor is the simultaneous usage of existing apps likely to add up to a high enough bandwidth requirement to justify fibre, and the rate of growth of domestic data consumption is likely to slow. Moreover, the capabilities of alternative, far cheaper technologies continue to grow rapidly, leaving a diminishing set of cases that actually require expensive fibre to the home.