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Elon Musk has appeared to criticise the federal government’s decision to invest another $3 billion in NBN.
The SpaceX founder shared an opinion piece in The Australian Financial Review that attacked the fibre service and agreed it “doesn’t seem to make sense” that the money wouldn’t instead be spent on installing Starlink.
The report cited an analysis that claimed spending $3.8 billion to upgrade 622,000 homes would equate to $6,100 per premise, far less than the retail cost of a Starlink router.
NBN first went live in Australia in 2011 and aims to offer significantly higher speeds than traditional broadband via fibre cables.
However, it has been repeatedly criticised for its slow and patchy rollout and has accumulated losses of $35 billion since its construction. Starlink, meanwhile, has signed up 200,000 customers despite only launching locally in 2021.
In October 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced a $2.4 billion investment in the company that owns NBN and another $3 billion this month.
The latest investment aims to upgrade the fibre-to-the-node connections, providing an additional 622,000 new fibre connections. More than half are targeted at regional and rural areas.
The problems with the ground-based NBN, though, come alongside similar complaints aimed at its satellite-based service, Sky Muster.
A recent Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) investigation published in January revealed the service’s performance was so poor it would struggle to consistently play videos or handle online computer games.
The findings showed NBN geostationary service’s latency averaged 664.9 milliseconds across all hours, compared to 29.8 milliseconds on low-Earth orbit (LEO) rival Starlink.
“While the latency is stable during busy hour congestion, its high duration is likely to hinder activities that require real-time responsiveness,” said the Measuring Broadband Australia program on Sky Muster’s service.
“Users relying on Sky Muster for such applications may experience delays, but the service remains predictable in its performance.”
LEO satellite constellations, such as Starlink, offer quicker services than traditional geostationary satellites, such as NBN Sky Muster, because they are closer to Earth.
The lower height also means LEOs effectively cover a smaller area and, therefore, need to operate in larger, connected constellations to be effective.
Starlink, a subsidiary of SpaceX, has the advantage of being able to launch thousands of satellites without paying external customers because it operates its own reusable rockets.
It’s currently thought there are around 7,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, with plans for a final constellation of 40,000.
It comes after Space Connect reported in March speculation that Amazon’s rival service to Starlink, Project Kuiper, is leading the race to succeed Sky Muster when it is decommissioned in 2032.
A federal government decision to back Amazon’s Project Kuiper service would be a huge coup to the Jeff Bezos-founded company, which hopes to begin launching satellites imminently.
Amazon blasted off two prototype satellites on a United Launch Alliance rocket in October 2023 and said the mission was a “100 per cent success”. Its long-term goal is to establish a constellation of 3,200 satellites focusing on providing internet to remote and regional areas.
This article originally appeared on Space Connect.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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