Communications minister Paul Fletcher spoke at an industry conference and outdid his Coalition predecessors in an extraordinary attempt to defend the beleaguered National Broadband Network. These are just some of the comments he made to an incredulous audience of IT professionals who know so much more than he does.

1. According to Mr Fletcher 10.2 million premises can now connect to the NBN. However, 40 percent havent even bothered. Thats not exactly a great endorsement of the project in my opinion.

2. He said But last year the ACCC confirmed what we knew to be true NBN Co is by far the dominant player in the fixed line market. Yep. That was the whole idea! To ensure that everyone has access to fast and reliable broadband just as weve always had universal telephone access.

3. He said Labors plan to scrap the HFC networks and then overbuild them with new fibre networks was extraordinarily wasteful. Yet NBN Co has dumped the entire Optus HFC network and its costing a bomb to remediate the Telstra HFC. In my area they are ripping out Telstras HFC and replacing it with an inferior alternative from a speed perspective.

4. He said I spoke earlier about the many legacy problems which Labors NBN has left. A whole class of those problems concerns regional and remote telecommunications. Well, his Government increased reliance on satellite and fixed wireless rather than superior fixed wire connections. In any case it has had six years to do something positive and broadband is still buggered in the bush.

5. He said 90 percent of premises can receive at least 50Mbps and all can receive 25Mbps. Well, not according to the complaints being received by the ACCC and the TIO. Too many NBN Co customers just cannot get 25Mbps and I very much doubt 90 percent can get 50Mbps.

6. He said The rollout of the NBN has been a massive turnaround exercise after we inherited a colossal mess. It was actually then prime minister Tony Abbotts instruction to communications minister Malcolm Turnbull to destroy the NBN that created the mess NBN Co is in now. As Ive noted previously, Turnbull subsequently failed to fix the NBN when he was prime minister.

7. He said Next year NBN will begin trials of the G.fast protocol which holds real potential across Fibre-to-the Node (FTTN) and Fibre-to-the-Curb (FTTC) footprints. Someone should tell him that in-field applications of G.fast in Europe are proving problematic and in fact G.fast will not work on FTTN due to the length of the copper wires involved.

8. He said NBN Co is on track and on budget to complete the rollout next year. Well IMO the project will not be complete until everyone has access to 21st Century broadband. That wont be the case until they replace the 30 percent of fixed line connections using FTTN. And as for being on budget, NBN Cos own financial reports reveal that it is not securing the revenue needed to pay back its $19 billion debt to the Government when it falls due and they have nothing budgeted for the inevitable replacement of FTTN.

9. He said I suspect if Labor were in Government they would be plotting how to restrict the operations of 5G networks lest they pose a threat to the NBN. The big threat from 5G mobile is that it will be embarrassingly faster than premises stuck with FTTN. This risks a huge loss of customers for NBN Co at a time when it is not reaching its revenue targets.

As I have commented previously, its time for bipartisan agreement on how to fix the NBN. It is a huge drag on our productivity and limits the ability of people to use the Internet for so many positive things.

Laurie Patton was CEO / Executive Director of Internet Australia, the NFP peak body representing the interests of Internet users, from 2014-2017. He is a former journalist and media executive. This article first appeared in The Lucky General (__).