Turnbull "naive" on NBN's HD future: Hackett

The federal Opposition needs to go back to school to brush up on broadband network topologies, a leading ISP said today.

Internode managing director Simon Hackett said the Federal Opposition's faith in ADSL2+ to deliver next-generation broadband streams was "naive" and "badly researched".

He was responding to Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull's claims yesterday that most of the high-bandwidth applications mentioned in the NBN business plan such as Fetch TV from Internode and iiNet were broadband misers.

"The FetchTV IP television service, and others like it, can provide a single TV screen with standard-definition video services over a subset of ADSL2+ broadband services - as long as IP multicast is available," Hackett said.

And those very close to an exchange could get HD TV or multiple streams, but the number of houses with access fell the farther they were from the exchange, he said.

"That's because ADSL2+ delivers speeds which vary depending on how far away from a legacy Telstra exchange you happen to live," he said.

Hackett said the current regime lacked "equity of access" and "guaranteed high-speeds" for all Australians, "not just those who happen to live close enough to a legacy copper line connected exchange to be able to use it".

The solution was IP multicast that efficiently sent such video streamswhi to a big number of interested receivers without excess load on the network.

"The NBN, incorporating IP multicast as a part of the design, will let every Australian with a fibre connection experience the future IPTV services from Fetch that we plan to launch in the coming years - not just the initial, entry services we are launching in the first instance over ADSL2+," he said.

"The future, high-definition, multi-screen, on-demand, interactive future of entertainment that we will offer Australians in the coming years - including high definition two-way video calls from your lounge room - all depend on the NBN to be possible and will not happen without it."

Otherwise Australians were "doomed" to lag citizens in other countries and the "NBN is an absolute prerequisite" to access such advanced services, he said.