(Image: NBN)
The government of Western Australia has said 25Mbps is no longer considered fast, and the company responsible for rolling out the National Broadband Network (NBN) across Australia should up its mandated minimum peak speed to 100Mbps.
In a submission [PDF][1] to the inquiry into the rollout of the NBN in rural and regional areas, WA called for a review every three to five years of the definition of "very fast broadband" to allow for future changes to technology and demand.
The minimum peak speed NBN is mandated to provide is contained within the Statement of Expectations from the federal government.
The state also called for NBN's connectivity virtual circuit (CVC) charge to be removed.
"Much of the existing NBN Fixed Line network is currently artificially-constrained where there is often vast capacity available and unused," the submission said.
"This constraint is imposed (primarily) by the NBN Co CVC pricing model, which makes access to available capacity over-costly to service providers who are in turn unable to supply sufficient capacity to users in regional Western Australia and still make a profit. Consequently, in many parts of the regional network, a vast quantity of wholesale capacity goes unused simply because it costs too much."
A number of the nation's telcos -- including Vocus[2], Vodafone[3], MyRepublic[4], and Macquarie Telecom[5] -- have said in the past that the only reason retailers are not offering gigabit speeds to consumers is NBN's CVC pricing structure.
Western Australia further called for the ending of the fibre to the node (FttN) rollout, in favour of fibre to the curb (FttC) or fibre to the