A previously confidential study has revealed that Labor’s all-fibre national broadband network could have been delivered faster and for less money than forecast, and it now appears that the LNP Government has ignored its own review.

Delivering a nationwide broadband network was never going to be cheap, and former NBN CEO Mike Quigley, before his departure, had sought to deliver the most internet for the least money.

Reports published by Fairfax Media show Quigley successfully trialled improvements that could have seen fibre rollouts complete in a third of the time and at half the cost.

A trial for various improvements to NBN Co’s rollout strategy were tested earlier this year on the suburb of Melton in Victoria, reports say.

They claim that a combination of “thinner and lighter cables, visiting premises only once and better managing contractor relationships”, would have seen the Melton rollout completed in a little over 100 days — 70 per cent less than the average.

The changes would have brought significant cost savings as well, the report says, up to 50 per cent in many cases.

The trial site included a selection of challenges across around 2500 premises, including “old and new buildings” and “rocky areas considered challenging”.

Ninety per cent of buildings were deemed serviceable with fibre to the home by the end of August – a timeline 61 per cent shorter and 50 per cent less expensive than areas using previous rollout models, the document said.

Work including boring, trenching, pit installation, cable hauling was completed 22 per cent to 400 per cent faster than the average under the new procedures.

Around the time of the report, NBN Co chief Quigley said the company was “knocking over the problems one by one and ramping itself into a scale rollout. And it was doing this without allowing any large increases in costs.”

But reports say incoming Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull dismissed the papers and their findings. 

The Coalition government “has this dogmatic view of [fibre to the node] so that nothing else can come in,” telecommunications analyst Paul Budde told Fairfax Media this week.

“Turnbull has been so dogmatic about his FTTN that even if someone said they could roll out FTTP [fibre to the premises] free of charge, he would not accept it.”

“He is always saying he's agnostic about technology,” Mr Budde said.

“If he's really so agnostic, and even he is on the record saying [fibre to the home] is better, why wouldn't he do the future-proof solution instead of going with unknown technologies, unknown copper quality and unknown situations with the 30,000 nodes we have to put in the streets – particularly if it can be done in a cost-competitive way?”