Earlier this week, Australia's Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry said Australians don't need the broadband speeds Labor was promising.
Labor had previously committed to delivering download speeds of 1Gbps through what would have primarily been a network of fibre to the home (FTTH). There was a significant chunk of change involved, but it would have served the nation well into the future.
What many Australians are ending up with instead under the Coalition's "cheaper" NBN rollout is a much slower mix of technologies; plus costs have reportedly blown out and rollout is behind schedule.
However, Christopher Pyne argued on ABC's Q&A earlier this week everything is hunky-dory.
"[People] simply didn't need the speeds that Labor was promising, but it was costing an absolute bomb," said Mr. Pyne.
"You will be able to watch five full-length movies in the same household if you all want to at the same time."
An article on The Age says the NBN 'five movies' speed promise is optimistic at best and Delimiter has taken Mr. Pyne to task on a number of his claims.
Labor's Anthony Albanese also made the point during the Q&A episode that really fast broadband isn't just about entertainment.
"..the NBN isn't about movies, it's about our economy and how it functions".
The person watching a movie in HD on Netflix at night at home may be the same person engaging in bandwidth intensive HD video conferencing in connection to their business the next day. At the same time staff may be working in the cloud and collaborating with teams in other states, while customers are making use of the company's free Wi-Fi .
While defenders of the NBN as it currently stands state demand isn't really there for high speed connectivity, David Glance, Director of UWA Centre for Software Practice, University of Western Australia, says the majority of customers are opting for speeds of just 25 Mbps because this is what many ISPs are pushing.
One of Australia's most successful tech entrepreneurs recently stated very fast broadband wasn't just a nice thing to have, it was essential.
"If you want to avoid a two speed economy, you need a one speed internet. Fast. Gigabit fiber. No debate on that," said Mike Cannon-Brookes; Atlassian co-founder .
Many have argued the NBN should have been designed to take into account not so much what can be done on the web now, but what will be done in the future.
It wasn't that long ago that the idea of streaming TV shows via the Internet was still the stuff of pipe dreams - today, it's a common activity.
The Internet even just 5 years from now may be a very different place. It won't just be our laptops, phones and tablets accessing the web en masse; but domestic and commercial appliances, vehicles, machinery and other devices as well.
The Internet will increasingly become what's known as the Internet of Things (IoT). This certainly isn't pie in the sky - it's already starting to happen in a big way.
Gartner, Inc. last year forecasted 6.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide this year, up 30 percent from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020.
Additionally, as the web has evolved, the applications that have evolved with it have become increasingly bandwidth hungry in order to deliver more features and a better user experience.
Last month, Internet Australia’s Chief Executive warned Australia's NBN is already out of date.
“We are supposed to become an innovation nation, but we are already significantly constrained without competitive broadband," said Laurie Patton.
At the minimum, Internet Australia wants to see “fibre to the driveway” (more accurately, fibre to the distribution point, or FTTdp) implemented in order to avoid a costly rebuild in 10 - 15 years' time.
While the argy-bargy over the NBN continues, non-NBN services have sprung up help bridge the gap; such as Lightning Broadband.
Offering residential, business and body corporate/developer solutions, Lightning Broadband incorporates fibre and wireless technology to deliver blistering fast speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps on upload as well as download, along with unlimited data plans.
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