A third of Australia will be left to rot on struggling cable broadband networks after the Coalition further downscaled the national fibre network.

Some people held out hope that once in power Turnbull would try to steer away from Abbott’s wrecking ball approach to the NBN and find a way to roll out as much fibre as practical.

The Government’s strategic review of the NBN, released on Thursday, actually delivers much less than what Malcolm Turnbull proposed when in opposition. Probably the biggest change is that the government now intends to connect almost a third of the country to the existing Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) cable networks rather than fibre-to-the-premises or even fibre-to-the-node. If pay TV cable runs down your street you can probably spot the problems with this plan.