“You would be blown away at the cost, it just would never happen … billions and billions that we would have to invest in this,” Mr Morrow said.

And that is not the end of it. Later this year the NBN is even abandoning its 50/20 offering — that is the service promising 50 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload speeds.

It will be replaced with what has been called Fixed Wireless Plus. This will deliver many users even better than 50 Mbps downloads, but it is also an admission that 50 Mbps cannot be guaranteed to all fixed wireless users.

Every connection must hit 25 Mbps — at least momentarily

In fact, far from its high-speed dreams, because of the Netflix effect, the NBN now considers a 6mbps download speed to be acceptable for some of its users, some of the time on its fixed wireless network.

Or as Mr Morrow put it to Senate Estimates on May 24 last year: “For a certain amount of customers, during the evening hours, which is when the busy time would be there, they could be restricted to 6mbps.”

This is interesting when you consider the Federal Government’s Statement of Expectations, the key document governing what it expects the NBN to deliver:

“The Government expects the network will provide peak wholesale download data rates (and proportionate upload rates) of at least 25 megabits per second to all premises,” it said.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this means all Australians on the NBN are guaranteed to get minimum download speeds of 25 Mbps.

In fact the sentence does not mean that at all.

The NBN has confirmed that it means a “speed of at least 25 Mbps downstream and 5 Mbps upstream at least once per 24-hour period”.

Even if it happens to be at 3:30am.

That is why the NBN can say that 6 Mbps is acceptable for some customers, some of the time, using its fixed wireless service.

Digital divide: Fixed wireless good for some

When fixed wireless works, it can work really well and does enable businesses to operate in remote locations.

A good connection helped Greg McLoughlin-Wilden set up an online training business in Coramba, a 20-minute drive inland from Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales mid-north coast.

“Brilliant, absolutely no problems at all,” Mr McLoughlin-Wilden told 7.30.

“If we didn’t have NBN fixed wireless this business would be in an office, it would be in town.”

But in the rush to complete the NBN by next year, fixed wireless has not only been used in remote locations.

Parts of built-up towns all over Australia are being connected to fixed wireless, even when their neighbours might be connected by some of the best fixed-line NBN connections available.

Jason Errey moved to Bellingen in mid-northern NSW because of the lure of super fast broadband via fibre-to-the-premises.

He is a geophysicist who has developed world-leading technology to map the ground.

“When we first came to Bellingen it was slated to be fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP),” Mr Errey said.

“That made it an ideal opportunity to set up a cutting-edge business and be in perfect contact and communication with the rest of the world.”

Mr Errey never got the fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) connections that most of Bellingen did. Instead he is being offered fixed wireless.

Using his digital ground mapping tools, Mr Errey showed 7.30 that his house is in a part of town that does not get the “direct line of sight” that good fixed wireless connections require.

So he is fighting to stay on his old ADSL connection to meet his business’s needs.

“I know what I’m going to get 24 hours, seven days a week,” he said.

“You can’t guarantee that clarity to be able to do video conferencing on fixed wireless. And that was the real killer for us.”

One neighbour, Rebecca Taylor, was told she would get up to 50 Mbps download and 20mbps upload speeds on fixed wireless.

At 8pm she is getting about 13 Mbps for downloading and less than 1 Mbps for uploads.

“Watching movies and things like that, it just drops out,” she told 7.30.

“It’s really dropped since this afternoon, and you’re getting nowhere near what you paid for,” Mr Errey told her as he tested her internet speed.

Across the road, Donovan Craig is getting even slower speeds.

“It’s about 3 megabits down, that’s what we’ve come to expect here,” he said.

“Sometimes down as low as 1 megabit.”

‘They’ve rushed into it’

It is not just Bellingen having problems.

In the Adelaide Hills, John Knight and his neighbour Lance Hewitt are considering installing a 15-metre-high antenna to improve their fixed wireless connection.

“I think the maximum promised was 25 Mbps, and I think we’ve had it up to about 15,” Mr Knight told 7.30.

“And then it drops out and then comes back again.

“I think the speed’s OK. It’s the frequency when it keeps dropping out is the annoying part.”

Mr Knight and Mr Hewitt think a hill is getting in the way of the fixed wireless connection.

“They should have done a bit more research into dead spots like the hills here, or put more towers up,” Mr Knight said.

“They’ve sort of rushed into it. They just wanted to get the job done.

“And I’m stuck. Like, what now?”