Documents which were seized by the Australian Federal Police during raids last year in a bid to find the source of leaks to stories about the NBN Co will not be available to the police for their investigation.

Documents seized by the AFP from the parliamentary office of Labor MP Jason Clare during a raid on 24 August should be returned, a bipartisan panel has ruled.

The Australian Labor Party has unveiled its NBN policy for the forthcoming federal election, pledging that up to two million more premises would get fibre to the premises (FttP) compared to what it called the "second-rate NBN" of the Coalition.

The Labor Party is looking at a return to its "original vision” and plan for the National Broadband Network (NBN), according to Shadow Regional Communications Minister Stephen Jones, who told a digital forum in Brisbane on Wednesday the party is “committed” to getting the NBN back on track.

The Australian federal election campaign has just crossed the halfway mark but one topic both major parties seem eager to avoid is the national broadband network.

Banished NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned that Australia has gone further down the slippery slope of unfettered mass surveillance than even the US. Yesterday Snowden pointed to the recent raids by the Australian Federal Police on the offices of senior ALP parliamentarian Senator Stephen Conroy and a staffer of Opposition communications spokesman Jason Clare to illustrate the potential danger of using retained metadata for nefarious political purposes.

The National Broadband Network is once again mired in election politics after raids on Labor Party offices on Thursday by the Australian Federal Police over leaked documents about the nbn.

Labor’s announcement that it plans to construct a fibre-optic network in north-west Tasmania, if elected, to deliver National Broadband Network services to the area has been lambasted by the federal government as an ‘unfunded’ misuse of government business funds.

The Minister for Communications, Mitch Fifield, has attacked the Labor Party, saying it still does not have an nbn policy and claiming that Labor appears to be preparing to “backlflip” from its long-held position on the broadband network.

The second report into the NBN by the Vertigan panel has made recommendations on privatising the NBN which are far more radical than any yet proposed.

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull and his Labor shadow Jason Clare were as predictable as the report itself in their responses to the Vertigan NBN cost benefit analysis.

Labor's vision for a fully fibre NBN is officially dead, buried and cremated as of today with the Abbott government announcing it has repealed the blueprints issued under the Labor government to build the National Broadband Network using fibre-to-the premise technology.

Foxtel’s upcoming Netflix rival, Presto, finally has a launch date - 13 March.

NBN Co's period of tumult and transformation is continuing, with chief marketing officer Kieran Cooney leaving the company this month.

Opposition communications spokesman Jason Clare says the Government is deliberately lowering expectations on the NBN so it will look good when it exceeds them.

The Government’s NBN Mark II has might be expected, drawn a lot of comments from inside and outside the industry. Reaction varies from disgust to congratulations.

The Coalition has broken a key election promise, announcing the NBN Co will no longer be able to complete the first stage of the network by 2016.

The long awaited NBN Strategic Review has been handed to Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

China has criticised the Australian Government’s decision to continue Labor's ban on Huawei supplying the NBN.