15

Canberra is a good place to start because it is a low cost/high return outcome. It's a city state, with 350,000 people living close by. The average wage and education level is higher than anywhere else, so people here have more money and more inclination to use high speed internet. In other words, they can roll it out quicker here to more people, and get a greater take up, thus getting them cash in the bank.
Coalition policy is not to scrap what has gone in, but to stop connecting homes - they would do the so-called "fibre to the node" putting optic fibe to the end of your street, but not your house, leaving the last mile or so as a copper wire, which, like the weakest link in a chain, would stop you getting high speed internet. I strongly suspect that if elected, they'd drop this, and continue the rollout for both political and financial reasons.

16

Yeah I know the differences. I look at the GDE in Canberra, where it was far cheaper to build a single lane road intially, yet far more expensive to almost immediately duplicate it.

Then we get to Transact, where again market forces meant the rollout was not great and only covered bits of Canberra. Also there is no competition in several exchanges in Canberra, because its mostly commercial with some residential.

IMO, Just build the fibre to the home straight out, because it will be used eventually.
It probably won't be changed because they'd still most likely need support in the senate to change too much. As much as they still look like they'll win the election, I doubt they'll gain control of the senate.

17

And much more time off to play online games, watch TV online and download movies! It's a no-brainer.

Harry, as I understood from what little I've read of the Coalition policy (I mean, that was actually written by them rather than alleged by others) is that they would use, where possible, existing cable networks to the home.

Making new trenches in existing housing areas is liable to be messy and subject to endless delays, if my experience of cabling is any guide. It would make more sense to start with new lindustrial estates, where everything has to be laid fresh. That would stimulate hi-tech developments.
I don't know if that's what's happening.
One problem would be that in the big cities (not meaning Canberra) you don't always know where the workers in these places reside, so don't know where the votes are.

18

I don't think that national broadband cable layout requires re trenching and suspect that it's largely a pull through job. I seem to recall that the copper my own quiet rural road (no subdivisions, not too many people) was replaced with fibre optic some years ago, I have no idea why, and it was done with little fuss.

Meanwhile the copper wire up to my house travels around 800 metres, goes under a creek that regularly floods and a small gully, passes through a plastic relay post that the cows have largely destroyed and still works very well. Replacing that one will be a little more difficult. Last time they used a tractor with some sort of cable burying tine.

19

#17, new residential estates are certainly being fitted out with fibre as they are built.

The whole idea of running it to the house now rather than as requested by the home owners is the cost. Doing it now, makes the project a little more pricey. Doing it later makes it cost a hell of a lot more, but could come out of another bucket of money, or even cost the resident money. Governments are good at hiding these costs.

I think the selling point of the NBN is the fact that 93% of the country will have access to the same standard of infrastructure. Right now there are plenty of city and country people who live in places that Telstra/Optus/Anyone else, decided not to upgrade or fix.

They have also added the ability for towns under 1000 people to request connection at a cost to the town/council. I doubt this will be taken up often, but if a town had 800 people and really wanted to be connected they could be.

#18, they usually blow fibre though existing conduits. But a lot of new ones will need to be installed.

I just hope this project gets completed properly. I'm not against FttN vs FttH. Both would be an improvement. What the naysayers don't understand is its not solely for internet and entertainment. One would hope education will be a big winner. The increase in information we get over the internet and communication devices has been enormous in the past decade or 2.

20

Justin, the GDE was only built as one lane because a court challenge held it up for 2 years, and then there was no road for Gungahlin, and the northern end of the city was gridlocked. Because of the delay, they had to get a road out there as quick as possible.
TransACT, at its peak, serviced 1/3 of Canberra homes. it was the only significant competition to Telstra, and forced them to gve Canberra a much better service. It's now been sold to iinet, which has signed up to the NBN, so the end result should be to have canberra wired up pretty quickly.