Actually, the point being made is that we need not 'run round the country laying down cables'. It takes too long and costs too much. Like any infrastructure, it should be built in a way that services demand, including some growth in a cost effective manner. Like any infrastructure, it can be expanded as required later on.
You do need to run around the country laying down cables. It's just that some people want to do that with FTTN and some people want to do it with FTTP. If you put down FTTN it can't be "expanded as required later on". It needs to be redone.
I have never seen a project where more capex is spent any earlier than necessary.
You've never seen a project where capital equipment is put in to service expected future needs rather than only current needs ? Because I reckon when they build tunnels (for example) they at least try to have a guess about what traffic will look like a few decades down the track, rather than just working on what it looks like today.
Who limited the discussion to 'fibre Vs copper installations'?
Most of it is going to have to be wired. Areas suitable for wireless are suitable for wireless regardless.
Tough luck. You won't see any benefit from many infrastructure projects. Should we throw the anchors on them as well so they only do the bits that benefit you today ? There's a whole country out there, it's not just about you.
No I don't see; the argument's been changed again. You said that the fibre would have to run to the tower in the town, then Fixed Wireless is broadcast within it. Fibre doesn't come anywhere near the tower; it comes in via microwave from a node across a bay where the fibre was already in place.
You are making an argument that wireless can replaced wired. It can't. At some point you need to go back to a wired backbone. That I was off by one hop because I didn't know the exact details of your locale doesn't change the principle.
Can we have a debate without the gratuitous 'champ' bit?
That depends. Can we have a debate without you telling me I have no idea what life outside a city is like ? Or complaining about remote communities "subsidising" metropolitan areas when those remote communities probably wouldn't even exist if they had to be self-sustaining ?
Yes, but only when we need to; and you used the example of submarines when we are talking about infrastructure. You can't build half a submarine now and half later. The capex on the next lot of submarines isn't spent up front, but spread over the lifetime of the project which I think is about 20 or more years.
Right. So building all this out is going to take many years as well, and can be funded over that time, as required.
People here have consistently put the proposition (I'll simplify) that fibre is fastest, it should be installed first and uniformly so it doesn't have to be re-done later.
No, that's not the point at all.
The point is that putting in fibre gives you scalability from whatever you need today, to orders of magnitude more than that in the future, without needing to dig up and relay all that fibre and supporting infrastructure. So, if you're going to go around putting in cable - which needs to be done in most places regardlesss - put in fibre so that you don't need to come back in twenty years and do it all again.
The expensive part of this is labour. By putting in fibre that cost is born once. By putting in something that needs to be replace every 10-20 years, that cost is born multiple times.
I was asking to what other infrastructure that applies to - schools, hospitals, roads etc and I haven't heard anything about that.
Road and rail corridors are the most obvious, if inexact, analogy. There's a "cost" to setting aside a larger corridor than is needed right now. It's an inexact analogy because upgrading your freeway from 4 to 8 lanes is still a relatively long, arduous and expensive process, whereas upgrading your fibre from 1Gb to 10Gb is not.
But it's a lot less long, arduous and expensive if you don't first need to go and resume all the land around it because you set aside the corridor thirty years earlier.
The fibre you put in today that can scale to speeds required in thirty years is the corridor. The speeds you get today are the freeway you build today. When you need to expand thirty years down the track, because you've already got the fibre in the ground capable of that, you don't need to lay it again.
EDIT: On further reflection a tunnel is probably a better analogy. The marginal cost of building a tunnel to handle, say, twice the capacity needed today is going to be a lot less than building one today, waiting until it becomes insufferably congested and then building another identical one beside it.
So why does broadband have to be the exception?
It's not the exception. The principle is identical.
Anyone not happy with the last bit of copper from their local node to their house or business is able to pay for their fibre completion. Stop complaining and go for it; money appears to be no object.
By this logic we should be telling you to go out and pay for that microwave link yourself.
No wonder you think decent nationwide internet connectivity is a waste of time. 
...
