Politics aside, I was interested to see that NBN have a process called "Individual Premises Switch", which allows an individual homeowner to apply (and pay for) an upgrade from Sattelite, Fixed Wireless, FTTN and FTTB (soon HFC also) to FTTP. This comes at the homeowner's cost, but should pacify those who are unhappy with the technology being deployed to their premises. (see here:
Individual Premises Switch | nbn - Australia's new broadband network)
Of course, anyone can pay right now to have Fibre dragged to their premises by one of the major business ISPs, but this would be a much lower cost solution as the NBN Fibre infrastructure would presumably be closer to the premises than those of the commercial business providers.
This seems like a good compromise for those who are obsessed with particular technologies.
Having worked in technology for nearly 20 years, I've noticed that people like to get fixated on particular technologies, rather than the outcomes. The original outcome for the NBN was to deliver ubiquitous high speed broadband where the private sector had found it uneconomical to do so. I have no doubt that those very same people who are jumping up and down about lack of FTTP will be, in the main, subscribed to the lowest bandwidths available, hence the requirement for the FTTP negated. Sure, in the future it would be great for FTTP to be ubiquitous, but realistically with land mass and population densities being what they are, it is not economical to publicly fund this.
Copper isn't dead. The majority of the US receive their high speed broadband (up to gigabits) over HFC copper networks. It is a relatively low cost technology compared to fibre, and if the technology and infrastructure is already in place, why would you overbuild it to achieve the same results?
Fixed connectivity is really on the way out for anyone other than content, hosting and service providers, all of which are businesses and usually located in appropriate data centres. Wireless technologies have improved in leaps and bounds and better suit Australia's vast distances and mobile lifestyles. Latency can be comparable to that of fibre, and bandwidth is getting up there too. Yes there will be spectrum issues, but there is significant under-utilised spectrum already available. Spectrums in use today will likely not be used tomorrow, such as analog radio, even digital television and radio as IP-based streaming will become the norm. Arguments about 4G/LTE cost are talking about today's retail providers, who really are gouging the market. I have no doubt that a second round NBN in later years will incorporate a 5G or newer mobile network, as it would have to. Home phone subscriptions are at an all time low. I personally haven't had one since the advent of naked DSL about 10 years ago.
As NBN customers are already seeing, the issue with having a 100Mbps pipe is backhaul. You do not have a dedicated 100Mbps path to the content provider, and this is compounded by contention ratios, all of which are controlled by the RSP (retail service provider). NBN charge the provider around $17.50 per Mbps. So if you wanted a dedicated 100Mbps path, it would cost your RSP $1750 per month, then you'd pay their retail service fees on top. This is actually quite a bit higher than a current commercial provider would charge for a business grade dedicated, uncontended 100Mbps fibre service. I think TPG offers these at around $299/mo plus a $5k setup fee. Telstra about $800/mo for the same type of service.
As for the timing of the rollout of NBN, anyone who has followed it closely knows that the original proposal was not properly costed, the project was not properly planned, and therefore the timeframes were, at best, a fantasy. With major infrastructure projects like this, it is difficult to estimate the complexity, timeframe and cost on a sheet of paper, it is only once you get out in the field and build it do the problems arise. Regardless of who is the government of the day, the same issues would have arisen. The current government have accelerated the rollout by using MTM (multi-technology mix) which leverages existing investments in infrastructure. It's a smart way of delivering the outcome, without being tied to a particular technology. Now those technologies themselves will have their own complexities and costs, but I think they are on the right track.
If there were unlimited public funds available (some seem to think this is the case), then building a ubiquitous FTTP network is clearly the best technological option for a fixed broadband network, but running thousands of kilometres of Fibre is extrememly expensive, and one wonders whether people who live in cities should be subsidising the broadband for people who choose to live in the middle of nowhere. I certainly have no issues in subsidising them to ensure they have reliable, relatively high speed connectivity, but to roll out Fibre everywhere with our land mass and population density would be an economic mistake IMHO.
Now, wait for the confected outrage...
