(edits: clarity) I divided $43 billion [1] by a population of 22 million, although now I see now that $1,500 would have been better (I read the wrong cost :[). Anyway, it was meant to be a per person, not per house, figure.
The NBN would be a good piece of long-term infrastructure, no argument there. It is better than a cash handout.
I don't think it is sensible to divide up-front cost by years of service. $100/year for 20 years is much cheaper than $2k up front (as a Net Present Value).
If we save the taxpayer $20 billion? Yes, that is a much better deal. Everyone gets 25 Mbps ADSL2+, and people who want fibre (happens to include me, but not the rest of my family) can pay for the last bit of cable work themselves if it makes sense.
Except the project is deployed over a span of 10 years anyway, so the upfront cost is already divided by that. You mention "you want fiber, but not your family" - but again, you're ignoring the fact that you and your family likely won't live in that house, with what opinion, for the next 40 years.
It's saving $20 billion, but still spending $20 billion and possibly more. Spending 2/3rd's the cost, with no upgrade path (FTTN does not upgrade to FTTP easily) is a terrible deal. We're keeping power and maintenance costs of the old copper network, you're splitting the type of plant you need to keep (since you have fiber, copper and coax all over the place), and you still haven't escaped the need to trench cable (since a huge amount of that copper needs to come out of the ducts to ever support 25mbit ADSL2, or needs to be completely rerouted to get the distance to the exchange to under 1.5km).
One huge benefit of fiber is that we don't need to worry about distances from exchange to premise - as long as it's under about 60km it'll work.
Comments
(edits: clarity) I divided $43 billion [1] by a population of 22 million, although now I see now that $1,500 would have been better (I read the wrong cost :[). Anyway, it was meant to be a per person, not per house, figure.
The NBN would be a good piece of long-term infrastructure, no argument there. It is better than a cash handout.
I don't think it is sensible to divide up-front cost by years of service. $100/year for 20 years is much cheaper than $2k up front (as a Net Present Value).
If we save the taxpayer $20 billion? Yes, that is a much better deal. Everyone gets 25 Mbps ADSL2+, and people who want fibre (happens to include me, but not the rest of my family) can pay for the last bit of cable work themselves if it makes sense.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network#Expe...
Except the project is deployed over a span of 10 years anyway, so the upfront cost is already divided by that. You mention "you want fiber, but not your family" - but again, you're ignoring the fact that you and your family likely won't live in that house, with what opinion, for the next 40 years.
It's saving $20 billion, but still spending $20 billion and possibly more. Spending 2/3rd's the cost, with no upgrade path (FTTN does not upgrade to FTTP easily) is a terrible deal. We're keeping power and maintenance costs of the old copper network, you're splitting the type of plant you need to keep (since you have fiber, copper and coax all over the place), and you still haven't escaped the need to trench cable (since a huge amount of that copper needs to come out of the ducts to ever support 25mbit ADSL2, or needs to be completely rerouted to get the distance to the exchange to under 1.5km).
One huge benefit of fiber is that we don't need to worry about distances from exchange to premise - as long as it's under about 60km it'll work.