Kiwichick,

A better comparison would be between mobile phones and land lines.

Land lines have better quality and are cheaper, but there are 4-5 times as many mobiles as land lines, and the value of calls is probably 100x. Landlines are decreasing, and Telstra's revenue is from the broadband usage not calls.

To spend $50bn on a system that may only receive partial usage in a decade is criminal.

The small steps of upgrading the back bone, and then rolling out fiber where required, will deliver most of the improvement for 1/10th of the price.

Wireless simply will not do the job, particularly as the number of users increases.

At best it's a stop-gap measure and will likely need new hardware for the user as the frequency band is changed to cope with demand.

Remember how Howard and Fisher trumpetted how Mobile CDMA was going to fix all the rural mobile reception problems left behind when the Analogue Mobile Network was pulled out?

Despite the huge taxpayer subsidies paid to Telstra to provide this service and its popularity with many users it was switched off within 11 years, to be replaced with 3G because it had reached its limit for providing facilities.

Fibre does not have these limitations. It's building for the long-term future, not just for the next couple of elections and whatever we get, we will be stuck with for many years to come.

Spend 50 billion I rest my case no such amount is being spent.
No further comment needed

Given the Building Education Rort, and the about $5bn of additional costs that have suddenly appeared, the $43bn is but a dream, and I am prepared to stake my reputation that $50bn is probably the lower end of the final pricing.

Belly is right when he says that fibre is forever.
The problem is paying for it on the never never.
It is the best technology, but I think it is just too expensive.
If it was done on the basis of the need to replace cables as they
deteriorated to the time for replacement then put in fibre.
I have seen the cable in my street and it is in first class condition.
I get 10 Mbit/sec which is faster than I can use. It seems that the
idea is to compete with the gamers in Korea !
I don't think wireless,better known as radio, is a better alternative
for home and office use as it is a waste of spectrum.
Spectrum should not be used for non mobile services.

I can foresee a ban on radio for non mobile services as spectrum is
far too valuable, and much more valuable than the internet.

Who says fiber is forever.

Fiber is far more fragile than copper. It is common practice to pull cables with at least twice as many cores as required, as any bump can an often does break a couple.

Copper can withstand much more movement, and if damaged can be patched. Fiber normally requires the replacement of the entire cable.

This is far more likely to require more maintenance than the existing copper cables.