There is no energy descent, fuel's will change over time when enough incentive is in place to cause a shift.
The NBN is important in decentralization, sydney is full.
Trucks restricted to local, will never happen matter what rail system you have. That is a very short sighted view.
Electric cars are being made in increasing numbers, they can only improve as models go by.
Why not steam power for a train fired with a little uranium. People need incentive to get off oil. [ carbon tax.]

579;
Do I have news for you;

The only argument about oil supply that is now current is whether
peak crude oil occurred in 2005 or 2006 !
The International Energy Authority says 2006 but others say 2005.
Not really much of an argument.
I suggest you read the Hirsch Report, easily found with google.
You should also read;

http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/validity-of-the-fossil-fuel-production-outlooks-in-the-ipcc-emission-scenarios/
Whoops bit long, use this instead;

http://tinyurl.com/yhqn2pv

The link to the full published report is down the page.
There is no way we can generate enough energy in the timescale needed
to replace oil and a bit later coal.
The present silver bullet is natural gas but even that will have a
limited lifespan as it depletes at very fast rates.

Do you still maintain that those projects I listed are less important
than the NBN ?
The NBN will have limited improvement for users and in terms of
really important things, like eating and food you can afford, pales
to nothing.

Peak oil has been around since oil was discovered, what you are saying is there is no more to be found. That would be highly unlikely, and telling explorers they are wasting their time looking.
It only makes cense that we have a communication link that is uniform and the best their is. The NBN will serve us nicely for quite some decades. Communications may be adequate where you are, but not so elsewhere.
Why be against infastructure.
I don't see your argument about food supply, all problems if there is any can be overcome.
The world needs incentive to make changes, or things will just drag on as normal.

The simple fact is we live in the information age and the volume of transmitted data will continue to increase exponentially.

For all those who think that infrastructure should be built to yesterdays needs, wake up. The whole point of infastructure is to build for the future. I see typical small minded infastructure projects every day. Two lane bridges built 5 years ago, are now being duplicated. What a phenomenal waste, savings of more than 50% could be had by buildng 4 lanes in the first place.

Initial take up rates are irrelevant. What is important is the usage over the life of the network. With data usage continuing to increase exponetially, demand for the higher speeds/larger bandwidths will follow. like night follows day.

The NBN will provide us with the capacity to evolve with the changes in information technology. Wireless will not suffer, on the contrary, wireless will improve as it will be able to use the faster speeds of fibre to a local wireless node, and allow greater usage of the available wireless bandwidth.

As for the commercial aspect. The question over whether there is value to be had in the internet sector has been settled by the recent capitalistation of facebook which values the company at 50 billion dollars, making it a global business heavyweight.

579
I never said;
what you are saying is there is no more to be found.

that, of course more oil will be found, it is just that the quantities
and the cost of new oil will not make up for depletion.

I think I understand now that you do not have an accurate grasp of the
situation. The adequacy of telecommunications will be of far less
importance in say, 20 years than it is now.
What will be important will be physical communication of people and
particularly goods. The transport of food and supplies for the
producers of food will have top priority and building supplies will
also have a high priority.

You seem to think that trucks will continue in a business as usual
manner, and they will for a time on natural gas but that will almost
certainly be kept for electricity generation.
The long distance road transport is coming to an end probably in the
2020s or late 2010s. They use up to eight times the per ton fuel
than trains so I just cannot see government allowing them to do long
distance alongside trains or ships.
The price of oil may well decide the matter when diesel reaches about
six to eight dollars a litre.

PaulL, I agree fibre is the way to go and is future proof, but to
run it to every premises is a waste of resources that are needed for
much more fundermental and important projects.
The radio spectrum is too valuable to waste on the internet except
where necessary and can be multishared.
Surely water and transport is more important than any data network
usage that can be dreamed up ?

The fundermental problem is we don't have the money to do everything.
We will in the future have even less.
Our oil import bill will soon be almost as much as the NBN but EVERY year !

I am going to opt out for as long as I can.

Reason:
Most won't bother to opt out so the network will be slow due to high traffic.
My opt out network will not be as busy so faster.
My opt out network will be cheaper
Let those who opt in pay for the fixing of the teething issues.
When I do finally opt in, they will have cheaper rates on offer than those who didn't bother to opt out, so as to attract the opt outters to opt in.