@Houellebecq: I can get a better price for 50Mb quota now at a good enough speed for me.

Yeah, well the grand plan here isn't to give Houellebecq a cheaper internet connection. You're just not worth that much to the Gillard government. No, the plan is to re-wire Australia with fibre at no cost to the tax payer. And as I mentioned the way they hope to pull that little stunt off is to give you almost no choice in coming on board at a price that is "in the ball park" of your current costs. No choice implies the price comparison you are doing above is a little meaningless, as you won't be able to buy your current 50Mb over copper at any price. It would not come as a huge surprise if "in the ball park" turned out to "a little bit more", using a politicians definition of little.

Now as Shadow is noisily pointing out, you don't really have absolutely no choice. When they turn off your copper line you can give the NBN the finger and go with 3G wireless instead. So on the most expensive Internode plan linked to above, you are paying $0.40/GB. On the cheapest Telstra Mobile Internet plan per byte, you are paying $5.75/Gb. Shadow seems to think everyone will jump at this offer, but I have my doubts.

@Houellebecq: PS: Why are you selling the land line aspect when most people are ditching them for naked ADSL?

I didn't mean to sell it. In the short term people will continue to drop their home phones - no argument. In the longer term I think most traffic will once again go over the land lines, much to Telstra's chagrin. I have programmed my mobile to do just that now when a friendly WiFi access point is around. It may happen faster than I had originally thought. I suspect the reason Microsoft bought Skype is to make just this happen, near invisibly, on a WinPhone 7 smartphone. It's about the only hope they have got of getting WinPhone 7 to sell.

@Houellebecq: CAT-5 is rated to 100M

Cat5 was designed to go to 1G, and will happily do so if installed properly.

@Houellebecq: wireless doesn't make it through the cement

802.11a/b/g didn't. 802.11n tries harder, sometimes with success. Don't expect 300Mbps though.

@Shadow Minister: Iphones use the mobile network not mobile wireless,

Nope. The chunk of bandwidth allocated to carriers 3G spectrum is divided up into a number of channels (ie narrow frequency bands). Some of those channels are allocated to voice, and your iPhone will use them if you make a voice call. Some are allocated to data. Both the iPhone and the 3G USB dongle you plug into your laptop use those data bands to make an internet connection. They do so in exactly the same way, meaning a modern tethered mobile phone will pump data at the same speed as a 3G dongle. In fact the 3G dongle you plug into a laptop usually is a fully fledged phone in a different case. It can send and receive SMS's, for instance.

@Yuyutsu: I understand that the government hates Telstra and wishes to punish them

This is Australia. Things don't work like that here. There is undoubtedly some dislike for some of the past executives of Telstra. I suspect that is why the Telstra board bid them adios as they were making it hard for Telstra to do business with the Australian Government. That, I suspect, was punishment enough.

@Yuyutsu: what prevents the government from continuing to provide the existing copper service

It costs money to maintain it.

Dear Rstuart,

"what prevents the government from continuing to provide the existing copper service: It costs money to maintain it."

But what if I'm happy to pay for the maintenance myself and (supposing the government itself is not interested) some company (say other than Telstra) is happy to provide it to me (at whatever cost), what right has the government to stop us?

On the subject of the high prices of the NBN, with no plan less than the outrageous 50GB, which very few need, perhaps the way to go is for neighbours to come together and share one NBN for 2-5 houses. Is the government going to prohibit copper wiring between houses? even so, it should be quite easy to dig and hide the cables in back-yards, going under the fences! Also, if prices are that high and local phone-calls are free, then dial-up may also find a new revival.

Rstuart,

Apologies I was misinformed. The frequencies are shared.

However, the new higher 4g and 5g frequencies are able to provide far higher bandwidths and connections per tower. A lot of the problem would appear to be the exponential growth in demand for bandwidth as well as connections. The growth in capacity per tower and number of towers has not been able to keep pace, and when a train load of users appear close to a already loaded tower, there will be problems.

@rstuart,

Cast your mind back to the original motivation for the NBN. It was all a dummy spit by KRudd at Telstra after their 1 page tender shenanigans. Do you think that policy should be developed in such a manner, or do you think this is just a lucky case of getting it right (in your mind) for the wrong reasons. There was no such thing as the NBN even on the horizon, and it wasn't as if that was the aim and Telecoms was any kind of focus for nation building. Or are you just happy with any nation building no matter where the money is spent. Are you not at all suspicious this is just some token bit of nation building for a politician to hang their hat on.

And you never answered my query about selling it off. You're very anti Telstra's monopoly, but I'm sure I heard Tanner say the plan is to sell it in 5 years. To Macquarie bank perhaps?

'And as I mentioned the way they hope to pull that little stunt off is to give you almost no choice in coming on board at a price that is "in the ball park" of your current costs. No choice implies the price comparison you are doing above is a little meaningless, as you won't be able to buy your current 50Mb over copper at any price. It would not come as a huge surprise if "in the ball park" turned out to "a little bit more", using a politicians definition of little.'

You sound happy about that. Do you also agree with closing tunnels so a private monopoly's motorway gets higher patronage?

@Yuyutsu: But what if I'm happy to pay for the maintenance myself

The entire telephone infrastructure is changing, not just the copper wire.

When this all started a few people started piggy backing what we now call the internet on top of the existing telephone infrastructure. They did that by connecting their computers using modems, trunk lines and so on. This tiny internet grew at an enormous pace, so much so that now, 20 years later, it is far far bigger (as in thousands of times bigger) than the telephone network that spawned it. In that period we furiously laid down new trunk lines, all of which carry internet data, not telephone data. The internet infrastructure now dwarfs the telephone infrastructure.

Two things are happening now. One is the NBN is replacing the final part of the telephone infrastructure the internet is based on - those copper lines, with something more suited to data. So now the internet can stand alone, not needing the telephone infrastructure at all. The other, not so visible, is the bit of equipment that copper wire is plugged to in the exchange is going. Telephone calls will now become internet data, and sent over the normal internet. With that the transition will be complete. Rather then the internet being bolted onto the telephone infrastructure, telephones will be bolted onto the internet infrastructure. They will become just way we use the internet, along with web browsing, email, internet chat, and watching videos.

So Yuyutsu, what you are asking for is something like this: you are sitting in a apartment in a large building. The entire suburb is scheduled to be bulldozed, and a new set of apartments erected there which you can move into at the same cost as your current one. And you are asking: please sir, if I maintain my room, can I keep it? It ain't going to happen, my friend. Either the new suburb isn't built at all, or you are changing apartments.