Over time, even fibre to the street would be extended, first to
premises that needed it and then to other nearby premises.
Maybe technologies like wimax could have been run from the cabinets,
who knows, especially now that iPhones & iPads are such the go.
We may end up with the best Winged Lady on the block when everyone
is driving Teslas !

Once finished we will have fibre everywhere, it will never be obsolete
as it is the ultimate connection.
But it is sad really, think what we could have used those extra billions on.
We are staring down an abyss at the biggest financial disaster the
world has ever contemplated and we are engaged in bread & circuses.

Our politicians refuse to even discuss, even in their cups, of what
the world faces in population surges, food shortages, and the lack
of energy available to cope with these problems and all they want is
to argue about happy motoring and Fibre to the Home internet !

Really !

To put a bottle neck in the middle of a freeway does not make sense.
Telstra's old technology has served us well, but is costing them big money for keeping the system going. Telstra is now decommissioning, and consolidating some of its 11,000 exchanges.
In areas where copper has failed it is being replaced with fibre optic.
Some areas date back 100 years,
Like all things they come to an end, change is hard to accept for some, Technology has moved along, 100 mb/s is the new technology.
Tv, radio, phone calls, internet, on the same cable system, freeing up airway space for wi fi and mobile applications.

"The vast vast majority of copper cable in the streets are in world standard condition or better. "

Wherever did you hear that little gem?

It's deteriorating - and rather badly in some areas. Ever noticed the line fault rates after a bit of heavy rain in your area?

Ever wondered why people on one side of a street can have ADSL and the others can't? It generally comes down to intermediate cable losses and permanent faults.

The cost of replacing a faulty 500 pair copper cable with a 12 fibre sheath is far less and has vastly more capacity.

If this work was dished out to a multitude of private companies, each having to deal with individual Local Council restrictions, right-of-access and heritage issues, it could never happen. There are few companies outside Telstra than can take on a project of such scale.

Would you consider building a new National Highway or Railway by breaking it up into 1km parcels?

There is a vast difference between the concepts of efficiency and effectiveness.

My thanks to all the posters on this thread. I now know have a better understanding of NBN as a result of reading all your comments.

Bazz, I found your comment saying that no tenders had been let for this rollout rather disturbing.
As this is usual standard practice before committing such a large sum to any such project, shouldn't this have taken place before any decisions were made?
I fail to understand why private enterprise didn't publicly produce their own costings and appeal the government decision.

Who needs the NBN? Well, me. I run an internet-dependent business in a small country town. Even with ADSL, I still have to send and receive some big files by CD/post. Most infuriatingly, almost a year ago the NBN cable was actually installed in my street, which is the highway between two major centres, but our region is not even on the NBN roll-out schedule. Maybe 2015? Later?

Re Jayb's comment: "Australia seems to have a need to evaluate new tech for 20 odd years before it thinks about adopting it. Strangely Australia has always done this. I don’t know why but it always has."

Actually in the 19C-early 20C Australia was an extremely fast taker-up of new technology eg Bell invented the telephone in 1876, the first regular service was installed in Melbourne in 1878, based on an article Bell published in Oct.1877. You could add steam power, telegraph, air transport, etc and of course, we invented lots of things too. (I'm currently writing something on the take-up of technology in rural Australia).

However the pattern of new technologies arriving and surplanting older ones just as the latter reached their peak is nothing new. Eg. Australia's finest interstate ships were built in the 1920s and 1930s, when railways (and even air travel) were taking much of their traffic.

Maybe this is inevitable?
Or was there a change in attitude in the 20C?

Worth reading, on the history of technology in Australia: http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/ahc/publications/commission/books/linking-a-nation/index.html.