I'm not convinced that the NBN is the right solution, putting fibre to every house in the country, given the size of it, seems rather less than sensible. The cost would support this view, $43 Billion to service a population of 23 million? Can I have my $2000 in cash instead. please?

Seriously, though, rural broadband is always the problem, wherever you are, though, at the other side of my suburb in QLD, there is a waiting list (dead men's shoes, if you like) for just straight ADSL at speeds barely faster than dial-up. My side of the suburb, lots of new housing developments, has ASDL2+ (20 Mb/s) readily available, sadly, only available from Telstra, since Optus refused to lease any more copper links from Telstra.

I think the fibre roll-out for new installations in the suburbs makes eminent sense (and wouldn't cost $2000 a head) but out in the rural areas, where cattle stations can be measured in hundreds of square miles, it doesn't make sense, logistically or economically. Europe have solved this problem by investing in a satellite broadband service, even for their much smaller rural sizes and it seems to me that this would make much more sense for our rural areas. Initial cost of the satellite would be high but not $43Bn! And it could cover most , if not all of Australia. We have satellite phone links and GPS, doesn't broadband on the same medium make just as much sense?.

There is also the political obsession with fibre. Sure, for any new development, it is the way to go, though harder to fix when a backhoe driver slices through it! But ripping out all the copper, just to put fibre in, except where the network is being upgraded for other reasons, doesn't make a lot of sense. It ISN'T a speed issue, take Ethernet, for example, Gigabit Ethernet (over fibre) and 1000BaseT (over copper) both transmit at 1000 Mb/sec, way over any broadband requirement, even for bulk backhaul. So stop laying new copper but only replace the existing copper when the network is being upgraded for operational reasons, not Julia's paranoia!

Be interesting to see if anyone else chips in.