[LINK] Considering Fibre to the Home

[George Bray]

It's good to see the call for opening up the analysis of Australia's
future broadband network.

<http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,21682412%5E15306%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.html>

I think the whole debate could benefit from wider scrutiny and
claim/cost verification.

My question to the Link Institute is whether Australia should be also
be considering the costs of an eventual fibre to the home network that
extends any fibre to the node development. If we are looking further
to the future, I think we should consider the eventual replacement of
the copper last mile now and how this might affect this next
investment and rollout.

Have any recent costings on a long term migration to FTTH been done?
If we are to spend $5-10b now, will that investment be wasted when we
come to the next upgrade. It would be excellent to have a 25 year plan
that took into account the current rusty copper, the intermediate FTTN
plans and where we really want to be compared with other emerging
broadband economies.

As a comparison for a nationally important investment, I submit the following:

The Snowy Mountains Hyper-Electric Scheme took 25 years to build, from
1949 to 1974, at the historical cost of AUD$800 million, a dollar
value equivalent in 1999 and 2004 to AUD$6 bn.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowy_Mountains_Scheme>

George
-- 
George Bray - University of Canberra, Australia