[LINK] Broadband for a Broad Land

[Birch, Jim]

Ash Nallawalla wrote:

> Most people are on the best plan they can afford and many can't afford
an extra $10-20 a month no matter how much faster the speed is.  I don't
download movies and wouldn't even if I had FTTH today. I can barely keep
up with FTA TV. I am not too far off retirement age and I have to think
about things like the rising electricity costs and the possibility that
my Internet use might have to be reduced to keep my bills low.

The economic problem of the NBN is that it's a large capital cost
upfront, not that it's expensive to run.  Like sewerage, water,
electricity distribution and the POTS, there are big capital costs that
have to be met after which the system is quite cheap to run for a long
time - especially for the NBN.  (Some of the services it carries won't
be cheap, but you won't have to buy them.)  The psychological problem
for the NBN Co is that people basically operate on monkey economics
(cash flow, what I can get this week for as little as possible) and no
one thinks about investment in a sustained way.

Once built, the NBN (per se) will be cheap to run so it should serve you
well in your retirement, provided it is maintained as an open public
asset and doesn't get flogged off to rent seekers.

- Jim


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