[LINK] Customers may be forced on to NBN to keep phones

[Birch, Jim]

> And now your being told that even if you choose not to have NBN fibre
> you are still "forced" to have it laid if you want a phone.


It would be crazy economics to maintain the old copper infrastructure
for a few people who don't want an Internet connection.  I expect that
the economics would be to lay fibre to every premises on the basis that
it would be required sooner or later.  You aren't going to run a new
strand of glass when the Smiths at number 42 decide they want to get the
extra TV channels available on the NBN.  Think: economies of scale.

The question is: if someone's blind grandmother who only uses the phone
and doesn't have or want the net gets their phone is switched through
the NBN, do they have to pay more?

Guess what?  I think this can be handled equitably and efficiently
without recourse to recreational outrage.

=-=-=

I remember reading the idea somewhere in an analysis of the SETI Project
that the radio visibility of advanced life forms - such as us, huh? - on
planets at astronomical distances may only exist for fairly short
periods in their histories.  Fairly soon after the locals develop the
technology for high-powered radio transmission, NBN-like projects will
become economically and technically preferable and take over from radio
fairly quickly.  Based on terrestrial evidence, we can reasonably expect
that this process will be - or has been - accompanied by the vehement
denunciations of little green naysayers.

- Jim




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