[AusNOG] Aust Govt will build National Broadband Network, no company will be awarded the tender.

[Paul Brooks]

lists wrote:
>
>      
>     Which is why a government NBN will not be able to deliver a
>     commercial return, which leads us to the question is
>     $43,000,000,000 a wise investment to cover 90% of the population
>     of which 68% of the popuation already has access to 12 MB or more.
>     Does enough of the market require semi trailers to go and do the
>     grocery shopping and are they prepared to pay for it, to justify
>     buying everyone a semi trailer to go shopping.
>
I'm not sure your analogy holds - the $43b is going so much further - 
not just building the vehicle, but also building a set of roads so that 
everyone can get to their grocery-stores-of-choice without being held to 
ransom by the current owner of the only road available at present.

This $43b is doing what no other commercial carrier has found the 
wherewithal to do, after 15 years of pro-competition policy - fund a 
duplicated customer access network over a very wide scale. And since 
most of the cost is in the civil engineering, trench digging or 
cable-pulling over overhead poles, there is very little difference in 
cost if it is done with new fibre cable compared to new copper cable.

so to torture your analogy futher - if it costs much the same to build a 
road suitable for a semi-trailer as it does for a moped, why not build 
the road suitable for semi-trailers?

(Paul - amazed that a message held in grey-listing limbo for 3 weeks can 
still generate comment).

P.


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