Australia To Build Fiber-To-the-Premises Network

Posted by kdawson on Monday April 6, 2009 @06:21PM from the no-censorship-on-the-wire-of-course dept.

candiman writes "The Australian PM, Kevin Rudd, has just announced that none of the private sector submissions to build a National Broadband Network was up to the standard, so instead the government is going to form a private company to build a fiber to the premises network. The network will connect to 90% of premises delivering 100Mb/s. The remaining 10% will be reached with wireless and satellite delivering up to 12Mb/s. The network cost has been estimated at 43 billion AU dollars over 8 years of construction — and is expected to employ 47,000 people at peak. It will be wholesale only and completely open access. As an Australian who voted for the other guys, all I can say is, wow."

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But why? by WCD_Thor · 2009-04-06 19:11 · Score: -1, Redundant

Why build such fast internet when no one will have anything to use it for? They are filtering so much stuff out that by the time this is available people won't need over a 1Mb/s connection. Hell maybe by that time they will only need a 256Kb/s connection for basic web surfing only. Seems pointless to me. Let people use the bandwidth you provide, otherwise why waste all that money?