The old proposal to build a partial (FTTN) broadband network for Australia has been dumped, replaced by a much larger, better plan - a $43b fibre to the home network, to bring 100Mbps network access to 90% of Australian homes. Here is the announcement.
That’s $2,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. That’s a huge amount. To put it into perspective, the same expenditure in the USA would be roughly $600b.
Putting aside the fact that this is desperately needed in AU’s miserable internet market - this is exactly what a government should be doing at a time like this. Spending huge amounts on wisely chosen infrastructure projects is just the ticket to pull a country out of recession, IMO.
And needless to say, this is the beginning of the end for that hated monopoly Telstra, who will be lefting holding nothing but their crappy 50-year-old legacy copper POTS.
Fantastic.