[jacques_chester]

My understanding is that copper will be replaced with FTTP when it wears out. That spreads the cost over time while bringing forward the 25Mbps minimum service level forward by a few years.

There's no doubt that FTTP is the ultimate long term solution. But that doesn't mean it has to happen first.

[elithrar]

> My understanding is that copper will be replaced with FTTP when it wears out. That spreads the cost over time while bringing forward the 25Mbps minimum service level forward by a few years.

Much of it is wearing out. Users who already have issues with noise, interference and/or slow speeds on ADSL will be similarly disadvantaged by VDSL under the Coalition's FTTN plan. You also still need to worry about flooded pits, leaking conduit and so on. Having worked at a number of ISPs and watched all the faults roll in after even moderate storms, I know that these are real problems.

Further, how does the Government decide when your copper is "worn out", and what incentive do they have to spend more money (over their original plan) to upgrade you? How many people in your area need to suffer the same problem before they need to both a) completely replace your FTTN VDSL equipment with GPON gear, and b) pull fibre, replace conduit and wire small groups of homes on an ad-hoc basis?

[jacques_chester]

I agree, lots of of the existing infrastructure is worn down. My understanding is that Turnbull proposes that some of it will be replaced immediately and the rest would continue to be replaced on a rolling basis.

The main difference between the coalition plan and the business-as-usual plan is that old copper will be replaced with fibre, not with new copper. It's easy to forget that waaaay back when, this is what Telstra and the government were negotiating to do anyhow.

In Turnbull's position I wouldn't have promised anything except to review once in government. For one thing, a lot of work will already be contracted and it's not plausible to renege on the contracts. So there'll be an uneven distribution of fibre/copper which will lead to some distortion in the housing market. Not huge, but it'd be nice if it wasn't there.

[elithrar]

> I agree, lots of of the existing infrastructure is worn down. My understanding is that Turnbull proposes that some of it will be replaced immediately and the rest would continue to be replaced on a rolling basis.

The problem is that these costs are most certainly not encapsulated in Turnbull's $20B costing.

[jacques_chester]

The problem is that neither the government nor the opposition have ever produced their original costings nor any audit of those costs. In the government's case we're promised that audits were done. But we can't see what was audited and we can't see what the instructions are.