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I work in the telecommunications industry and I've always believed that the NBN was an ill conceived plan.
To even dream of replacing a copper network that was built over a century, with fibre in just a few years, is just plain stupid and shows a lack of understanding and logic by the decision makers of the time.
The NBN isn't a bad thing nor is it a waste of money, don't forget the investment will generate massive amounts of revenue and open up lots of opportunities, I'd expect that with revenue from phone and data plus the massively reduced maintenance costs payback would probably be less than 10 years.
Don't forget also that a big proportion of the cost and use will be by business and their continuation will help lower the cost.
As for wireless and satellite technology taking up the slack, forget it, shared spectrum is just that, very limited and unreliable.
More bandwith on copper is a pipe dream, the higher the bandwidth, the less the distance, I see poorly performing ADSL every day, it's prone to even minor cable faults and interference so reliability will always be an issue. Money poured in to trying to extract better service from the copper network is money wasted IMO.
In my Telstra days I saw a fibre cable that had a fire lit underneath it, there was nothing left of the cable but the original half a dozen glass fibres hanging in mid air, the entire sheath and protective system gone. We were alerted hours before as the copper cable disintegrated with the heat, the fibre maintained it's operation, remained fully functional and was still burning when we found the problem.
Fibre is immune to lightning, electrical interference, corrosion etc, the only thing that will affect it is vermin, I've seen rabbit and rat damage but only rarely.
Look at the money the government pours in to unsustainable industries, the forest and motor vehicle industries for example, tens of billions of dollars for no return.
To borrow an old TV ad line ... It won't not happen overnight, but it will happen......
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