[jeza]

Installing infrastructure is never cheap nor easy. As such I'd categorise fibre as a natural monopoly. You only really need to install it once to every house hold and once it's there, terminal equipment can be upgraded to keep abreast with technological changes. It's better if the fibre is owned by a neutral entity, while internet services provided over the fibre can be provided by competing companies.

The Australian government had this part right with the National Broadband Network. The fibre and backhaul infrastructure would be owned by the government, while retail companies would be allowed to sell internet connections, telephony and pay TV services over this network . A change of government has slowed things down a bit, but the same model appears to be in tact, where the current proposal is that the government will take ownership and upgrade coax cable (HFC) networks as an intermediate step.

[paulnechifor]

It's only expensive if you have high standards. Romania (and much of Eastern Europe) has good connections because there is a demand for cheap and fast connections (due to piracy). This resulted in neighborhood networks of 100-1000 people or more. And the cities started looking like this:

http://media.hotnews.ro/media_server1/image-2012-09-14-13222... http://storage0.dms.mpinteractiv.ro/media/1/1/1686/6527161/1... http://www.b365.ro/media/image/201107/w620/Cabluri-NetCity.j... http://www.b365.ro/media/image/201302/w620/netcity_romania_i... (I was unable to find some of the best pictures.)

Eventually big ISPs started offering higher speed and unlimited traffic plans and the cables are still being buried.

[antimagic]

No. Firstly, maintenance on those do-it-yourself solutions is high. This is one of the reasons those types of installations are generally speaking not done by telcos - they know that lifecycle costs are actually cheaper if you suck up the upfront cost of installing the cables properly, which actually reduces the price of the system.

Secondly, population density has a huge impact on the cost of installing fibre. As such, comparing Eastern Europe to Australia is just ridiculous. Even when you're in a city in Australia, the vast majority of the population live in detached houses on what are huge blocks by European standards. Those cable nests in your photos just wouldn't exist in Australia for the simple reason that you can't run a cable more than say 50m (any longer and you start to run into engineering challenges such as dealing with cables stretching in the heat, the weight becoming to much to be easily attachable etc) without putting up another pole, and for most Australians you would be lucky to have more than 4 houses within 50m of any given pole.

This is why cabling is a much more expensive proposition in Australia, standards or not. You would actually have to install enough poles, or bury the cables, neither of which is particularly scalable, and hence not particularly cheap. Much of the US has a similar problem, which is part of the reason that bandwidth costs so much in the US (there are other reasons, but this is certainly a factor).

[Moru]

Reminds me of Stockhom 1890: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Telefontornet_1890.jp...

[another-one-off]

It is debatable whether the Australian government got that right.

The Australian government has set up a single corporation to roll out a broadband network to every house in Australia. This is something that the government has no special knowledge of, and no demonstrated ability to do. Governments have no business doing this thing. There is a very real risk that ideological differences between the Liberal and Labor parties will see NBN Co. mired in a similar situation to Telstra - a privatised monopoly with massive and unrivaled infrastructure funded by taxpayers with terrible customer service.

What should be done is for the government to maintain an inter-town and inter-city fibre backbone, and cover the cost at taxpayer expense, then let local council and small business wire up individual towns and suburbs. Then let consumers hire an ISP who also handles maintenance of the fibre cables. Maybe give the installer of the cable a 10- or 20-year monopoly on maintaining the cable to allow them to recoup their cost.

Granted, technically the government would want to retain official 'ownership' of the cables, and would still need some sort of administrative group to oversee who was responsible for which cable, but this would be a big improvement over how the rollout actually came together.

Creating new government-backed corporations to own the infrastructure is not a winning formula. The entity building and maintaining the cables needs to be exposed to market forces, and it isn't difficult to see how it could be done.

The government can handle the expensive parts like satellite connections for rural Australia and the inter-town links, if the market isn't likely to provide those things.

[hartror]

The intention is that Telstra and the NBN are apples and oranges when it comes to the consumer. Telstra is (soon to be was?) both the network and the retailer whereas the NBN is just a network wholesaler.

The argument of government vs private infrastructure projects is a whole other kettle of fish.

[jeza]

The 10-20 year monopoly idea would prove to be problematic if the cable provider is also your ISP. I can only imagine this leading to deterioration in quality of service and over pricing. Regulation might help to an extent. Having a large number of companies using a myriad of technologies could well negate market forces. Where as having a standardised set of technology nation wide could save a lot of money (think maintenance contractors who only have to learn a small set of technologies).

I don't see why a government authority can't coordinate an infrastructure rollout like fibre, provided they have the right expertise. They seem to manage the same task fine with roads, etc. That's not to say it's the only model that can work.

[hrrsn]

We're following a similar setup here in New Zealand, except in lieu of NBN Co the government has outsourced network build and maintenance to different companies in different parts of the country. We've actually had FTTN to 80% of the population set up for about 5 years now (what the other alternative was in Australia) and as any geek will tell you, it's not sufficient. In addition, VDSL is now available nationwide if you're close enough to a cabinet which is a nice stopgap while FTTH is being built. All of this is ISP neutral, so a new comer offering DSL and fiber has significantly less required investment.