Well, there was a govt mandated plan for a FTTH network (the NBN, a multi-billion dollar project), so providers stopped building stuff about a year before the build started in preparation. That set us back a little, but not much.
However, about 1 year into the build, said govt got elected out. New govt redesigned things so it'll now be mostly FTTN (so last part will be copper), cos it would supposedly be cheaper and faster to deploy (called the MTM or multi technology mix). They also claimed our budget was in an emergency crisis (during the middle of a mining boom I might add) so we needed to save money.
Time frame has blown out massively. Almost a year was added just through the redesign and contract renegotiations, during which existing builds didn't halt, but they definitely slowed dramatically, and new build areas were put on hold where possible. The extra contracts have cost more money as well, plus all the extra tech required to manage not only FTTH but FTTN & Cable (they are buying access into local cable networks to speed up deployment), has made the system much more complex and costly to deploy and manage.
On top of all that, due to Australia being a very large place with a sparse population, a large portion of ADSL users are >1.5km from the exchange/DSLAM (copper distance), with 2.5km probably being about the median. All in all the first plan was much better. *sigh*
Wikipedia on the "National Broadband Network" or NBN:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_B...nd_Network
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