Vendors pushing fibre on developing countries, says Oz minister

“If we want to get the benefits of broadband, particularly … in countries that aren't as wealthy as Australia ....."

If "WE want to get the benefits .."? Will the 'targeted' countries have any say in the matter?

Philippines

I've just got back from the Philippines visiting family, had a stable 7mb connection in the house and on a prepay mobile sim I had unlimited lte for 7 days at 299peso (£4).

Maybe Australia does't want to look stupid when all the developing countries around them have better connections?

Fiber is not a cargo cult

Greenfield fiber is cheapest - it takes the same amount of money to put in the ground as new copper. It is cheaper than HFC (coax is not particularly cheap and coax street box infra is more expensive). It is massively cheaper than greenfield fiber+copper. It also has the lowest cost to maintain (assuming PON).

In fact, the same math applies to developed countries too. It is simply a matter of what depreciation period do you put on it. If you put 10 years depreciation period (a number most utilities put on their infra) instead of sub-5 years (most telcos) fiber to the home ends up being cheaper than maintaining and upgrading HFC or fiber to the curb over the same period.

The problem is elsewhere. With fiber in the ground 90% of the telco field workforce will be out of a job. Try getting that idea past the union.

Everything depends on the country in question....

We have an example from Vietnam, above. From a couple of my global stomping grounds:

Fiji. There's very little copper so, even in the main towns, wireless (WiMax) rules. Fiji now has its first 4G network. Neither copper or fibre make sense, since everything is a bit too spread out.

Zimbabwe: There's plenty of copper in the towns and cities, so Huawei are re-using expertise from the UK (and other countries) to bring normal ADSL and (I'm told) FTC. Zimbabwe's first LTE network is being rolled out.

What of Australia? Well I'd agree that for a place as big as Aus, getting FT(to every)P was a bonkers plan in the first place (sorry, Internet starved Australians) but surely the big cities should benefit?

With wired and wireless, the issues are the same as the UK; not spot areas where it isn't economical to deploy, without subsidy. In the UK, the government has subsidised generously; BT pocketed the money..... So, a developing country stands even less chance than we do!

Utter rubbish ...

... this is shorttermism at its best - "I want a chunk of chocolate now", when the whole bar is available with a little patience and doing the right thing. This is ignoring the maintenance cost of copper and the restrictions of radio. Important to keep all those fields engineers employed ... far more important than a future-proof broadband technology, evidently. When a politician opens with a punt at the previous party, you know he's a technologist at heart <cough>.

With governments in Oz and the UK backing the incumbents that only have eyes for their rusty copper network profit streams, some communities are DIYing their fibre to break the profit cycle. Gob-smacked that government (we elect them don't we?) are not more supportive of public/community owned broadband infrastructure.

Copper is a lot more expensive when you have to keep replacing it after it gets nicked.

And it will get worse as the price of copper keeps rising - it will get nicked more and it will cost more to keep replacing.

For a greenfield site, copper is ridiculous.

Once upon a time there was two ways to do things - the wrong way, and the great western railway.

Now there are two solutions... The right one, and whatever snake oil turnbull is selling this week.