People are often surprised that I don't support Fibre to the Home for the NBN.

1) Costs vs Benefits
The main reason for this is cost-benefit: With Fibre to the Node (street), The average Australian will get all the benefits of faster Broadband for 1/3 of the price. Remember that faster speeds than ADSL2 are a nice to have, not a need to have. The extra $30 billion required for fibre to the home has to come from somewhere, either bigger debt or <em>instead of</em> other more worthwhile investments in health and education. We need t make our choice - unfortunately there are real limits and constraints.

2) Faster Internet at Home is a nice to have, not a need to have.
While I agree that access to the Internet at home is now (in an advanced society) a right, faster speeds at home really benefit entertainment and little else. It would be nice to download Game of Thrones in one minute instead of 15, but would that really improve my life? Would 100mb/s mean that my kids have better educational opportunities? Wikipedia, ITunesU, Skype, all work perfectly fine over old copper or wireless. Is it really government's role to divert scarce resources to improving entertainment? 

3) Proportionality
Places that need fibre to the premises (hospitals, schools, universities, organisations) will get it. It reminds me of a question I asked my Engineering professor back at Uni when talking about alternative engineering solutions: Q:"What is the best solution?" A:"The best solution is the one that meets all the requirements, including aesthetics and safety, at the lowest cost?". Just as the universal solution to providing public transport is not to buy everyone a Ferrari, fibre to the home is not proportional to the need. Providing everyone (including me) with a Ferrari is just wasteful; spend the money on more worthwhile things.

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I fully understand the 'vision' of providing the very best to 

