“So there is a strong case for government intervention to achieve standard broadband coverage on a nationwide basis, but not for superfast broadband,” Meek said. “Getting a return on FTTH requires heroic assumptions about the externalities involved with such rollouts.”
Meek added that Singapore’s NBN scheme was an exceptional case. “It can deploy full coverage and superfast speeds relatively cheaply because of its geography and scale, so balancing tradeoffs is less of an issue. Australia hasn’t made those tradeoffs either, but I think that’s a mistake.”