I have a few comments / questions on that. Yes, Australia has a relatively distributed population - but how much of that population lives in truly rural situations, as opposed to dense townships? If we find that 95% of the population live in communities that are relatively dense, then surely a FttH solution wouldn’t be so expensive for that 95%? A significant cost of such a network would be, of course, the backhaul between towns/cities, and area which I believe has already been identified as suffering badly from lack of competition. Backhaul aside, why should FttH cost any more to roll out in Birdsville than suburban Sydney? After all, Birdsville is only about a kilometre from side to side…

That should, I presume, be one of the questions the current NBN bidders are asking themselves: “How much of Australia’s population is within economical FttH reach of an existing exchange?”

I agree that the FttH is a key to all IP network and it could promote telehealth, tele-education, e-business, digital media, e-government, smart utility meter reading, etc..

But based on the fact that Austrlia has a large area and sparse population, is it too expensive for the industry to implement a FttH or any fibre infrastructure? When do you think we will have the financial ability to vastly deploy FttH especially for the remote areas? And is the Satellite still dominant now in the market?

Thanks a lot.