Yes, I’ve remarked at other times at the extreme cost and penalty of paying STD charges. Around 60c per minute of call time in 1980 is my recollection. You needed to take a pocket full of coin to the corner phone box for a short 3 minute call. Sometimes two corners away. Or hours by light plane in other locales?
The concern or challenge today is that the NBN satellite service is being used to backfill coverage in near urban areas. From a NBN Co business case it is one way to reduce total spend in the fixed line or FW options. At the same time it potentially increases the number of customers serviced through the satellite system. It’s a cost already expensed and supposedly under subscribed vs original forecasts. Hence the more on Satellite the better for the NBN Co? Although forecasts are that the service will never make a profit.
The lack of transparency leaves those just at the edge of the fixed line footprint to ponder the real cost. What was the true cost of bringing service to the neighbours down the road a few hundred metres distant, or on the other side of the back paddock? Would it really be tens of thousands, or just an extra thousand to have gone the extra metres?
P.S.
The roll out map can be a great tool for those with enough patience to ferret the neighbours service connection details. It would be revealing possibly damming to see it produced with colour overlays to show the type of service to each property, as well as who has or has not connected. In our instance the map suggests our property and the neighbours could have been serviced by FTTC, because others further away have been. The reality is there is a 55m FW tower down the road. It would have lost 75+ potential customers. The die has been long cast, and the voting habits of the locals long ago metamorphosed.
