Australian Private Fibre

I don't know if this has been considered by the Australian government but I've been wondering about an interesting use for some of this financial stimulus money. In short: subsidised private fibre to the node.

The Australian government provides a subsidy for individuals to plumb fibre optic cable from their house to the nearest node or junction. The tricky part is the legislation which controls how the fibre is connected and used at the node. But oddly enough, this is a problem the Government already has.

The Broadband Fibre to the Node program has a huge problem: Telstra owns the nodes. The current non-Telstra contenders all assume that somehow they'll be granted access to the nodes. But the nodes are owned by Telstra. Government intervention will be required one way or another- either to un-privatise the nodes or force Telstra to allow access.

But another option would be to create this infrastructure anew using modern infrastructure. And the timing is surprisingly good: Passive Optical Networks make fibre infrastructure cheaper and we happen to want to spend money right at the moment.

The current Keynsian Economic thinking calls for a stimulus to the economy: sensible Government led investment prefereably in productive assets. In an ideal world this investment would have long term benefits, be socially equitable and have broad geographic impact. Oh, and we'd like it to happen sooner rather than later. The classic stimulus is building roads. The 21st century equivalent has got to be Broadband networks.

I'm not suggesting that this is an easy suggestion. Maybe it has already been thought through and dismissed. But if not- well it is certainly worth the thought.