The new NBN = the old Telstra deja vu

One picture of a redhead animee character does not a tweet make, so I will see what I can make of the coalition's rearrangement of the NBN. Although the ideology behind the new NBN stinks, the circumstances of the policy takeover are such that the changes in direction are mostly harmless. The reason that they are mostly harmless is that the unprofitable country areas were front-ended and fast tracked into the original NBN, such that the countrywide backbone and country capacity is basically there already and will not be dismantled. The NBN co. is now scrambling to do the exact opposite, by frontending and fast tracking fibre capacity to profitable city areas before competing telco's try to cherry-pick them through loopholes in the new NBN structure. The "last mile" is the most expensive bit of the conversion to Fibre, but at least now Fibre to the node is equivalent in accessibility in country areas as it is in city areas. Now the question is who gets to be connected to what and when? Once the cherrypickers have been headed off, the sensible thing would be to improve the most blackest spots in the quickest time without locking in to inferior technology unnecessarily.