One of the things that's annoying me about all the NBN talk is the insistence on metro-equivalent services in regional and remote areas, as though this is a reasonable thing to require.
I live in the inner city of Sydney and I get “metro” services: I can walk to my nearest major hospital, there’s an international airport a short walk away, a shiny modern new swimming pool under construction give minutes' walk away, excellent cafes and restaurants wherever you turn and broadband via two HFC cables or a copper pair running past my house. I also have horrendous, pause-the-telly-and-wait aircraft noise, air pollution, traffic congestion, neighbours who are, quite literally, as close as 40cm from me and a house price that would make any country real estate buyer wince. It’s the price I pay for enjoying a vibrant, well-serviced metropolis. Surely if regional and remote Australians want metro-equivalence, they’d put other services higher on their list than fast broadband. Things like schools, hospitals and public transport.