The coalition policy is to use wireless all over the place, even in metro areas. They play it up as a replacement for wired services. They also just leave almost everything to the market which has proved rubbish as we can all clearly look around and see today. It fixes none of the structural issues we face. It appears that only have a broadband policy to oppose the NBN. Under the NBN small towns will get wireless or satellite.

What are the views on the US Internet ?

DR: Are wireless networks where the future is? Is the use of fibre optic networks overblown?

BL: What is interesting to me is the way some people judge a broadband plan solely on the speed of the wired line network to the most rural residents. That’s what I’m fighting against and that’s the wrong way to look at it. I think over the next ten years changes in wireless are going to be the biggest driver of growth in the economy.

The current copper network was govt installed and goes most places. The current broadband that sits on top of that govt installed network is privately installed and is a mish/mash with a huge percentage of Australians having a poor outcome (see the OP). Now that it is time to update the underlying govt installed network I am glad it is not being handed to private industry to do it. I am also glad that the NBN will usher in a level playing field for all private broadband retailers so they can compete fairly.

The NBN uses wireless for the most remote residents. Wireless is a complementary technology for a wired backbone, "not" a replacement. When you need the fastest, most reliable, most affordable broadband in your home and office it will be wired and as you transition between these places it will fall back to the more expensive, slower, more unreliable, open to congestion, affected by weather, costlier to install wireless towers.

Cancelling the upgrade to the wired network and just hoping unreliable expensive wireless will take up all the slack for all the super high speed internet connected devices in the home and offices of the future is just head in the sand stuff. The best economies are not doing it that way. Fibre is an industry accepted best practice network medium with years of speed increases open to it. Despite current and future speed increases wireless is a very poor cousin to a speed of light based technology like fibre. Refusing to upgrade the copper network now just leaves us with an old slow network with a myriad of unsolvable/expensive network issues throughout the copper network.

I have to wonder why the American attitude is to do just that. But then they are talking about a wireless that is faster than the NBN, in both the US and Australia.

I still feel that spending the money on more essential services, hospitals, education, etc., seems to be a better option.