>It was a specific plan, budgeted for
I like how you call what I said "arrant nonsense". Such a harsh response must have been followed up by some irrefutable facts for justification. Instead, your argument is "it was budgeted for". This level of nativity is complete lack of knowledge of planning and budgeting and forecasting models shouldn't be coupled with your big boy harsh words.
Lets see, Kevin Rudd said it would cost $15 billion. The total cost at the moment seems to be $51 billion. So your conspiracy theory is that the crappier NBN we got which required less work cost $36 billion more than the one you are saying was budgeted for?
First, can I ask why you're creating multiple new accounts to comment? It seems very odd.
> Kevin Rudd said it would cost $15 billion.
The first 90% fibre plan was $43b, later revised down to $37.4b of which it was supposed to be $30b of investment from the Federal government. [0]
About $12b of that was in payments to Telstra ($11b) and Optus ($800m) in return for access to lead-in and last-mile conduits/pits, and decommissioning of HFC networks.
That original business plan was revised later after a KPMG study to recommend ~93% fibre, ~4% fixed wireless (LTE variant), and the remaining ~2-3% on two dedicated satellites (new launches).
(Edited to add: Note that this plan included an eventual ROI, where the government would get it's money back - and hence it be zero/low cost. The current plan has no hope of that happening short of selling the entire thing off to Telstra.)
FTTH installations were budgeted at $1500/residence to install, which by the time the Abbott government was coming into power was actually trending closer to $1200 as the workforce was trained up in deploying the gear and became more experienced in dealing with any odd situations.
There is/was a fantastic video of a talk given by someone from NBNCo (I believe Mike Quigly?) at a University where they go over the architectural design decisions, and how the 93% number was arrived at. The video also went over in detail how the fixed-wireless process was to work.
Arguments that remediating conduit and installing new copper is either cheaper or less work to install aren't backed up by evidence, with NBNCo's current cost for FTTC being somewhere over $3000/residence in 2019[1].
Additionally, because there's now FTTP, FTTN, FTTC, HFC, Fixed-Wireless and Satellite - the whole network is harder to manage and maintain. You need a bigger, more widely trained workforce, you have more equipment to maintain, and more vendors to deal with.
Lets see, Kevin Rudd said it would cost $15 billion. The total cost at the moment seems to be $51 billion. So your conspiracy theory is that the crappier NBN we got which required less work cost $36 billion more than the one you are saying was budgeted for?