I don’t profess to be an NBN expert, but my understanding is that you don’t really need to know about the NBN in order to use it. The NBN is intended to replace all sorts of communications infrastructure. Once it’s in place, there won’t be any further need for POTS wires to the home, or cable TV connections, or anything of that sort. If a household wants a fixed-line telephone, or some kind of video on demand service, they’ll get it over the NBN. They don’t even need to know that the service runs over the NBN.

We don’t need to create demand for broadband. Broadband is not a service: it is a medium for services. If you build the NBN, it’s not the customers that will come, it’s the service providers—especially those who were not in a position to roll out their own infrastructure (i.e. everyone but the incumbent telcos). If it’s done right, the arrival of the NBN should be accompanied by a glut of new information, entertainment, and communication services, all of which use the NBN as infrastructure. It is those things which will attract public demand.

A large part of the reason the Australian government is investing in a nationwide FTTP network is to bring the dominant telco, Telstra, into line to create a more genuinely level competitive playing field.  Telstra still controls the vast majority of last mile connections and has proven itself to be pretty adept at leveraging the competitive advantage it inherited as the former monopoly provider.

Australia also has some significant geographic challenges - a huge and sparsely populated landmass with increasingly overcrowded cities clinging to the coast.  The NBN has the potential to create significant new business opportunities in rural and regional areas that currently suffer from relatively poor infrastructure and declining employment opportunities.  Providing world-class service to these areas requires a cross-subsidy, which is also part of the rationale behind the project.

Much of the criticism of the NBN is of a partisan nature, including that from the vehemently anti-Government Murdoch broadsheet, The Australian.  The benefits from a national infrastructure project like this are likely to be felt over a period of decades and will likely result in innovations that are yet to be imagined.  They are therefore not necessarily easy to define in a cost-benefit analysis.

I think it’s also too early to be making judgements about likely take-up based on a very small number of towns in regional Tasmania that are part of the first phase of the project.