Glug, yes, but some of the operating costs are fixed, so spreading them over a smaller customer base increases the costs to those customers. And all the capital costs are fixed: again increasing the cost per customer, if fewer sign up.
But nobody apart from possibly a few businesses, will ever pay the full cost. It would be too expensive for people to sign up. Look at some of the plans at the moment: $120/m for unlimited downloads with no speed guarantee, which is three times the ADSL2+ rate.
The network is forecast to produce annual revenue of $5.8bn by 2021, while the operating expenses are forecast to be around $3bn. These figures are so rubbery it is laughable - the nbn hasn't released what its prices to RSPs will be yet, these are still under negotiation. So are the terms and conditions - atm nbn are demanding that RSPs pay for more capacity than the RSPs want; trying to force the RSPs to lower their contention ratio without understanding how it really works. Or trying to get the RSPs to overpay for capacity so they meet their forecasts ..... but then the RSPs are uncompetitive with copper or wireless or 4G, so the take up will be less.
It'll be like Concorde. It will only make a "profit" when the capital costs are written off and back door subsidies are made. Only Concorde was beautiful.
