why are you invested in telstra? , page-48

Pugsley,

2 main reasons why the FTTN did not go ahead:

1. Telstra required an 18% return on capital. That was deemed impossible by the govt who donn't understand such things. In my experience in IT and manufacturing - we required much higher returns to get large projects off the ground (50% not uncommon).

2. All Tesltra's exchanges would have been redundant with FTTN. This was a key part of their proposal as I recall - releasing around 750 well located properties for redevelopment and a $2bn credit to te overall project cost. BUT no lesser person than Mr Howard objected strenuously to this - because - all his Telstra wannabees has installed their DSLAM's etc in these exchanges and under FTTN there was nowhere they could go. So the daft policies of that government that saw this leaching of vitality from Telstra in order to line the pockets of a selected few would be shown up for the nonsense it really was.

IMO - what makes the NBN nonsense is that it was conceived in a time of global financial stress when a whole batch of woolly schemes got the go ahead (don't forget the cash splashes). Now we are in much less straightened times the government should be repairing our balance sheets and refocussing on basics - the sorts of things they were elected to do. Complex projects such as communications should be dealt with incrementally by industry participants (eg Telstra).