Tasmania's Great Internet

40,000 homes in Hobart, 30,000 in Launceston and 10,000 in each of Burnie and Devonport (all located on Tasmania, if you're scoring at home) will soon have a better Internet than Chicago, Houston, Boston or nearly all of Europe.

That's about half the homes on the island, with 90% of Australia soon to follow. It's currently GPON, designed for 200-400 megabits but initially selling as 100 megabit. The budget for these 90K homes is about US$1,000/home. Given that everything is new, procedures undeveloped, and people need to be trained, that's consistent with the $600-700 figures from Verizon and France. It should come down significantly. The original estimate of $43B (Australian) was twice as high as the current costs. Australia has decided that 10% of the population is too expensive to reach with fiber, but most of the population is urban and suburban and shouldn't be particularly expensive to reach.