Story time: Back before 2010 the Australian government established the Next-generation Broadband Network ("NBN") [1]. Almost all of Australia at this point had

Story time: Back before 2010 the Australian government established the Next-generation Broadband Network ("NBN") [1]. Almost all of Australia at this point had ADSL as their best Internet option. Now the ACCC (equivalent to the FTC but with teeth) had created this situation by allowing third parties to put their own DSLAMs in the telephone exchanges. In response, that telco (Telstra) let the landline business languish (after all, why invest in a network that competitors have a right to access?) in favour of 3G (and later LTE), which had no such constraints and was much more profitable. 2-10Mbps was good in 2002. Not so much in 2012. So the NBN's original mission was to replace all this copper with fiber (FTTH) and was going to cost tens of billions. Each household would be guaranteed 100Mbps. Construction got off to a slow start and after a few years later not much fiber had been laid. The Labor (left-leaning) government lost an election and was replaced by the Coalition (Liberal-National parties; conservative) who had to be different and proposed a mixed-technology model as a cheaper alternative. Their model meant for most people they were going to get fiber-to-the-node ("FTTN"). This is the last-mile copper using VDSL1/2 (which only works over short distances) and otherwise fiber. So for $50B+ each household would only be guaranteed 25Mbps. If this saved any money at all I'd be surprised. But that's what Australia has now. And not everyone gets 25Mbps. By network topology some people aren't within 1.2km of the fiber node. DSL just shouldn't qualify as broadband (of acceptable speed) in 2021. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Broadband_Network