In their vein attempt to scare off the opposition, Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo made a claim at a recent conference that the real cost of building the FTTN to 98% of the population was more like $14billion and not the orginally estimated $8-$9 billion.

Telstra has been providing mis-information on the cost of building this network for the past 3-4 years, with estimates of $30-$50billion to deliver FTTH giving Senator Conroy the chivers. Its amasing, but in the world of advanced communications where messages can be delivered in milliseconds around the world, Telstra thinks they can get away with such properganda.

Verzion is now building their FTTH network for approximately $400 per home passed and $1200 per home connected, thanks to substainially lower electronics cost and new advancement in Fibre deployment technics.

Since 2004, Verizon has spent $19b to pass 10 million homes in the United States. However this takes into account that when they first started the ONT (the equipment in the customer's home) was US$800 and labour costs where very high because of the large amount of fusion splicing by skilled contractors. An ONT is now US$300 and with the advent of connectorised solutions, fibre is much cheaper to install. Over the 4 years since they started, Verizon has been able to more than half their cost of deployment.

So if Verizon can do it for $19b Australia must surely be able to be considerably cheaper.