There are so many other massive latency issues upstream that you can stick in all the fiber you want but you cannot leverage it properly anyway. This is almost never discussed.
At least we won't BE the latency issue with fibre in future. The rate of change at the moment, we're going to be chasing 40th spot for years to come.
I always look at it this way: what is the point of Wireless-N device on a smartphone when the bottleneck occurs as soon as it connects to the resource? Theoretical maximums of 300Mbps N are great, but the only time I made it work on a PC was when the router was in the same room - at which point plugging in the Gigabit Cat6 was the preferred option.
At which point, the internet connection was a massive bottleneck anyway.
LTE and LTE-A make mobile connections awesome, but they're never going to be economically sound because you pay through the nose for them. Its not just about speed, remember.
Let's say Turnbull is right, and its an $18bn difference overall if we started
today. In the course of 20 years, that's less than a billion dollars a year to put ourselves at the top of the tree and stay there.
I think there is going to need to be a change in expectations for the rural sector. I've lived there, and sorry but you give up your access to certain services when you accept the fresh air and open spaces. I'd find it hard to go back, but as I get older I understand the limits of my mortal existence, so I could put up with that.