My initial reaction to the Ruddster’s announcement from a week ago (and yesterday’s radio ad) was exactly what the Labor strategists wanted: “wow! faster Internet! that’s cool!”

But on closer scrutiny, I’m not so sure that spending billions of public dollars to cover the country with fibre to the node is the best way to go about fixing the problems in Australia’s broadband. After reading Joshua Gans and Ross Gittins, I’m thinking it’s a step in the right direction, and way ahead of what we’ve seen from Howard so far, but also not the best possible decision.

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