The single biggest problem for fixed broadband expansion is the cost. Revenue from phone calls and data no longer justify the cost of installation for any telecommunications company anywhere in the world, according to the analyst Paul Budde. ''We all know the fibre network can deliver other services - healthcare, education, smart grids - but that requires government policies that will actually stimulate other sectors to utilise the broadband network, and that is when you start getting the business model going,'' he says. When South Korea's broadband revolution started in the late 1990s, the government invested heavily in public education. Private companies rolled out the infrastructure, assisted by dense population and some public assistance, but the government wanted to make sure its citizens would know how to use broadband. The publicly-funded ''Cyber 21'' course targeted housewives, farmers, soldiers and elderly Koreans, and was taken by 10 million people. And the government installed free internet training sites across the country and boosted computer use in schools. In Finland the government has simply made 1 megabit per second broadband connection a legal right for every home and businesses, increasing to 100 megabits per second in 2015, while French courts recently declared free internet access a fundamental human right, along with equality and freedom. But until more profitable uses

for fibre come along, former monopoly telecommunications providers will be ''utilities'' with little outlook for growth, says a telecommunications analyst at Bennelong SGI, Scott Klimo. In the US and Canada they face competition from cable companies, which can provide television and faster internet than copper DSL, and declining revenue on ageing fixed networks, which consumers are abandoning anyway. Even if telcos invest in building mobile networks, revenue margins are expected to decline as network capacities increase, Mr Klimo warns. ''The good news is that twisted copper pair, circuit-switched phone networks are expensive to maintain. Declining connections allow telcos to reduce capital expenditure, maintenance and headcount,'' he says. ''The other bit of good news is that fixed phone connection revenues are being ameliorated by increasing broadband and fibre revenues.''

US firms Verizon and AT&T have been building their own fibre networks in the US to compete against the cable companies, but have a huge task ahead of them. ''As internet content becomes richer and more bandwidth hungry, consumers will continue to turn towards the fastest connection. In the second quarter [of 2010], US cable companies won roughly 94 per cent of new high-speed data connections,'' Mr Klimo says. Verizon has stopped rolling out its network because it has already established it in the places it feels are profitable. Neither Verizon nor AT&T share their infrastructure with competitors because the US government closed the telecommunications ''open access'' regime eight years ago. Some kind of ''open access'' regulation operates in every OECD country except the US, Mexico, and the Slovak Republic, says a report by the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at Harvard University. The researchers found regulation was the key difference between countries with cheap and accessible broadband, and countries with expensive and limited broadband. ''The lowest prices and highest speeds are almost all offered by firms in markets where, in addition to an incumbent telephone company and a cable company, there are also competitors who entered the market, and built their presence, through use of open access facilities,'' the report's authors found.

The researchers were particularly impressed with France's approach to telecommunications, and not just the ideological judgments. The French regulator cracked down on anti-competitive behaviour by the incumbent, France Telecom, in 2002, such as predatory pricing, discriminating against competitors' access to local exchanges and charging competitors excessive labor costs. S ince then the average monthly access price in France has fallen from 17 to 8 and broadband subscriptions have increased from 3.7 million to 18.7 million. The French government has not directly invested in broadband infrastructure, but is set to raise between 80 to 100 billion for municipal governments to spend on communications infrastructure. Local governments have been the main driver of broadband growth in many northern European countries, although the European Union tries to limit state investment to avoid distorting markets.

In 1994 the City of Stockholm started a company called Stokab to deliver infrastructure as a ''public service on commercial terms'' mandate. Since then 5600 kilometres of cable and 1.2 million kilometres of fibre have been laid across Stockholm and nearby towns and islands. Stokab's technology neutral network is openly available to retailers, corporations, community groups and public sector institutions at wholesale rates. Last year Amsterdam City Council signed a public private partnership with the formerly state-owned KPN and Reggefiber to provide broadband to about 150,000 homes. KPN is slowly installing its own national fibre network, trying to claw back its broadband market share, which was taken by cable companies offering 60 to 120 megabits per second, plus television and telephone capability. Fibre packages with free calls and hundreds of television stations are reversing KPN's long-term decline in net line loss. KPN plans to phase out its copper network once the fibre is complete and lease the fibre to competitors. But the Netherlands' population density is about 400 people per square kilometre, with many people living in medium-high density areas, making the returns on a broadband rollout more profitable. Canada has a comparable population density to Australia, at 3.4 and 2.9 people per square kilometre respectively. It was once a leader in internet distribution, but is now lagging behind other countries in terms of accessibility and affordability. Most households access the internet through cable installed for pay TV. There is virtually no fibre and 20 per cent still use dial-up, according to the Berkman report.

A state government initiative to provide super fast broadband to every community with at least one school, hospital, library or government office has failed to deliver to households. The government of Alberta in Canada's centre-west entered a $320 million public private partnership with Bell Canada to lay 12,000 kilometres of fibre cable. The service began in 2005 but many households remain unconnected because it is too expensive for retail providers to connect small remote communities to the fibre backbone. Councils in Alberta are now borrowing from the state and federal government to build the so-called last mile themselves, according to recent reports in the Calgary Herald. If a lack of fibre broadband is a problem, there are many different solutions being cooked up by both public bodies and private enterprise around the world. Fortunately, there are no signs of ''NBN Co'' or ''Telstra'' branded shovels being handed out along Australian streets yet.