The criticism of bandwidth misses the transformative aspect of nationally deployed FTTP. Throughout the internet's history, increasing the speed and availability of broadband has consistently led to new, previously undeveloped, applications. At its start, the internet was a text-only system using slow telephone links. Over time, it was augmented with graphics on the world wide web, new applications such as Skype and other Voice-over-IP (VOIP) services, and in the recent past, video-streaming sites such as YouTube and Australia's Quickflix, as broadband connections became more ubiquitous.

By deploying more bandwidth in more places than needed today, the NBN will open the door to further advances in the home such as telemedicine, remote car and appliance diagnostics, and detailed security and environmental monitoring, applications popularly known as ''The Internet of Things''.

On the issue of mobility and convenience, the deployment of ubiquitous FTTP has the potential to improve wireless mobility, convenience and coverage just as much as other solutions. A fixed-line NBN will allow mobile phone operators to pay for the use of ''femtocells'' in subscribers' homes. Femtocells are essentially miniaturised cell phone towers, and can provide greater availability of high-bandwidth cell phone signals - at lower cost - than traditional towers. Femtocells are already successfully deployed in the US, Europe, Japan, China, New Zealand and elsewhere.

In addition, networking researchers have recently developed new methods to safely, securely and fairly share bandwidth between users and visitors on home wireless networks backed by the same provider. These methods eliminate concerns that a fixed-line NBN could only be accessed from one's own home.

It's worth adding that the current FTTP plan is superior to the alternatives for additional reasons: large wireless networks are generally difficult to deploy successfully due to their inherent interaction with the physical environment. Interference from other radio transmitters, building materials, and home appliances negatively affects a wireless network's performance. Furthermore, these problems' intermittent nature requires expensive over-engineering to overcome and difficult processes to identify their causes. Lastly, transitions in wireless standards can necessitate the complete and costly re-engineering of existing networks.