[Aussie Mike]

The company I work for develops and deploys a lot of this technology around the world.

Triple play is the way it'll all go eventually. Normal telephone networks will be replaced with VOIP networks. Your pay TV, your broadband internet and telephone will all come down one high speed digital link to your home via either fiber or VDSL2 on copper.

NBN is a long way off now that they have decided on a fiber to the home strategy. Trenching cable is expensive and since the NBN will be a seperate network to Telstra it means they have to build it from scratch.

I'm thinking what they'll end up with is a mixed solution. Part fiber to the home and part fiber to the node with VDSL2 from the node to the home on copper.

VDSL2 is not ratified yet in Australia with the comms authorities. You can get some phenominal data rates out.

Interesting times ahead.