> which is one of the highest of all non-city-state nations
Speaking of being misleading, are you saying that being equal 11th of nearly 200 such countries doesn't count as being 'one of the highest'?
Including all nations, it only drops to 17th - still in the top 10%.
Yes, I think that being in the top 5% is a requirement for being one of the highest. To be honest I would prefer to restrict "one of the highest" to the top 2.3%
Top 2.3% it is, then. However, the central theme of my point was that everyone (including ourselves) sees us as a rural nation, focusing on the outback, when we're actually a society of [sub]urbanites, despite the landmass.
Australia has a 90% urbanisation rate, which is one of the highest of all non-city-state nations[1], though our cities are quite spread out. It's a total myth that we're all comfortable in the Outback, one that most of us seem to believe ourselves. We're suburbanites and urbanites, as a rule of thumb.
Regarding the costs, laying new fiber is more expensive than not laying new copper, but the copper circuits we have are so old that maintenance costs are ballooning. There's not really a serious cost argument for or against the NBN, it's really about politics.
copper is for providing DSL to that cattle ranch 100 miles from civilization
DSL doesn't stretch that far, by an order of magnitude (perhaps two orders) :)
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_by_country