"In terms of broadband access today there is only something like 15 per cent of people who have access to take up broadband today. Move outside of the urban cities and you very rapidly run out of broadband services."

Alan Noble, engineering director at Google A/NZ said the NBN was cost-effective when compare to other infrastructure projects in Australia's history.

"If you look at other big investments from the last century and the one before, the construction of the overland telegraph from Adelaide to Darwin was a much bigger investment for the then very, very poor colony of South Australia, as a percentage of that colony's GDP" he said. "The same would be true of building the trans-continental railway. These were nation-building infrastructure projects that transformed the nation."

Eric Olson, vice president at security company Cyveillance questioned the cost to Australia of not building an NBN.

"There is the cost, but also the cost of not building it," he said. "For healthcare, education, and services - if you can assume of the presence of that delivery vehicle (the NBN) as ubiquitous, then you will accrue all kinds of cost savings and efficiencies and novelty in the provision of those services.