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Gigabit is basically the default capability of fiber to the home. If you're going to basically relay and reinstall your communications infrastructure, it would be dumb to do it with copper.

And Gigabit is certainly not overkill when viewed on a 50-year timeframe, which is realistically how long this infrastructure is(/was) meant to last.

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Laying fibre for new networks makes sense. But that's orthogonal to whether to deliver Gigabit and irrelevant to the question of whether to rip out a working network and replace it with "gigabit" as the justification.

"Gigabit will make sense later" is what they were telling people 35 years ago too. Back then they were explaining to people that you'd be able to watch movies at home some day. Yup, you sure can and of course you don't need anywhere close to a Gigabit to do it.

The applications for household Gigabit remain a mirage decades later.

Except, NBNco are in many places finding the existing last-mile copper going into people's homes is too degraded to support FTTN or FTTC (Fibre to the curb)

So... They are ripping out the copper going into people's houses, and replacing it with - Copper. Yeah.

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