This is for fiber to the premise, not fiber to the node. It would have solved some of the problems with the old NBN model, especially in highrise buildings in the city.
I'm simply for this by the fact the government has been progressively removing all technical references about the NBN from every government website. During their election they promised a climate controlled box every 500 meters or so. This was ridiculed as completely out of the question due to cost and maintenance and has been quietly dropped since then. So even at the best case scenario the distance will be x20 as long as in these trials. And as the researchers noted: "giving broadband speeds up to 500 Mbps over a distance of 100 meters. In contrast, XG-FAST uses an increased frequency range up to 500 MHz to achieve higher speeds but over shorter distances."
It's about squeezing more out of the existing copper to the premise, while we wait for fibre to arrive.
"a major business benefit in locations where it is not physically, economically or aesthetically viable to lay new fiber cables all the way into residences. Instead, fiber can be brought to the curbside, wall or basement of a building and the existing copper network used for the final few meters."
I interpreted "the premise" as the building, but perhaps the conventional interpretation is the entire grounds. Either way, this is certainly about squeezing more out of the existing copper.
It is absolutely useless for the 1km+ distance to exchanges common in cities and 10km+ common in rural settings.
Instead the premises will have in the pits (or on one of the electricity poles) just outside them a tiny box - powered from the household itself through the existing copper - that connects to the fibre, which runs past the household. This contrasts with the average distance to the nodes of about three, four hundred metres likely under what the coalition is doing.
It gets rid of the most expensive part of a FTTH install, which is the actual connection to the customer. So, yes, it's viable.
It's also, however, substantially more like Labor's plan than the coalition's. So even if it were to make a buttload of sense and be insanely more cost effective it still wouldn't be done because Labor is evil. Or something. And Telstra and Murdoch wouldn't approve of something like this.
I bet this isn't that much cheaper than a full FTTH - the cost advantage of DSL is eroded as the port density goes down.