NBN Evangelists enlisted for a virtual crusade

The federal government has decided to recruit NBN advocates from the community, business, education and association sector to help tell the public how a future NBN will work. Prominent advocates and high profile 'evangelists' including a chief scientist, a famous author, and the head of a major telecommunications users group.
The government announcement stressed the 'voluntary' nature of these appointments, supposedly meaning that these people are not the usual high paid crew of spin doctors and professional opinion makers.
This method might just cut some mustard in a slogan saturated public arena that always assumes that citizens are too busy for real and informed opinions. Regional NBN wishes the evangelists good luck and good communicating.

Acronyms, 'Telephone Exchanges' & Points of Interconnect (POI)

OMG what the F are POI? A legitimate question, at least if you understand the mind numbing acronyms the telco industry adopt to describe their infrastructure.
Our telco boffins are of course not alone in having caught this insidious disease. Most educated Australians in management positions create these BIG letter acronyms to our collective bemusement. Popular too are weasel words like 'digitally arranged visual evidence' that neatly dodge accountability and isolate a critical examiner with ease (That bit of silliness is a security camera video).

The problem is if you are trying to advocate for a popular technology project or product and you use increasingly distant terms to sell your attributes, you metaphorically shoot yourself in the mouth. BOOM as in boom, you've lost us.

So it comes to the increasingly difficult issue of explaining the importance of modern telephone exchanges to a public hungry for knowledge about the National Broadband Network (NBN) roll out. The telecommunications industry call these exchanges 'Points Of Interconnect' (POI) They are really important as the ACCC - Australian Competition and Consumer Commission have told us and the NBN Company as the builders of the nation's new broadband network.

Basically as far as I can decipher the ACCC has insisted that there now be built 120 odd of these new telephone exchanges instead of the originally planned 14. The commission's rationale appears to be that this will enhance competition on the new network. Well that may be the case, but of course it is also much more expensive to build 120 instead of 14 of these super exchanges. Who is going to pay for them and more importantly where are they going to be located?
On the question of who can pay for 120 exchanges? Early signals indicate only the big companies like Telstra and Optus can afford a full nation wide spread. On the question of where these exchanges are or will be located is a vexed issue, because the location of these will heavily influence where the NBN will be rolled out and how early.
In other words my regional friends lobbying like tom cats to get on an early roll out schedule, the location of these super exchanges may very well be the factor that gets you a NBN ticket or not.

Where these exchanges are or will be is another investigation worth an acronym or two, can I suggest WTF R D POI?