For some reason i didnt notice your link... thats probably the...

For some reason i didnt notice your link... thats probably the best network map i have seen, others dont show Townsville/Cairns properly.

Vocus 'manages, operates and maintains' the RBBP fibre, but the government owns it.
https://files.vocus.com.au/www/legal/nextgen/Nextgen-Equivalence-Undertaking.pdf

I thought there was a deadline on that agreement and that it would eventually be handed to NBNCo, but i cant find anything to support that right now.

In any case if a cable comes in at Townsville or Cairns, irrespective of the RBBP agreements it has to go through Vocus owned segment, so that has to be a gain for us.

For PNG/Solomons they have to consider the long term interconnect costs to get to Sydney (Or Perth), so i expect they would still consider going further South. I guess the extra costs of laying cable in deep-sea arent that high compared to to the overall costs. We saw how fast they did Christmas island to Perth (recent update at below url) compared to ETA to Singapore, so its mostly the cable costs to go to Brisbane/Sydney (but i am guessing)
https://australiasingaporecable.com/articles/australia-singapore-cable-main-lay-progress