Opposition Leader Bill Shorten admits his plan for the National Broadband Network will cost an extra $3.4 billion to roll out.
But he said that would be offset by greater network reliability and higher community take-up.
Mr Shorten announced Labor's NBN plan on Monday, promising to scrap the coalition's "second rate" National Broadband Network and resume Labor's original fibre-to-the-premises plan, connecting an extra two million homes by June 2022.
"It will involve greater capital expenditure, full stop. I have said that," he told the ABC's Q&A program.
"I also say if you've got better technology, the operational costs are less and if it's a better deal more people will buy into it, improving the return overall."
Asked how much more, he replied: "In capex terms, about $3.4 billion."
Labor estimates its NBN cost from $49-57 billion. The coalition estimates $46-56 billion.
"The beauty of Labor's proposition is that we know that fibre's going down in cost compared to copper," he said.
Mr Shorten said a Labor government would reduce the deficit, although that would not be as fast as the government planned for the first three years.
He said that was only because government estimates on deficit reduction were based on fake and bogus cuts.
"After the fourth year, we will reduce the deficit further and better and start paying down government debt," he said.
Mr Shorten said he would not pretend to Australians that you could make funding cuts that would never pass the Senate, which was what the government was doing.
He said that once the opposition had finished rolling out policies in the next week or so, it would then outline its costing well before the election.
"We will save more than we spend. We will do that. That is our commitment. But what I'm not prepared to do is sacrifice properly funding our schools or the National Disability Insurance Scheme," he said.
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