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Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

fourlightyears.blogspot.com

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Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#21

Post by stephentmcm »

hhandoko wrote: post #13
andrewstuart wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key point of the blog post is that any tech company that succeeds in Australia does so purely on its own two feet and that governments are at best mildly supportive of technology and at worst actively hostile. Turnbull destroyed the fibre to the home NBN and I can't see high speed ubiquitous Internet access coming any time soon. Imagine if 95% of Australian home - including ones in the country areas - had super h…

With the risk of being viewed as a Turnbull apologist, re: NBN I think he's just trying his best to work with the cards he's been dealt (i.e. compromise). It is unfortunate that the NBN was one of the key points of the campaign, we all know how it's turning out... It will probably ended up costing about the same, yet without the advantages FTTH brings. I do hope NBN will come to my area soon (within the next 24 month…

IF you have telstra/optus cable running long your power poles you might as well sign up for it now and settle for disappointment as that now counts as you access to the NBN.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#22

Post by qzervaas »

qzervaas wrote: post #19
theandrewbailey wrote: post #16

> In an age where the state of the art broadband to the home in the U.S.A. is 10 gigabits, Australia is currently building (it claims) a National Broadband Network at great expense that promises a blistering 12 to 100 megabits per second at the top end I know it mentioned "state of the art", but the vast majority of Americans would be lucky to get 100 megabits without breaking the bank every month. Many (most?) don't…

Many (most) of Australians don't even have the option of 10 mbit. When the new NBN is rolled out, most will have the option for 25 Mbps. This plan is due to be completed by 2020.

My office is "in the city" in Adelaide, a city of 1.25m. Our only reasonably priced option is 12Mbit ADSL2 (which is about 0.8mbps up).

We can get 100mbit fibre for $1000/mo, plus cost of installing the fibre.

We can get 12/12 DSL for $300/mo.

As an app developer, I am often unable to upload anything to iTunes Connect without saturating the link and it timing out. The only feasible option is paying a premium for 4G/LTE speeds on Telstra.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#23

Post by andrewstuart »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #16

> In an age where the state of the art broadband to the home in the U.S.A. is 10 gigabits, Australia is currently building (it claims) a National Broadband Network at great expense that promises a blistering 12 to 100 megabits per second at the top end I know it mentioned "state of the art", but the vast majority of Americans would be lucky to get 100 megabits without breaking the bank every month. Many (most?) don't…

The point in the blog post is that if you are currently building a national broadband network, why would you build anything except state of the art?

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#24

Post by ruffrey »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #16

> In an age where the state of the art broadband to the home in the U.S.A. is 10 gigabits, Australia is currently building (it claims) a National Broadband Network at great expense that promises a blistering 12 to 100 megabits per second at the top end I know it mentioned "state of the art", but the vast majority of Americans would be lucky to get 100 megabits without breaking the bank every month. Many (most?) don't…

Comcast is horrible and has a monopoly in Sacramento, California. Fastest speeds are typically 25 - 75mbps. 25mbps costs $59.99.

Well, technically you can get AT&T "high speed" internet for $50+ per month, at a whopping 18mbps max.

This is the capital of Califoria, so, yeah.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#25

Post by [deleted] »

evanriley wrote: post #18
theandrewbailey wrote: post #16

> In an age where the state of the art broadband to the home in the U.S.A. is 10 gigabits, Australia is currently building (it claims) a National Broadband Network at great expense that promises a blistering 12 to 100 megabits per second at the top end I know it mentioned "state of the art", but the vast majority of Americans would be lucky to get 100 megabits without breaking the bank every month. Many (most?) don't…

Yup, I live RIGHT outside of City borders of Durham, NC, where Google Fiber is coming, Frontier is putting up Fiber, and AT&T is putting up fiber. My max available speed? 24mbps DSL for $50 a month. Even though TWC says they are in my area, when they drive to my house they say they can't do anything for me, and I doubt Google, Frontier, or AT&T are going to be able to do anything for me.

[deleted]

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#26

Post by mb_72 »

regecks wrote: post #4
andrewstuart wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key point of the blog post is that any tech company that succeeds in Australia does so purely on its own two feet and that governments are at best mildly supportive of technology and at worst actively hostile. Turnbull destroyed the fibre to the home NBN and I can't see high speed ubiquitous Internet access coming any time soon. Imagine if 95% of Australian home - including ones in the country areas - had super h…

I really don't understand the NBN meme. I've worked for small tech companies in Australia my entire (not so long) career, and access to high internet speeds has never ever really been a problem. When you're a programmer, what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really? Yes, regional areas should be upgraded from dialup/slow sattelite to at least 10mbps. What kind of impact will that have wrt the OP…

Some points made already, but this might be of interest. I'm on ADSL2 in Adelaide (South Australia), and my business partner is on the NBN in Hobart (Tasmania). One project we work on together is using the Outsystems platform, and this means a compile cycle involves (at the least) a compile and upload to a remote server; if there are clashing changes made, it's also necessary to download the 'other' version and an automatic comparison of the code changes is made locally. With his NBN speed he can effectively lock me out of making changes, as by the time I've downloaded his changes, he's already made more changes and uploaded them, and I can never 'catch up'.

Also, it's not just the speed, it's reliability. I'm in the Adelaide hills, with old copper, and I'd say I have momentary drop-outs on a regular basis, and drop-outs of a few hours or more once a month. Very annoying when you want an 'always on' connection. I've found my tethered mobile phone is faster to use for uploading than my ADSL2 connection.

Finally - I've also worked remotely based in Estonia, and the reliability, affordability and speed of the connection there eats my local Adelaide connection for breakfast; you don't even really think about, the quality of the connection starts tending towards that of a LAN connection.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#27

Post by xxpor »

qzervaas wrote: post #19
theandrewbailey wrote: post #16

> In an age where the state of the art broadband to the home in the U.S.A. is 10 gigabits, Australia is currently building (it claims) a National Broadband Network at great expense that promises a blistering 12 to 100 megabits per second at the top end I know it mentioned "state of the art", but the vast majority of Americans would be lucky to get 100 megabits without breaking the bank every month. Many (most?) don't…

Many (most) of Australians don't even have the option of 10 mbit. When the new NBN is rolled out, most will have the option for 25 Mbps. This plan is due to be completed by 2020.

Part of the issue is that getting transit out of Australia is EXTREMELY expensive. Telstra still has a stranglehold on the country, and the amount of cables out of the country hasn't kept up with demand.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#28

Post by wahsd »

The weird thing about these kinds of posts is that it only contributes to places like Australia, in this case, lagging behind other places like the USA. All this is is another one of those whiny posts that sets a mindset that you have to leave Australia and head to the Valley if you want to make it when what the post really should have been about is " We (Australia) really have some work to do. Here is what we need to do and how we push the government to support our industry".

It really kind of annoys me that "foreigners" fall to this victim type mentality and then rather than pushing their own local governments to change, they advocate leaving and only exacerbating the problem by draining the local talent and interest group, while piling on to the concentration of people in the tech centers like the Valley.

I would love to know what the total damage the USA does to source societies and countries by luring and essentially poaching talent and expertise away. I know that India is really kind of struggling with that issue. On one hand they see it as a source of remittances, but on the on the other hand even in a huge population like India they are really starting to feel the sting of the "brain drain" in the tech sector.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#29

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

d_t_w wrote: post #15
d_t_w wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't you hear? Coal is the future, get digging.

FYI non-Australians, I give you (former) PM of Australia, Tony Abbott: July 17, 2015 - "For the foreseeable future coal is the foundation of prosperity" http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/17/for-tony-... That just about sums up the amount of vision in Australian politics.

To be fair, he's probably right. Australia has no new hydro planned (we can thank The Wilderness Society for that), and no plans, that I'm aware of, to shutdown any coal fired power stations.

So, pending catastrophic climate change, I'm going to guess Tony will turn out to be right.

And besides, politicians aren't selected for their 'vision', they're selected for some other set of characteristics, whoever knows what. P.J. O'Rourke has plenty to say on this subject.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#30

Post by rukuu001 »

hhandoko wrote: post #13
andrewstuart wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key point of the blog post is that any tech company that succeeds in Australia does so purely on its own two feet and that governments are at best mildly supportive of technology and at worst actively hostile. Turnbull destroyed the fibre to the home NBN and I can't see high speed ubiquitous Internet access coming any time soon. Imagine if 95% of Australian home - including ones in the country areas - had super h…

With the risk of being viewed as a Turnbull apologist, re: NBN I think he's just trying his best to work with the cards he's been dealt (i.e. compromise). It is unfortunate that the NBN was one of the key points of the campaign, we all know how it's turning out... It will probably ended up costing about the same, yet without the advantages FTTH brings. I do hope NBN will come to my area soon (within the next 24 month…

Yep, Turnball had the FTTN thing thrust upon him by the Abbot led govt. He got to the drivers seat too late to change it.

Hilariously, I was in Bolivia last year. They were ahead of Australia in rolling out proper 4G.

Govts here are terrified of spending money on infrastructure because perceived 'irresponsible spending' is so politically damaging.

(BTW I'm reading 'Keating' at the moment. What a difference in outlook between then and now)

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