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How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

nytimes.com

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Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#51

Post by spangry »

stirlo wrote: post #30

The biggest issue with the whole project wasn't the abandoning of FTTP and move to MTM but the locking in of 2010 prices for the foreseeable future via a ridiculous CVC charge that only existed to turn a profit. The founder of one of Australia's largest independent ISP's Internode (and later NBNco board member) Simon Hackett put it very well in 2011 where he showed locking in a arbitrary $20 charge per megabit hobble…

Yep Hackett called it right. He put his money where his mouth was too: he sold his ISP to iiNet/iiBorg (who were subsequently consumed by TPG) and got the fuck outta dodge. It's a pity; Internode was possibly the best ISP in the country.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#52

Post by discodave »

ccakes wrote: post #48
pserwylo wrote: post #36

The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack. However they didn't argue this. They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but o…

FTTP or FTTN aside, aiming for 93% coverage in a country as sparsely populated as AU was a terrible idea to start with. I understand the need to support rural areas but the the majority of the initial budget was to cover non-metropolitan areas and while the govt has been messing this up, private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.

That's actually not the problem. Australia has a similar percentage of people in cities and large towns as somewhere like the US.

The low population density of Australia makes backhaul and overseas transfer of data more expensive, and the last 2-5% of people might be very expensive to get. But the original goals of the NBN were well thought out and modeled properly.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#53

Post by taneq »

pserwylo wrote: post #36

The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack. However they didn't argue this. They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but o…

A friend and I have a theory that the rollout was deliberately train-wrecked by the Liberal party to avoid Labor getting the long term political kudos for having started the project.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#54

Post by spangry »

ccakes wrote: post #48
pserwylo wrote: post #36

The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack. However they didn't argue this. They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but o…

FTTP or FTTN aside, aiming for 93% coverage in a country as sparsely populated as AU was a terrible idea to start with. I understand the need to support rural areas but the the majority of the initial budget was to cover non-metropolitan areas and while the govt has been messing this up, private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.

This gets repeated a lot, but people seem to forget that a large part of the continent/island [?] is inhospitable desert. Our population distribution looks like this: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4afe2e7cc5078f81d6a999...

About 60% of the population is clustered in 4 cities [0] and we're one of the most urbanised countries in the world [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#Cities

[1] https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/ & http://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-austral...

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#55

Post by ajdlinux »

znedw wrote: post #16

Currently I pay AUD$79 per month for the privilege of 1.4mbp/s down and 100kp/s up. My area is slated for the NBN, albiet HFC (using old coaxial) to commence building in 2019. Bloody bonza, mate.

ADSL? I would imagine you could go somewhat cheaper than $79 given it would be hard to exhaust a high-quota plan at those speeds...

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#56

Post by cyphar »

Yeah, shit's fucked. To be fair though, it's not like Labor would've delivered on their promises either.

Honestly the whole thing smells very strongly of a money-making racket on the part of Telstra (how much money did the CEOs profit from the privatisation only to sell their 100-year-old waterlogged copper back to the government?).

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#57

Post by ajdlinux »

I'm lucky enough to live in an area where I can get ~70-80Mb/s down and ~30-50Mbps up VDSL2 for a (by Australian standards) reasonable price.

My suburb, unfortunately, hasn't been NBN-ified - but we still have a VDSL network courtesy of TransACT, the broadband provider that was created when the ACT Government decided to start laying FTTC fibre around Canberra back in the 1990s.

There's a lot of talk of locally-driven "municipal broadband" in the US, but very little in Australia. I expect that's mostly because local governments in Australia are far less powerful than in the United States (which, for the most part, I'm actually okay with) and wouldn't be able to raise taxes and spend them on broadband projects. The Australian Capital Territory, of course, is a special case - a local government with state-level powers, who already owned an electricity network when they decided to go into FTTN as well.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#59

Post by bootload »

The NBN is a tale of geography. If you live in the CBD mainland capital city you will get good coverage. Even that it's patchy. If you live more than 30km out access get mostly worse. If you live in the bush, the best you'll get is crappy satellite or your own jury rigged antenna to the nearest town.

If you were lucky enough to a) live close to the city b) have telephone poles c) live near a telephone exchange and were chosen by Telstra to get FTTN before the change of government you can get 100Mb+ access. [0] Otherwise you are out of luck.

This is largely a political issue that could be fixed by leadership. Australia has weak leaders of both sides of the political spectrum.

Market forces are supposed to fix this problem according to our learned leaders, but it won't. Australia is big, really big and we needed a federally funded optic fibre solution to the country even if it cost a lot.

   Here's my version of NBN... Exchange->fibre->POTS 
   https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/pots
Using technology developed during the early 1900s.

[0] Relative has NBN fibre to the node.

Re: How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

#60

Post by jpatokal »

andrewstuart wrote: post #47

If you posed the question "Who in the world would be the worst possible person to decide on how to construct a nationwide high speed computer network?", the you might come up with a list that included Tony Abbott. I genuinely believe that Tony Abbott really didn't even understand what purpose the Internet serves, apart from email and playing games - he saw it as some sort of frivolous discretionary spend - definitely…

For HNers wondering who the hell Tony Abbott is, he's basically the Australian equivalent of George Bush (Jr): conservative politician and former prime minister who's, let's say, not known for his grasp of the finer details of policy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Abbott

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