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How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

bbc.com

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Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#11

Post by gonzo41 »

andrewstuart wrote: post #8
gonzo41 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't waste that anger. Vote left (Or at least be very careful with your preference flows) at the next election. And get everyone you can to start talking/pushing for a Royal Commission into this.

I loathe all politicians including the left wing. I just loathe the right wing more. None of them represent the citizens. They represent their own grasping self interest. And I certainly don't agree with the far left who seem to have an anti corporate/anti capitalist whiff to them ... I'm a committed capitalist AND green and they is no political party aligned to that.

I'm not discounting that, but use what you've got. Your vote.

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#12

Post by ClassyJacket »

The tl;dr is that Australia started a fibre-to-the-premises project for the whole country (93% of premises, plus rural 7% on wireless), then a conservative government got in power and decided to deliberately destroy it. To do this, they changed it to fibre-to-the-node (DSL) instead. Instead of gigabit to the home, they're spending more money providing people with connections anywhere between 4mbps and 100 at the absolute most, with no possibility of upgrades. The cost to do this, is, of course, far more money in the long term than installing the fibre. Some people in metropolitan areas will get connected to the existing coaxial network, which is going to have huge contention problems as it's stretched far beyond what it was ever intended for.

It's the biggest trainwreck of an infrastructure project in Australia's history and will set every person and business back for decades, and the blame lies squarely with the Liberal Party.

The current head of the project has gone on record saying that Australians don't want fast internet and wouldn't use it if it was free.

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#13

Post by Gatsky »

By 'fit for service' they mean 12Mbps down, or average copper wire speeds. What's the point?

Although the original goal was great, in hindsight it appears that it could not be delivered anywhere near the original budget. For context, after a prolonged period of centre-right government, a centre-left government was elected, led by Kevin Rudd. He had a progressive agenda, but due to a combination of his unmitigated egotism and internal party conflicts, he instituted a variety of programs that were poorly conceived and executed, and was ultimately ousted by his own party in a fairly disasterous manner. The National Broadband network was a product of this highly disappointing and dysfunctional period of government. Since then the problems have continued across a change back to the centre-right government, who with a very slim majority have essentially stuffed around for the last few years with a lame duck leader who seems hamstrung by the ultra conservatives in his own party.

For my part, I'm dropping all wires and switching to 4G/LTE, where I can stream 4K content, get decent uploads and still pay less than I would on the National Broadband network.

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#14

Post by [deleted] »

DigitalSea wrote: post #3

I truly fear the day the NBN comes to my area. I am currently with Telstra and fortunately have HFC, I get pretty reliable speeds between 112 and 115mbps, with ping of 9ms. I am a developer and I rely on my currently decent connection to make money, video call clients in other countries, transfer large files (to and fro) if speeds were to suffer resulting in the inability to communicate properly, it would be crushing…

[deleted]

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#15

Post by perilunar »

andrewstuart wrote: post #8
gonzo41 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't waste that anger. Vote left (Or at least be very careful with your preference flows) at the next election. And get everyone you can to start talking/pushing for a Royal Commission into this.

I loathe all politicians including the left wing. I just loathe the right wing more. None of them represent the citizens. They represent their own grasping self interest. And I certainly don't agree with the far left who seem to have an anti corporate/anti capitalist whiff to them ... I'm a committed capitalist AND green and they is no political party aligned to that.

What about the Reason Party (ex. Sex Party)?

They are broadly Libertarian but more pro-environment than the Lib-Dems.

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#16

Post by novos »

DigitalSea wrote: post #3

I truly fear the day the NBN comes to my area. I am currently with Telstra and fortunately have HFC, I get pretty reliable speeds between 112 and 115mbps, with ping of 9ms. I am a developer and I rely on my currently decent connection to make money, video call clients in other countries, transfer large files (to and fro) if speeds were to suffer resulting in the inability to communicate properly, it would be crushing…

Just go with an RSP that is honest and provides decent bandwidth. Aussie Broadband are great and won't even let you sign up if they don't believe they have enough capacity in your area.

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#17

Post by cknight »

hackits wrote: post #7
DigitalSea wrote: post #3

I truly fear the day the NBN comes to my area. I am currently with Telstra and fortunately have HFC, I get pretty reliable speeds between 112 and 115mbps, with ping of 9ms. I am a developer and I rely on my currently decent connection to make money, video call clients in other countries, transfer large files (to and fro) if speeds were to suffer resulting in the inability to communicate properly, it would be crushing…

When migrating from 56K modem to ADSL it was amazing. The same cannot be said from the migration from ADSL2+ to NBN Fiber to the home was nice, but wasn't WOW. The whole NBN has turned into a complete joke. If they would of stuck to rolling out fiber everywhere it would solved everything. Nope we now have to have a hybrid of everything.

This depends on your ADSL2+ line. I'm paying for "up to 24mbit" but the line length means I get 3.

The rest of my street is now on HFC NBN but my house is an outlier, still waiting on additional work. Been waiting since May, I suspect it'll take until the next May.

With 3 people in the house, going from 3 mbit to 25 or 50 will make a pretty huge difference to us. Probably about as much as when we first jumped from 56k to 256k ADSL 15 years ago.

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#18

Post by bobbles »

owengriffiths wrote: post #4

This article didn't mention what Australians are choosing to do when they have a range of speeds. According to the figures NBN released 80% of customers aren't even paying for the top speed they could. Similarly, this piece from Vox notes that fast internet just is not nearly as valuable as proponents claimed. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/only-17p... https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/17/132…

It really is on par with saying something like hard drives should never get bigger because we dont use the space.

The capabilities need the infrastructure in place first so that they can grow to use them, it's impossible for the other way around to occur as you cannot transfer something that requires faster connections before they exist.

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#19

Post by hiisukun »

owengriffiths wrote: post #4

This article didn't mention what Australians are choosing to do when they have a range of speeds. According to the figures NBN released 80% of customers aren't even paying for the top speed they could. Similarly, this piece from Vox notes that fast internet just is not nearly as valuable as proponents claimed. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/only-17p... https://www.vox.com/new-money/2016/10/17/132…

That's at least partly because the speeds you pay for are "up to" 100mbps. Many who pay the extra (~double a normal adsl fee) don't get anywhere near the advertised max speed.

Besides, what people pay for and need in October 2017 is probably less than a child starting school will use in 2022 when they hit year 5. This is a national infrastructure project - surely it should be built with the future in mind?

This is without discussing upload speeds - not everyone is a purely downloading user. Viewing a population of civilians as a population of solely consumers seems a common folly.

I recommend the four corners tv show [1] (linked in the original piece), likely the cause of the extra media attention on the NBN lately.

[1] http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/whats-wrong-with-the-nbn/9077...

Re: How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed

#20

Post by Retric »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #12

The tl;dr is that Australia started a fibre-to-the-premises project for the whole country (93% of premises, plus rural 7% on wireless), then a conservative government got in power and decided to deliberately destroy it. To do this, they changed it to fibre-to-the-node (DSL) instead. Instead of gigabit to the home, they're spending more money providing people with connections anywhere between 4mbps and 100 at the abso…

Wait, if the Conservative party decided to destroy it how is that the fault of the Liberal Party?
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