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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

#71

Post by mmerlin »

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.

Sick of politicians?

Sustainable Australia party is who you're looking for. William Bourke is eminently sensible. Dick Smith joined. The anti-corruption fighter who wrote "Game of Mates" Dr Cameron Murray is running for them too.

http://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au

http://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/qld

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

#72

Post by ioquatix »

ggm wrote: post #30

First common mistake: Yes, Australia is geographically huge. No, it is not sparce. it is a highly urbanized economy in terms of geographic concentration of the population. Therefore, the oft-quoted extreme expense "oh, its so much more expensive to do it in OZ compared to ..." is bullshit: its not. There are of course some very expensive locations to service, but thats a USO problem. Overall, the cost of deployment o…

I'm glad it finally happened in NZ and as you say, it's awesome. I'm rocking 1000/500 - the biggest limitation is international throughput and latency which I suppose they are working on and improving all the time.

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

#73

Post by aplummer »

zmmmmm wrote: post #64
aplummer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extremely biased and misleading take on the situation. Look at premises passed when the LNP came into power. https://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbnco2/documents/nbn-ro... Total activated in mid 2014, ~250k. That is completely nuts, you make it sound like this was a steady ship the LNP tipped over.

What is biased is citing premises passed at an really phase in a project which deliberately planned to roll out difficult sites first. Of course there were not many premises passed, that is meaningless without context.

It wasn't though. The rollout follows political seats exactly to the street. In Brisbane this means that it followed the border of marginal ALP seats that cross the river and back again instead of doing adjacent houses.

It's also not meaningless 5 years into a project that was announced 7 years prior.

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

#74

Post by aplummer »

aplummer wrote: post #73
zmmmmm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is biased is citing premises passed at an really phase in a project which deliberately planned to roll out difficult sites first. Of course there were not many premises passed, that is meaningless without context.

It wasn't though. The rollout follows political seats exactly to the street. In Brisbane this means that it followed the border of marginal ALP seats that cross the river and back again instead of doing adjacent houses. It's also not meaningless 5 years into a project that was announced 7 years prior.

I don't even vote LNP, but you have to wonder about the efficiency of a rollout where you get faster internet driving an hour out of Melbourne than Fitzroy or a lot of the CBD. For a project originally estimated at 4.7 then 15 then 42 billion, dense paying customers early should probably have been prioritised.

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

#75

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

mmerlin wrote: post #71
andrewstuart wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sick of politicians? Sustainable Australia party is who you're looking for. William Bourke is eminently sensible. Dick Smith joined. The anti-corruption fighter who wrote "Game of Mates" Dr Cameron Murray is running for them too. http://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au http://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/qld

Unfortunately, Dick Smith's reputation has been somewhat tainted by getting involved with a racist national disgrace:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/08/17/hanson-dick-sm...

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

#76

Post by aplummer »

andrewstuart wrote: post #33
aplummer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about the original plan being preferable. The original NBN plan was a pipe dream in terms of cost feasibility, the rollout was aligned electoral boundaries, and the country first mentality means you get 12 megabit per second ADSL2 across from the Telstra building in the Melbourne CBD, and 100mbit in a large number of country towns.

I live in the city but "country first" is exactly the right way to go. Internet service in Australia outside the cities is absolutely terrible. It would be a game changer for the whole of Australia if Internet was first class everywhere. Then it truly wouldn't matter where you lived for certain classes of work. And regarding cost, well I think this is precisely what the government should be spending OUR money on. The…

We'll just have to disagree. Last weekend I was at a farm in Glenburn with NBN, but since on the farm they get 4g which is easier they just use that instead, especially just for email and occasional agri-mapping software. Meanwhile software developers in Fitzroy working from home get ~5mbit - ~10mbit and actually need the data.

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

#77

Post by mmerlin »

Benjamin_Dobell wrote: post #75
mmerlin wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sick of politicians? Sustainable Australia party is who you're looking for. William Bourke is eminently sensible. Dick Smith joined. The anti-corruption fighter who wrote "Game of Mates" Dr Cameron Murray is running for them too. http://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au http://www.sustainableaustralia.org.au/qld

Unfortunately, Dick Smith's reputation has been somewhat tainted by getting involved with a racist national disgrace: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/08/17/hanson-dick-sm...

Somewhat, although he backed away from One Nation after Pauline wore a Burka in parliament.

It's a shame the media has conflated any discussion of an immigration policy with racism (ie because of One Nation)

Dick's not running though, so checkout the candidates and party, they are academics and scientists for the common good.

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

#78

Post by bigger_cheese »

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.

I have the "good" NBN (FTTP) it is much faster than my old ADSL2 (eg Netflix youtube etc. don't buffer constantly anymore) but also less reliable there are semi regular outages. I've had 3 1 hour+ outages in October so far. I normally wouldn't have an issue except during one of the outages I was working remotely from home and needed to make a semi-important skype meeting.

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

#79

Post by chrismorgan »

gtkspert wrote: post #37
Gatsky wrote: post #13

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 ego…

Where do you get your cheap 4G/LTE? Best I can find is prohibitively expensive, especially if I wan't to stream 4K content...

I use amaysim’s 50GB data pack, at $65 for 28 days, and on the Optus network. In the country town of Stawell (a few thousand people), I get roughly 23/12Mbps. I’m moving to Navarre soon (about a hundred people), and get about 45/15Mbps there.

For me, living by myself and working from home most days, it’s substantially better than ADSL2+, as it’s faster, more reliable, doesn’t lock me into any contract, allows me to use my internet supply from other places as well, all for the same price as ADSL2+ (which is admittedly generally $10–20 per month dearer in the country for a given service level, and at this price point would include 100GB instead of my 50GB, but I simply don’t need that).

This arrangement works well for me.

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

#80

Post by justasitsounds »

boyter wrote: post #65
nrki wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its on the Optus network Actually it's a completely separate network to Optus' 4G network. Optus bought them several years ago. It's also highly throttled and utterly shite for most users. I was one.

Useful to know. I was considering moving over to them to save money on my ADSL2+ connection. My area has fantastic 4G speeds without any congestion issues as its semi rural and I was expecting them to be quite good.

Have been with vivid for about 12 months, was supposed to be a temporary arrangement while I waited for my building's strata to fix the internal wiring between my apartment and the MDF in the basement. All of the NBN horror stories and the strata's malignant incompetence mean I'm still using it and it's pretty solid in my experience.

I'm in central Sydney and normally average around 10mbps down

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