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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

#141

Post by jaredklewis »

loa_in_ wrote: post #140

> In 2013, Australia ranked 30th for average internet speeds. The NBN was meant to improve that, but the most recent standings ranked Australia 50th. Well, I'm pretty sure 50th place today is a lot better than 30th back then still. They might not have the best internet around, but it probably got better for the users in that timespan. It smells to me like typical misused statistics in search of click-earning controve…

How is this misusage of statistics? Given that internet speeds are a moving target, it really only makes sense to compare with other nations. If Australia doubles their internet speed that's great and all, but if the rest of the world makes a 10x improvement, sure doesn't seem like much of an accomplishment.

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

#142

Post by masklinn »

Gatsky wrote: post #44
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…

Yeah this is spot on. Other comments are blaming the Liberals, but the reality is if you are an effective leader trying to create a huge infrastructure project that you care deeply about, you need to come up with a solution that will last through a change in government, with aligned economic and political contingencies. If you are just governing for fun then you do what Rudd did. It always lets you blame the next gov…

> Other comments are blaming the Liberals

Perfectly rightfully.

> if you are an effective leader trying to create a huge infrastructure project that you care deeply about, you need to come up with a solution that will last through a change in government, with aligned economic and political contingencies.

On the other hand, the opposition can either try to work with or lie your ass off and sabotage everything, the latter being exactly what the liberals did with the NBN.

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

#143

Post by masklinn »

Retric wrote: post #20
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?

"Liberals" does not mean "left-leaning" in most of the commonwealth or even the world outside the US, "social-liberal" does but "liberal" on its own is generally center-right and sometimes "conservative-right", the latter being the case for the Liberal Party of Australia (which always existed in opposition to Labour).

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

#144

Post by dalbasal »

Gatsky wrote: post #44
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…

Yeah this is spot on. Other comments are blaming the Liberals, but the reality is if you are an effective leader trying to create a huge infrastructure project that you care deeply about, you need to come up with a solution that will last through a change in government, with aligned economic and political contingencies. If you are just governing for fun then you do what Rudd did. It always lets you blame the next gov…

It's all "damned if you do" or don't regardless.

It's no secret that our political systems have problems, with this sort of thing. Factionalism, corporate interests and other monority special interest, continuity.

Sometimes policies have a chance of being coherent, usually through a small group of "authors" that have a clear idea of what they want to do. This is generally when a governing party gives free reign to some internal group.

The other option is bipartisan commitees & a "wide consulatation approach". This is how the vast majority of australian laws get made. There's an alarm-like flashing oof lights (red or green) in parliament when an attempt is made to do things otherwise (a split).

Anyways, the standard process means compromise. Specifically, comromise between all "relevant" participants. The two big parties, obviously. Several interested factions within those parties, and various corporate interests usually represented by specific industry chambers of commerce or similar. Everyone needs to get something.

Coherence and compromise just don't go together, not when it comes to policy/legislation.

Look at the americans. They've been fiddling with health policy for a decade. As far as I can tell, the more attention the issue gets, the worse it gets.

Anyway, apart from being "pro-internet" labour never really had a solid agenda. The parliamentary end of this sausage factory was basically "the internet is important!!" vs "why spend 100bn on streaming cat vids!?). The hyenas and crows did the rest.

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

#145

Post by rayiner »

ioquatix wrote: post #72
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.

Is this pricing accurate: https://ufb.org.nz/pricing-plans? I'm seeing prices like $150/month for symmetric 200/200: https://www.trustpower.co.nz/-/media/files/terms/legal-offer.... That's pretty expensive (about what I'm paying for symmetric gigabit with TV and phone in the U.S.).

It's interesting to note that the compromises made with UFB would not fly in the U.S. Liberals would kill it as a handout to rich people ("if you can't afford to feed your family by the end of the month, you can't afford $75 a month for the broadband service")[1] and conservatives would kill it because it's not available more than 50 km from an urban area.

[1] http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140219/TECHNOLOGY/140...

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

#146

Post by chrismorgan »

boyter wrote: post #55
gtkspert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Vivid Wireless offer unlimited 4G data capped at 12 Mbps for $90 a month. Its on the Optus network so your experience will depend on what the coverage is like where you live.

From the critical information summary (https://static.vividwireless.com.au/online/Wireless-Broadban...):

> Whilst the Vividwireless service uses the Optus 4G Plus network, it is designed to be used in the home and its data speeds are different to mobile and mobile broadband speeds on the Optus 4G Plus network. In metropolitan areas where you connect to 2300 MHz coverage at your nominated address, download and upload speeds of up to 12/1Mbps are available.

And the cheaper 200GB plan CIS (https://static.vividwireless.com.au/online/Wireless-Broadban...) adds,

> Otherwise in other compatible coverage areas, download and upload speeds of up to 5/1Mbps are available.

So, 12/1 or 5/1 rather than 23/12 or 45/15 as I tend to get out in the country on the same network.

Yes, hiding this information in there is misleading, because people aren’t generally aware of what the different frequency bands and relevant 4G technologies (TDD/FDD) mean and think that “4G” is just one thing.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

ggm wrote: post #70
raides wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the Aussie's credit the infrastructure and the regulations instilled on businesses there have always been Federally imposed. Since the mid-90s the government has imposed many regulations for control that has impeded much of the free market progress for network infrastructure. Those regulations coupled with needed external transit installations have not helped. For a long period of time the government would pick an…

I'm not personally sold on the baby bell model of regional monopoly. I think the whole FIOS debacle, and what happened when google started offering citywide fibre says a lot about how US telco industry operates. Lobby your way to the people who make rules and then get rules passed to shut down anything which freaks your own monopoly of indifference.

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by neotek »

tmeasday wrote: post #106
dibstern wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought he was going too hard on Turnbull (current PM). What has he done that justifies your appraisal of his brief term? People seem to be forgetting about Abbott, who in my opinion did indeed fuck around with rubbish policy his entire term (helped into the grave by treasurer/idiot Joe Hockey).

I think you're forgetting that Turnbull was the communications minister under Abbott. He's square to blame for this.

Not just that, but the Liberals presented Turnbull as some sort of masterful IT expert on the extremely flimsy pretext that he made a shitload of money flipping an ISP two decades ago.

He has a slightly better grasp on some areas of technology than the average person perhaps, but certainly no more than the absolute bare minimum any communications minister should be required to have.

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

#149

Post by chrismorgan »

Gatsky wrote: post #50
gtkspert wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's not exactly 'cheap', but if you need 100-140Gb a month there are data only sims for $70 monthly from Optus and resellers. They guarantee minimum 12Mbps supposedly. In metro areas with the latest LTE modems people are pulling 200Mbps down. If you need lots of data though, the cost becomes less viable.

Optus’s 100GB (if paid monthly)/140GB (if paid annually) plan: http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/mobile-broadband/data...

When I was investigating this stuff six months ago, I believe these plans were somewhat different (and indeed the Critical Information Summaries for them seem to have dates of May and July), with only the first month being cheaper or having as much data or something. (That the month-to-month one still uses the wording “$70 for the first month” on the marketing page makes me uneasy, but I don’t think there’s a catch, I think it’s merely outdated wording.)

I shall consider switching from amaysim to Optus.

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

#150

Post by neotek »

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…

Sure, and we'll never need more than 640k of RAM, either.
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