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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

#101

Post by IntelMiner »

flukus wrote: post #29
craigvn wrote: post #17

As an Australian, I think it can be summed up by two reasons. 1. All large scale infrastructure rollouts are difficult and subject to problems and blowouts. 2. It was made a political issue. New government decided to make major revamps for no reason other than it was different to the previous government so they could use it as an election issue.

> New government decided to make major revamps for no reason other than it was different to the previous government so they could use it as an election issue. The worst part was the nationals. In 2007 they were bitching that it needed to be fiber, by 2010 they were saying copper is the future.

Let's be fair here, the Nats are a bunch of spineless cowards who'd rather play follow-the-leader with the Libs than represent the bush

Even though they'll be career politicians, because nobody will vote anything other than Nationals in those electorates, there's much more money to be made in a life of lobbying afterwards

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

#102

Post by spangry »

voltagex_ wrote: post #92
spangry wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Internode's sort of okay still. TPG routes are slower though. I have unlimited FTTP NBN, static IPv4 and a v6 /56 for $110 a month.

Man, that's pretty nice. Looking at the TPG plan page I'm guessing that's at 100/40? What's bandwidth contention like? I know TPG cop a bit of flak on whirlpool, but for the 2 or so years I had ADSL with them I never had a problem...

When you say v6 /56, does that mean you can have 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 addressable hosts? [I don't CIDR gud...]

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

#104

Post by ue_ »

eng_monkey wrote: post #94
benjoffe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which parts of the constitution do you think are bad?

E.g. it does not explicitly outline the right to freedom of expression. It is sort of implied within Government, but not necessarily.

I don't know if it is related to the constitutional issue, but someone was convicted of having Simposons pornography because it pictured child characters from the show.

The UK, Canada, NZ etc. and otger countries (to a weaker extent) have similar laws. It is ridiculous in my view.

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

#105

Post by spacehunt »

bootload wrote: post #59

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 we…

> If you live in the CBD mainland capital city

Actually just had a look at NBNco's rollout map; both Melbourne and Sydney's CBD are blank.

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

#106

Post by ytta »

daemin wrote: post #72
marak830 wrote: post #8

I was born and raised in Australia, I left for Japan just as the NBN was beginning to roll out. It's an absolute disgrace how much it has been butchered. I have thoughts about returning occasionally, but going from 2 GB/s unlimited for Aus$ 40 ish a month, back to those speeds and prices is a major factor for me staying here. It is a massive quality of life difference to have amazing internet.

I used to have decent ADSL2+ while living in Inner Suburb Sydney, I got close to 20mbit/s. Now I am living in Poland and have 250/20 unlimited for less than a third of the price. The whole NBN project just irritates me at how it has been mis-managed, by both of the political parties. Yes, Labor included since they could have sped things up by having Fibre to the basement for most apartment buildings in the cities, an…

Just a bit of curiousity - how exactly did you wind up in Poland? Working on a start up?

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

#107

Post by d_t_w »

strken wrote: post #75
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not Australian, but I went back and looked at it again and I can't see any possible way to interpret it that isn't racist. Perhaps you could fill me in?

I read it as a statement that the problems faced by remote aboriginal communities are structural and obey institutional inertia; that they are hard problems. We have a history of well-intentioned reformers coming in and making everything much worse: the stolen generation, the NTER, laws against alcohol consumption that cause even more destructive patterns of behaviour, etc. I've known men and women who trained as pol…

Thanks, what an intriguing level of detail to draw from the cartoon, I have to admit I never read even the slightest amount of that from it.

To me the cartoon is staggeringly racist. Clearly, deliberately, outrageously racist. And I am deliberate in my use of the words "deliberate" and "outrageous" because personally I believe in Australia that the proprietor of this particular newspaper makes his money by manufacturing outrage.

To me the cartoon is as racist as the day is long, it's as racist as it is blunt. There's no finesse. There's no guile. There's no dog-whistle or wink to the unspoken. It's a full frontal racist scaling of the ramparts. Which is why I find your comment so intriguing, because you clearly hold a detailed opinion, well communicated, of many different facets you have drawn from the content and how they relate back to social issues in the Northern Territory and yet none of what confronts me occurs to you.

So can I ask you. If I were the proprietor of a newspaper that liked this cartoon but needed it to actually be racist. What would you change? Could you change anything to make this cartoon racist? Or is it not possible. Perhaps we just disagree on what racism is.

Personally, I can't think of a single thing that I could change to increase the amount of racism it expresses. I'm interested to hear your opinion.

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

#108

Post by flukus »

shard972 wrote: post #91
flukus wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The budget was already blowing out beyond 2x the cost According to partisan figures that were often repeated but never justified. I don't doubt it would have blown out, world class infrastructure would have been worth it at twice the cost. Instead we have the current NBN who's costs have blown out just as much to delivery 20th century infrastructure.

> According to partisan figures that were often repeated but never justified. I mean if you pretend that the $30~ billion paid to telstra had absolutely nothing to do with the NBN then yea you can avoid the 2x figure but I still have no idea how you can say the two things are completely unrelated. > Instead we have the current NBN who's costs have blown out just as much to delivery 20th century infrastructure. How? I…

The 30 billion to Telstra was the liberals to buy the copper network, not part of the Labor plan. 30 billion for a network the CEO of the owning company said was minutes to midnight a decade earlier.

What do you think is more efficient, digging up the footpath once and giving everyone a fiber connection, or doing it 50+ times? Because if everyone completes the line to their house, that's what will happen.

More importantly, if you're trying to start a business or provide a government service, you can't rely on everyone having a 100Mb connection, you have to plan for the lowest common denominator.

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

#109

Post by boyter »

i336_ wrote: post #85
boyter wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are on FTTN which will comprise more than 60% of the network and are only guaranteed up-to 12 mbit for the coexistence period and 25 mbit after. Unless you happen to be connected to a node less than 50m away (most will be over 400m) there is no chance your connection will support that option.

-_- Wow :( This is insane. We're getting laser beams, and they're literally going to be worse than cable! I wonder if NBN Co would agree to do a FTTH setup if I covered the fiber and installation. Hmm. They might, but then I could be stuck with a $200+/mo Internet bill... Shakes head ...this is just infuriating, how completely this has been mis-sold and bungled.

There is a technology choice program to upgrade to FTTP which was promised to cost less than $5000. A quote costs a non refundable $600 and the estimates I have seen have all been in the tens of thousands of dollars. About 20 people have taken the option so far.

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

#110

Post by daemin »

ytta wrote: post #106
daemin wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to have decent ADSL2+ while living in Inner Suburb Sydney, I got close to 20mbit/s. Now I am living in Poland and have 250/20 unlimited for less than a third of the price. The whole NBN project just irritates me at how it has been mis-managed, by both of the political parties. Yes, Labor included since they could have sped things up by having Fibre to the basement for most apartment buildings in the cities, an…

Just a bit of curiousity - how exactly did you wind up in Poland? Working on a start up?

Working as a Video Games Developer.

Also Polish by birth and wanted an easier way to travel around Europe.

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