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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

#41

Post by perilunar »

redcap wrote: post #32
Retric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Liberal party is the conservative party. No Conservative party in Australia AFAIK. The Liberal party is broadly social-conservative, pro-business. The Labor party is broadly speaking socially liberal and pro-labour.

> No Conservative party in Australia AFAIK

There's the Family First Party, who merged with Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives. There's also the Christian Democratic Party (Fred Nile).

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

#42

Post by contingencies »

bhalley wrote: post #38

Tasmania got very lucky with the rollout, we are mostly covered with FTTP, Fixed Wireless and only some FTTN. We are also lucky enough to have a local business (Launtel) pushing the constraints of the NBN by offering Gigabit at prices that aren't unreasonable ($14.50/day). They are treating it as a new pricing model, why bill the same as ADSL when there are no costs associated with setup and plan changes? They are bi…

Wow. Just wow. My advice is buy cheap real estate and start an internatianal incubator. The weather alone should keep people indoors and focused... only half joking!

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

#43

Post by girvo »

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.

There was the Australian Democrats. I’m still tempted to see if I can resurrect them.

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

#44

Post by Gatsky »

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 government though, as he is doing now.

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

#45

Post by qzervaas »

aplummer wrote: post #34
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…

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.

It was an unsteady ship that could be righted with some well-known and publicised fixes. Instead they filled it with more water and blamed everybody but themselves.

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

#46

Post by girvo »

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…

The craziest part is that I was getting 100/60 that actually ran FASTER than it’s advertised speed, unlimited (truly) for $69 a month, with TPGs private FTTB network. But I had to move, and now I’m on an Opticom network; $99 a month for slower upload, but I do get a static v4 IP, so that’s a plus for what I use it for. And this is all in Fortitude Valley, basically the centre of Brisbane...

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

#47

Post by vacri »

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…

> 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.

s/some/most/. HFC is the predominant plan for most of the capital cities (I think not... hobart? or was it adelaide?).

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

#48

Post by jimmux »

perilunar wrote: post #27
Retric wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The Liberal Party of Australia is a conservative party. (The ACCC really should force them to change their name due to false advertising)

There's an argument to be made that they are socially conservative but economically liberal. That seems to be less true over time, however.

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

#49

Post by vacri »

flukus wrote: post #36
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…

> 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. If everyone does that you'll be lucky to stream youtube videos at 240p. Wireless bandwidth is inherently shared between everyone, wired is dedicated.

> wired is dedicated.

Cable internet is shared. Most of the NBN rollout (HFC) is on ageing cable internet puchased from another vendor.

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

#50

Post by Gatsky »

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...

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.

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