How Australia's $49B internet network came to be ridiculed • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by raides » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:46 AM UTC

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…

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 and choose companies based on their ideals rather than their talent. This has hindered progress from both sides of the fence by liberal and conservative administrations.

I ran a semi successful ISP and consulting company for a decade in the US and I have always enjoyed the tiering system we setup vs other country Infrastructures. It wasn't until recently when the FCC gained control that states started to use the new regulation power to hinder progress. I am still on the fence about the whole thing because the exploitation has not been bad in my area but the horror stores I have heard in other states make me sad. Hopefully it will get back to normal.

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

#62

Post by boyter » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:49 AM UTC

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…

The fact that you get that where as the majority get up-to 12 Mbps is enough to make me cry. I am still waiting for any connection and happy that at least my ADSL2+ gets 15 Mbps solid pretty much 100% of the time.

I think the only way I could ever be happy with how the NBN story finishes if if Turnbull and Abbott serve gaol time for deliberately acting against the best interests of Australia and its people.

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

#63

Post by nrki » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:49 AM UTC

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.

> 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.

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

#64

Post by zmmmmm » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:49 AM UTC

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.

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.

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

#65

Post by boyter » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:53 AM UTC

nrki wrote: post #63

boyter wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

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

#66

Post by robocat » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:54 AM UTC

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…

My main issue is that the investment enables digital consumption, without much impact on production.

For example, a flaw I had with the NZ rollout: it was deployed to citizens before businesses. It feels kind of sad as a business owner when your business remains on VDSL while the suburbs are getting fibre (although lovely to get Netflix at home on fibre!).

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

#67

Post by ianhowson » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 2:56 AM UTC

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 used OVO for a while -- IIRC it was $60/mo for 50GB. No speed limits, Optus network.

I used this for work and the kids shared the 4MBps DSL.

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

#68

Post by Sag0Sag0 » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 3:06 AM UTC

cknight wrote: post #39

redcap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're on the money, but just a bit out of date. We have a (very) new far-right party called the Australian Conservatives now. The creation of a former Liberal party senator.

Ahh, make australia great again.

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

#69

Post by ggm » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 3:09 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #66

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…

My main issue is that the investment enables digital consumption, without much impact on production. For example, a flaw I had with the NZ rollout: it was deployed to citizens before businesses. It feels kind of sad as a business owner when your business remains on VDSL while the suburbs are getting fibre (although lovely to get Netflix at home on fibre!).

This is a totally valid point. I'm on the consumers side, so to me it made sense to bulk out the build for eyeballs but not enabling SMEs to leverage high bandwidth was silly. The stuff they did in Wellington making a city heart fibre ring some years back had lots of upsides.

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

#70

Post by ggm » Fri, Oct 27, 2017, 3:11 AM UTC

raides wrote: post #61

Gatsky wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.