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The Australian Broadband Disaster
David Gerard writes "Monopolies are bad, mmmkay? Robert Clark of TelecomAsia discusses the disaster that is broadband in Australia - its 2% takeup putting Australia behind such dynamic economies as Estonia. 'Telstra controls the local loop, is the largest mobile carrier with two digital networks, is the largest retail ISP, the largest wholesale data and Internet provider, and is a 50% shareholder in the biggest pay TV company.'"
I've heard that many (all?) of the Australian broadband options have limits on how much you can download per month. I hope it's not a sign of things to come in the rest of the world.
... they're anti-competitive too.
Read this post for an example. Basically they don't tell the other ISPs on their wholesalers list when new exchanges are ADSL-enabled, so that customers sign up with Telstra because they think they can't get a connection through other ISPs. (The author of that post, Simon Hackett, is the CEO of Internode, one of the larger - and best -- wholesale ISPs).
Telstra are the perfect example of why monopolies are bad.
They've taken every new technology that has come and instead of saying "How can we sell this to people and make a profit" they say "How can we exploit this and make as large a profit as we can."
I had ADSL with Telstra.
It was capped (bad) but I could live with that. Until they slammed me.
Short story:
I had the three gig cap. It cost $90 AUD/month for three gigs.
I went over one month (my bad) and used around 9 gigs (when I discovered file sharing). The bill I recieved however was for over $1200 AUD.
To sumamrise:
1st 3 gigs - Charge $90.
Each 3 gig block after that cost me $550 AUD.
At the time it was _not_possible_ to get a greater cap then 3 gigs - so if you wanted ten gigs to download that was what you paid.
Exploitation?
Yes.
They are scum and deserve to be broken up.
Estonia actually is a dynamic, hi-tech economy. They have the largest uptake of Internet banking in the world. When you park your car in Estonia, you pay the meter using your mobile phone. It is not surprising at all that they have a high uptake of DSL.
Both ex-British colonies, parlimentary systems (big ramifications there when passing legislation - like a benevolant dictatorship), both have positive views towards monopolies (the Canadian government sets them up from time to time), and both are large countries with small populations spread over a diverse and challenging geography. In countries like Australia and Canada, the Internet is important (small towns in the middle of nowhere - lived once in a town of 600 people - no where to buy shoes, cloths, books - and 6 hours from the nearest town).
In BC, we have one phone provider for local calling (Telus). They are also a monopoly in Alberta, and operate in other provinces. They provide DSL, but the government makes them sublease network access to smaller ISPs (though the price is tied to Telus). And they have Shaw/Rogers Cable to compete with (cable broadband).
Despite their monopoly in the telephone and DSL market, I pay $65 CDN (about $45 US) for a 2.5 megabit line. I could pay $45 CDN/$32 US for a 1.5 megabit line. What keeps the costs down? Well, Telus has to share their bandwidth; small ISPs can sell DSL that sits on the Telus networks. Second, the cable Interet providers provide an alternative.
I'm guessing Australia has neither of these two alternatives, and thus they get f*cked by a nasty monopoly.
Maybe for you. Maybe for everyone who bought shares.
But for the people who actually use Telstra it would not have been any easier to take at all.
Frankly even if broadband was perfect I would be somewhat worried that the Government is selling Telstra off for a value of only $45 Billion or so.
Thats only $2500 per Australian.
You could not even lay copper to each person's door for that amount of money let alone the rest of the infrastructure.
Check out this democrat's pdf (different to US democrats) for plenty of other good reasons why selling our goose that lays the golden egg is a bad idea.
There most certainly isn't anything "wrong" with it... when they setup the network they planned for 1-5 second pings during peak hours. So by their perception you are actually getting one of their "better" connections.
Sorry, couldn't resist. I know the kind of bullshit companies will pull. A couple years back when I got my first DSL line it took a full 4 months from my first signing up for service before I actually got my first connection to the DSLAM. All the while PacBell (the provider at that time, now SBC) told me every day "Your connection will be up tomorrow, don't worry".
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
I'm with optus@home, I can't wait to get rid of these rip off merchants, check out their plans -
Lite 550MB $64.95
Standard 3GB $79.95
Pro 5GB $154.95
Ultimate 10GB $305.95
I'm on the Standard 3GB a month for $80AUD - and btw, if you go over the 3GB your cable modem gets throttled down to 28.8kbps! Besides that, if I wanted to go for 5GB a month then that will be $155AUD! WTF is that! an extra 2GB a month and an increase of $70?!
Indeed it is a crisis, and iirc Microsoft warned about the crisis a few years ago, the article was on slashdot.
Don't worry, the country here is run by a bunch of cattle herding farmers who are afraid of technology and large populations. There won't be any incentive to fix the broadband price infrastructure for some time as they believe the internet is a latest craze like the hoola-hoop and yo-yo.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
.. ie that it can be regulated to offers good price and service.
;-)
For some times, here in france FT had a monopoly for the last kilometer link.
This shows that the DSL deployement was not so quick mainly because of the price
Now, that the last KM has been deregulated, the DSL market is booming : +100% on one year !
Some of the ISP use the provider services from FranceTelecom, other have their own core service. We even have some bank now offering DSL services (operated by third party ISP) ! OF course the most interrested thing is the price: 30â for a 1Mb no-limit DSL . And this is constantly decreasing as more as the deregulation is gaining momentum....
Ausis, put the pressure on your gov & telcos !
It worth wasting your time, to get better connectivity
-SLK
I have noticed a huge surgence of "capless" broadband plans in recent months.
Many ISP's including Dodo, escape net, TPG to name just a few have introduced unlimited download plans on their "slow" 256K/64K plans. This is fantastic news for home users except for those that have been locked into an 18 month contract with Telstra and are still capped at 3GB.
Incidently, though Australia's broadband usage is only 2% Nationally - it is actually increasing exponentially. Total number of ADSL/Cable users increased from 15,000 in July 2001 to almost 60,000 in June 2002 and it is still increasing rapidly. (See the ACCC)
Though growth may have slowed recently a little due to general unhappiness with Telstra's monopoly and bandwidth caps I see the influx of new ISP's and uncapped plans (thanks to comindico) as a good sign of more growth to come.
I have 10 Mbps/10 Mbps uncapped for $36/month here in Sweden. I do somewhere around 10 GB a day...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
IT policy in Australia is a national disgrace and will continue to be as long as Richard Alston is in charge. He has been dubbed Senator "Luddite" by The Register. Gross stupidity withstanding, everything he does is clearly to benefit one person: Richard Alston. I know someone who stood next to him in a photo shoot recently and she said Senator Alston spent about 30 minutes getting makeup done before the picture was taken. She also said his perfume (sorry cologne) stinks.
His website reflects his self-aggrandizing nature. Notice how Senator Luddite's name is plastered all over the website taking credit for his staffers work like this report on spam
His latest disaster was revealed in parliament recently when it was revealed that he spent $4 million dollars on his departments website. When the scandal broke, the press went around and received quotes from web shops for roughly $65000 for the exact same job. Have a look yourself. There are multiple javascript errors on the home page apparently. I'm not suprised. I've corresponded with this department and many of the staffers have problems receiving/sending email. It's a joke that this office should be setting IT policy in Australia
The Australian monopoly Telstra is supposed share their bandwidth too - they provide many base exchange services for smaller ISPs, and usually the uplink as well.
The problem is that all of the smaller ISPs are therefore dependant on Telstra's goodwill & timeliness. If Telstra "forget" to give the ISPs up-to-date information, or give their own ISP arm service priority, there's little the smaller ISPs can do.
You may not have to use ADSL - cable is an option for some (through Telstra). Optus are another major telco who provide local calls and broadband, through their own cable, though their market share is considerably less than Telstra's. Unfortunately, few areas have both Telstra and Optus cable available, so there's little actual competition between them. And only a relatively small % of the population can get cable at all, so ADSL is the only option for many, which means you're dependant on Telstra again.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Sure 3gig is fine for surfing the web. But I happen to be a big gamer, and have been in several Beta Programs for AC2, Eve-online, Chrome, SWG and a few others. SWG was a 2gig download!!! There goes my cap for the next month!!
I refuse to have a sig... dammit!
Here, they rejected one customer applying through iiNet, a smaller ISP, claiming line quality was insufficient. The customer applied again through Telstra's own ISP, and was accepted. His ADSL service worked perfectly.
He complained to the Telecommunications Ombudsman publicised this, and shortly afterwards received an offer from Telstra to refund his connection fee, provide discounted service & upgrade his link too. He accepted, and also publicised Telstra's offer, causing more controversy. Telstra's explanation for the original problem was that "line test quality tests varied according to the weather".
Shortly after that, he was notified by Telstra that his service was to be disconnected, as he was "too far from the exchange". His ADSL service was still working perfectly, but apparently he shouldn't have been connected at all, regardless of the line quality...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Yeh I'm going to be getting broadband shortly too. As quoted in an earlier post, it costs almost double the 3gb plan to get 5gb (instead of decreasing as you would expect with economies of scale).
The only options for me with cable are either Optus or Telstra. And one thing not mentioned by other poster's are that if you want to get cable internet in an apartment, you general *cant* get telstra (their policy it appears is to not support apartment blocks), so you have to go with optus.
So yes, I will also be bending over to get cable from Telstra for exorbitant prices. I cannot wait until we get some competition.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
Amen.
For two years, my network had NEVER gone down, for as far as I can tell. In the three weeks after the buyout, my connection has been a roller coaster enthusiast's dream. I can't go a day without disconnecting for two one to three hour sessions.
In a strange irony, I was watching cable TV yesterday (they own our cable TV too), they had a commericial about "earning respect from the customers." Midway through, it lost the connection and was off for the next two hours.
Yes, almost all broadband providers have download caps (typically around 1 - 4Gb/month), but that's not a problem for most people, just leeches mostly.
I downloaded RedHat 8 on Telstra cable. Came to about 1.5Gb. I had a 3Gb cap.
Being a bit of a software dev nut, I also downloaded things like J#, updates to the .NET framework, the Java SDK, Apache 2 and related modules (PHP, Perl, Python), security updates for windows and ... well you can see where this is going, can't you?
I've spoken of all legit software, but in a week, without trying, I could have pushed my cap - and then paid the 20c per Mb over the limit.
No fuckin' thanks. I'm glad it serves you well, but to me it's barely worth the money. I'm currently on a dial-up with no download cap and unlimited hours (by lack of choice - no ADSL/Cable in a new estate apparrently) - and I'm almost as happy as I would be with cable.
4 years ago, I got cable internet within a few months of its initial availability in Sydney, and it was capped, believe me.
For $65/month, I was capped at a mere 100 MB, including both upload and download. Excess bandwidth was 33c/MB! Imagine what downloading a "free" RedHat ISO cost.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
In Canada, there isn't a monopoly on high speed access. We do have local monopolies for telephone (in my area, Southern Ontario, it's Bell Canada) and for cable (Cogeco for me - who happen to get my $45CDN/month for Intenet access), but they don't have anything to do with each other. This means that Bell Canada can't gouge thier customers too much or they'll jump to Cogeco, and vice-versa. hat's the real reason for the great prices we get - competition. (I'm lucky with Cogeco, BTW - very clueful and hacker friendly admins, as long as you don't do anything stupid - like get your home web-server published on /.)
As a matter of fact, the Cable companies are making noises about providing local and long distance telephone service via the cable infrastructure, and Bell is pushing satellite TV to compete with Cable TV. There isn't really a monopoly on the services, just the delivery mediums. A better idea for our Aussie friends would be to have a divorce betwixt Telstra and Optus, so they need to fight each other for your $AUS.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
I got billed $800 on a Dial-Up account because I went over their "Unlimited" 500 meg limit.
Then I switched to IPrimus, who, for dial-up anyway, are pretty decent, I mean they let me get away with this which is nice for the most part.
The end result of this is now I don't have anything to do with telstra whatsoever, my phoneline is through someone else, my internet is through someone else, the only thing I do use them for is when their wires fail to work and I need them repaired. In the city at least they fix these problems.
Read Errant Story.
I once made the mistake of trying out the then-new BitTorrent protocol to download an ISO, while staying at a friend's place. He was (but no longer is) connected to Telstra.
I didn't give much thought to BitTorrent's uploading while downloading, other than thinking it was a good idea, nor did I realise that my friend's data cap included upload bandwidth..
A day later, my friend got around to checking his email, and found a series of messages warning him that he was over his cap, and that charges were accumulating at 14c/MB. I consider myself lucky that, despite my carelessness, I escaped with a mere $110 of excess bandwidth fees... (Mark, when are you going to let me pay you back? ;-)
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Here in Tokyo, I've got a 10mbit connection for about $38 AUS dollars/month, And could switch to a 100mbit (cable) cxn for about ~$60 AUS dollars. No cap. I'd average 1 Gig a day download (more on weekends). So, if the costs you presented are correct, you'd be paying AUD $15,000/month for what I'm getting for AUD $38. And everyone here complains Japan is backward compared to countries like Sth Korea.
I previously worked for the New Zealand arm of Telstra (TelstraClear), TelstraClear is wholly owned by Telstra and is the result of Telstra buying (and combining) Saturn Communications, Clear Communications and numerous smaller companies.
Before the Telstra purchase of these companies I regularly looked at Telstra position and the public perception of it, I was bewildered that the staff of a company could go along with something that was so obviously in direct contrast to their customers interests, I have since come to realise that they have option in their customer relations and are (basically) forced to provide an abysmal level of service.)
Telstra purchased the company I worked for and over time added others till we reached the behemoth that is now TelstraClear, I had a great view of our 'department' falling down the slippery slop and becoming part of what I've now found to be the "Telstra Way".
We went from being one of (if not the) most loved company in our field to receivng death threats from customers within roughly a two year period.
Almost everyone in my 'department' gave so much more than could ever be reasonably asked of them, they worked extremely long hours and like most parts of the company received no recognition for their efforts and no increase in pay.
We worked harder and harder finding that our efforts (in most cases) only resulted in slowing the process of 'decay'. Most departments in the company were downsized to the point that people had to quit due to overwork. This made things almost surreal, people quit over high workload but were not allowed to be replaced putting an even higher workload on the remaining staff.
Call Centre and Helpdesk staff were especially hard hit, with the customer base constantly growing (largely due to the previous reputations of the companies of which TelstraClear is comprised). There were (increasingly more frequent) instances of the multimillion dollar call centre software 'falling over' due to 'overflows' in the wait queues (the designers had never envisaged hundreds of people waiting in the inbound call queues).
This all comes down to the fact that TelstraClear is (as one of my co-workers excellently put it) "The most corprationary corporation".
We were constantly bombarded with brilliant catch phrases telling us to "Work Smarter, Not Harder" and that "There is no I in Team".
Amongst the pile of 'motivational' paperwork we received (loud and clear) the message that Telstra(Clear) had the main priority of looking good for its shareholders, this priority superseded everything, the general concept of a corporation is a very dangerous thing.
Telstra and TelstraClear (Being the same company anyway) have demonstrated over time like many companies their primary goal is profit, but unlike other companies there is no 'give and take', they will go after the quickest, easiest path to profit with no consideration given to the customer.
We're luckier than those in Australia as we have the larger Telecom to keep TelstraClear (at least partially) in line, Telecom themselves have never been especially liked (128k ADSL with 10Gigs of traffic for around $35US is the norm here) but at least there's some form of competition to keep Telstra being the sole provider and forcing people on to their soulless customer service and profit mongering.
Here in Tokyo, I've got a 10mbit connection for about $38 AUS dollars/month, And could switch to a 100mbit (cable) cxn for about ~$60 AUS dollars. No cap. I'd average 1 Gig a day download (more on weekends). In Aus, I'd be paying literally thousands of dollars for that. And everyone here complains Japan is backward compared to countries like Sth Korea.
I hope it improves by the time I return.
I'd rather burn my money than give it to Telstra.
I live 8 miles from Parliament house in Canberra, and I can't get anything faster than 33k dialup.
Doesn't look like that will change until late 2004 when TransACT finally roll out in my suburb.
Not Happy, Jan.
The earth is 98% full, please delete anyone you can!
A workmate recently got a Dodo connection installed and they must work on some sort of large-scale cache system because commonly accessed pages (ninemsn.com.au for example) load quickly, whereas you are lucky if you can get an uncached page to load at all. Stay away from Dodo at all costs!
I guess this article and comments just show how important it has become to research broadband solutions before choosing a place to live.
I recently was looking at some land to purchase in the U.S. It was decent land and an okay price, but before I even talked to the owner, I went to one of the neighbors and asked, "do you get cable out here." He thought it was an odd question to stop by someone's house and ask, but I'm not going to make a six figure investment on house and land that does not get broadband. He said "Yes".
It happened to be on the edge of an area that Time Warner had recently added digital cable, but I wasn't sure if this property was too far out in the boonies or not. I knew it wasn't going to get DSL, wireless hadn't made it to the area yet, and I don't care for satellite. Time Warner cable, although hella expensive (compared to what I pay now) would be an acceptable solution.
Just shows how times change and priorities (like being in a good school district) get moved down the totem poll. Actually, I ended up not choosing that land because I found a plot that had the same broadband available, was in a better school district, and had a pond in the neighboring property.
Sorry if this is slightly off-topic.
Australia and New Zealand both have overpriced internet access however its not due to small pipes out to the the major exchanges, its due to greed of the local phone compaines.
:-)
The pipes are the 1st excuse. Boy is it a lame one too. It turns out that AT&T recently decided it was too expensive to maintain repeaters every 20km and repalced them with ones that have a greater distance and now they have something like a 1000x the bandwidth they had before. Soutern Cross just upgraded its repeaters and now has more bandwidth than the can sell plus most of the speculators are tring to offlaod their unused bandwith as well. Plus Tyco may be running a new fiber which will keep the stock holders happy about keeping orders up for undersea fiber and the laying ships busy even though the bandwidth side of the businesse may not be looking so hot. Why have 3 bad divisions when you can have one?
The second excuse is that Australia is a big place and Telstra has to provide coverage everywhere. Thats kind of ture but there are parts of Australia the size of many US states that has zero population and no one asking for a phone. Throw in the fact that two cities have a larger population than Chicago now. With the other cities 96% of the population lives within 25,000 meters (or yards) of an exchange (but not by ADSL distance) or cell tower. Telstra does have to spend a bit on rural areas but its no different than the western part of the US midwest and they don't have to worry about ice.
The only real excuse is Telstra is a luxury tax which helps the goverment and what a lovely tax it is. Outside of the 3rd world, Telstra is the most expensive phone company in the world for people who use the phone.
The interconnect fees are out of line. Its cheaper for me to call the US or UK on some cell phones than it is to call the other side of town. with Orange, its cost twice as much to call a land line in Australia than it does to call a landline in the US. Phone rates in New Zeland are equally out of line. With some plans its the same price if you call a phone in NZ, Aus, US or the UK.
Right now I've got a few Canopy access points. I also have access to a roof on one of the tallest building in town and 10mb ISP uplink. I've got racks of isp gear and everything I need to sell ISP service execpt for one small thing, a Telecomunications License. Thats $10,000 up front and more every year. You also have to be the right kind of company to get the license but the license lets you do things like run wire in the ground and resell inetnet access.
So if anyone near Melbourne wants to buy an unlimited 2mb pipe, I can set you up. The gear is only about $1500 and it takes about 2 hrs to set up so the setup fee would be about $11,800
I also have an AP on a very tall hill just outside of the outer burbs and I can't sell bandwidth from there either.
And for those that say Telstra won't sell unlimited business broadband, they will but only in New Zealand and a 1.5mb adsl link is NZ$500/mo +gst. The same thing in Australia would cost you something like $38,556 in over use charges if you could keep the pipe full for a full month.
People in both countries need to pull their heads out and figure out they need a Public Utilities Commission but everyone seems to be so happy with the TIO and ACCC and the other groups that aren't looking out for anyone.
Excuse me while I hop on over to the Information Super Outback! Thanks Telstra!