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.'"

Comments

Download caps on broadband

[paul248]

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.

Not only is Telstra a monopoly...

[stewartj]

... 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 - perfect example of a preadatory monopoly

[sould]

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Interesting to compare to Canada

[puppetman]

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.

Re:Interesting to compare to Canada

[wilko11]

Telstra does have to provide access to the local loop to other DSL providers, however there is some evidence that they are playing dirty - telling the alternate providers that a particular line does not meet specs for DSL but telling the customer that they CAN get Telstra DSL on the same line. The alternate ISPs also claim that the charges for access to the local loop make it difficult to compete with Telstra.

Cable TV rollout in Australia is pretty small due to the low density of population - satellite is cheaper. Cable modems are available where cable has been rolled out, but that service is also provided by Telstra! (Some areas have cable from another company, whose cable modem charges and terms seem more reasonable, but it is not widely available).

The problem stems from the way that the government de-regulated the comms industry a number of years ago. They should have split Telstra into two components - one to own and manage the actual network of copper and fibre and one to sell services on top of this network. The solution we ended up with has the biggest retail provider, Telstra, also being the main wholesale provider. This makes it almost impossible for new service providers to get a fair deal.

Re:Interesting to compare to Canada

[NoodleSlayer]

I think its interesting how both countries also like to avoid what they call "American Style" systems. However when I hear people give their honest opinion about those countries' governments and hear about some of their own restrictive, wasteful laws, its in many ways just as bad as the US.

I live in the SF Bay Area, so granted there is more choices then in many other areas in terms of ISPs, on top of the Comcast Cable Internet, formerly ATTBI (which IMO, was when it was at its best state), formerly ATT@Home, there's also ten or so other DSL providers, Sprint Wireless Broadband if you get really desperate, and if bad comes to worse, Satalite internet via DirecTV/DirectPC.

As much as our legislation is corporate influenced, the US government has also seemed more ready to take on a monopoly. Granted not the Bush administration by any stretch of the imagination, but that dictator mostly likely, hopefully, will be out in another year.

Re:Monopolies are a great investment right?

[sould]

The monopoly and the resulting lack of cost efficient broadband would be easier to take if some people ... had at least made some money out of it.

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.

Monopoly is not everything ...

[Anonymous Coward]

.. 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

Actually caps are falling away!

[lithium100]

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.

Re:Telstra - perfect example of a preadatory monop

[Per Wigren]

I have 10 Mbps/10 Mbps uncapped for $36/month here in Sweden. I do somewhere around 10 GB a day...

Poor Government Policy

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Worse than that

[Namarrgon]

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...

Re:Is it that bad?

[krumms]

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.

Used to be unlimited? Don't think so.

[Namarrgon]

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.