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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.'"
For More Info on Australian broadband news you can go to http://whirlpool.net.au/ ----------- Off Topic I myself am having trouble with Ozemail aDSL. They say there is nothing wrong with my 1 - 3 second ping time (to ozemail.com.au) during peak times. They say if you can load a webpage in under 20 seconds nothing is wrong with it.
"You win again Gravity!" -Futurama (Zapp)
...than the comcast service I have right now. I swear my internet works only when no one on the block is watching cable.
I like their customer service "Welcome to Comcast, if you are calling for customer service please hang up now and bang your head against a wall until you are hallucinating connectivity.
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).
What is even more incredible than Telstras' monopoly in Australia is its plummeting share price. It has gone from around AU$8.50 in late 1999 to around AU$4.50 today. The monopoly and the resulting lack of cost efficient broadband would be easier to take if some people (especially all the Mums and Pops the government encouraged to invest when Telstra was privatised) had at least made some money out of it.
Over in New Zealand out monopoly is called Telecom NZ.
They have no bloody clue as well. Funny to see them them lose to Vodafone in the mobile phone market though.
I think the Southern Cross cable is just a myth and in this neck of the woods we connect to the US through "the message in a bottle method".
What is worse is that taxpayers own a majority stake in the company (in theory).
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.
Just to make you feel worse, I've got 1.5Mbps/512Kbps ADSL (up/down) in Japan, and although I don't keep track of my bandwidth usage, I imagine I'd do somewhere around 1-3GB a day.
I pay about what you do.
Australia is a classic case of why monopolies in any industry should be avoided.
The most recent broadband fiasco here in Oz concerns itself with Telstra (who handle ALL submissions for ADSL in Australia regardless of ISP) deliberately telling competitor signups that they don't meet broadband exchange requirements, then signing them up under Telstra where they suddenly just scrape in.
Then you have the woeful bandwidth limitations (imposed mostly because Telstra controls the phone lines and resells bandwidth to every other ISP by the MB).
The ONLY point I will concede to Telstra is that due to our huge, continent scale country, upgrading ALL exchanges can be cost prohibitive, however to not have broadband capability yet in large POPULATED regions is unforgiveable in 2003.
In short, Telstra as a RETAIL company should be split from Telstra the NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE company. Make the infrastructure company publically owned, then Telstra (Retail) can compete along with everyone else on a level playing field.
Quizo
Visceral Psyche Films
...it provides heaps of motivation for
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Wireless Networks. And the government finds it pretty difficult to argue against them.
That's a Berlusconi waiting to happen...*shudder*.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
I couldn't read the article as it's /.ed (mirrors anyone?)
But my perspective as a broadband user in Australia...
Frankly, I don't see there's a big problem. I pay my money (which as much as I can tell is roughly in keeping with global prices), and get a reasonably good, fast connection. 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.
If you use Telstra for your broadband, you might get lousy customer service (as I did before I switched) but now I'm with a smaller provider (Internode) and quite happy with them. Good connections, good service, reasonable prices.
Why the take up is so low, I don't know (maybe the article does), but I've got it, it wasn't hard and I'm happy.
FYI, I pay $A80/month for a semi-high end plan which is roughly $US55. Basic plans start around $A50 - 60/month, perhaps even lower.
Read reviews of shopping cart software
A senate committee hearing is currently underway in Australia, which is invistgating Telstraâ(TM)s practices. Especially Broadband and the dominance over the local loop. (Last mile of copper from the exchange)
6 08 0.pdf
Just take a look at the transcription below to get a feel for the attitude this company has!
http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s
Comments like this from Telstra really make you laugh. (pg. 337)
There is an ADSL fetish that ADSL equals broadband. We do not believe that. We sell broadband services, and so we will try ISDN for those customers. That may be all they need, particularly if they are downloading stuff from the US, because ISDN is the maximum speed you will need to get stuff from the US.
Sad But true.
Area51 - We are watching...
the webserver seems to be grinding to a halt, so here's the article:
Australia's great broadband disaster
[by Robert Clark]
After a decade of political in-fighting over the ownership of Telstra, Australia faces the prospect of being a broadband desert. The incumbent needs to get out of cable TV - but first the government has to get out of denial
This is the story how a single mistake can turn into a multi-layered catastrophe. About how industry structure can drive government policy. About how the powerful will drive players in a market to their own ends. About how monopolies will thrive despite the most rigorous of regulators.
This then is the story of the great broadband disaster Down Under.
To a casual observer, it might seem an unlikely tale - Australia has been one of Asia's pioneers in telecom deregulation as well as in the adoption of new technology.
Australia introduced the first full service competition regime in the Asia-Pacific in 1992 and the first totally liberalized market in 1997. It boasts very respectable ownership rates for mobiles and PCs of around 70%, and around 60% for the Internet. It has far and away the strongest competition watchdog along with a well-resourced and experienced industry regulator. It has 600 ISPs, 80 long distance providers and four mobile operators, each of the latter with an international footprint.
As much as any other market in Asia-Pacific it has set the pace for telecom reform since the late 1980s.
Yet the story of Australian telecommunications in the decade since full competition began is that of a never-ending trench war between politicians, regulators, media magnates, new telcos and diverse groups ranging from farmers to pro-privatization lobbies.
More than anything else, they are arguing about the future of 50.1% government-owned Telstra - the country's biggest company, the most widely-held stock, the incumbent telco and the dominant cable company.
Yet amid the political thrust and parry, few have noticed that the industry structure has since lost the ability to deliver competitive outcomes.
No alternative
One long-standing Telstra critic is Professor Alan Fels, chairman of the national competition regulator the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), who describes Telstra as one of the world's "most horizontally and vertically integrated telecommunications companies."
It is Fels who points out that 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.
And, almost uniquely in the world, it has been allowed to build a hybrid fiber coax (HFC) cable network which has been leased all but exclusively to its own pay TV company, a joint venture with the country's two most powerful media tycoons, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer.
"In the local call services market competition has had very little impact," Fels says, adding that Telstra's competitors have virtually no alternative but to use the incumbent's network - even the main rival, Optus, relies heavily on the Telstra local loop.
"The clear message from this analysis is that Telstra has overwhelming dominance across the telecommunications market and in almost every segment of that market," Fels told an industry event in early March.
The impact of Telstra's sway in the market shows up most clearly in what has become the most critical aspect of the "last mile" - the growth of broadband.
The figures tell the story. With less than 2% of the population using a broadband connection, Australia now ranks 23rd on the global league table of broadband connectivity, behind 18 OECD countries as well as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Estonia. And it is sinking.
Ewan Sutherland, chief executive of the International Telecommunications Users' Group (INTUG), says that even if Telstra meets its target of 1 mil
@ASP.NET's parent-teacher meeting: "Little Johnny.NET is very bright, but he doesn't play well with others."
I've never seen an ISP in Canada that is unlimited, they all cap the bandwidth and charge unbelievably high prices.
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
Australia's big telcos (mostly Telstra) have long argued that the way they charge for extra downloads and uploads are not a problem for most broadband users... then today, their telecommunications watchdog announces that broadband complaints have skyrocketed, and most seem to be about the data charges...
.. 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.
The Telstra/Optus duopoly makes it impossible for smaller players to compete. I work for an MVNO, a smaller mobile phone network that effectively piggybacks the Optus GSM network. (Optus have their own mobile products so we are effectively partnering and competing at the same time -- what's wrong with this picture?)
Every time we offer a reasonably priced mobile plan that offers the consumer good value for money, both Optus AND telstra drop their pants, offering ludicrously underpriced products that we can't compete with. These cashed up bohemoths can afford to lose money to gain subscribers. We can't.
To try and understand why broadband access within Australia has only 2% take up, look at The sad fact is most of the cost in these plans is in the Telstra wholesale charges. Often accounting for 80% cost of the product, which mid you, doesn't include data. So the ISP has absolutely no room to move! Almost all of all the ADSL providers in Australia resell Telstra ADSL. There's no competition at the whoelsale level at all. Until we see some real competition in the broadband whole market, the prices will remain the same.
Area51 - We are watching...
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"?
This needs to be fixed, so that I no longer have to spend 8 hours downloading classic episodes of Bananas in Pajamas from slow Australian Kazaa servers. :P
Actually, you can get fixed-rate ADSL from quite a few provides - see Whirlpool for a list. Most will slow you down to modem speeds past the cap point, but at least you don't get whacked with thousand-dollar service bills.
Still, you can get ""unlimited" ADSL plans for as little as $65, e.g. from TPG. Only 256/64 Kb/s, and it can get pretty choked at peak times. It does exist, but it's a far, far cry from the unlimited cable I enjoyed in Canada for $40/month...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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...
Well, over here in New Zealand, it's very similar -
All ADSL broadband is provided through the largest (ex-SOE) government-supported monopoly of a telecommunications company (Telecom). They charge the most ridiculous prices for ADSL and even mislead customers with the speed of the actual service (in a very cunning, but legal, way).
Yep, me too: real Ethernet to the home box. And now two companies here in Sweden are battling with VDSL offers: one with 10Mb/10Mb for about $35,and the other claims to offer up to 23Mb for about the same price! And our former monopoly Telia have no plans to do anything at this point.... on the contrary, they had plans to cap the traffic, or charge by the Mb, which no other company does here :D (not that I know of, anyway)
Meep.
Broadband is simply too expensive here in Australia for the majority of customers - that's why the takeup rate is so slow.
While living in Canada for the last 4 years, for about CDN$40/month (about AU$48/month, including the modem rental) I enjoyed unlimited high-speed cable internet. But when I moved back to Australia, I found that cable internet would cost about AU$65/month, plus the cost of the modem ($300 I think), with a 3 GB cap (including both uploaded and downloaded data). Any traffic beyond that was ~14c/MB. This was a lot better than before I left Australia 4 years ago ($65/month, $500 modem, 100 MB cap (yes, MB) and 33c/MB beyond that!), but still a big let down.
I ended up with a third-party (Internode) ADSL link at only 512/128 Kb/s for $99/month (and a $200 modem) which is uncapped, but prioritises me down the more I download (upload is unmetered).
I'm told the Canadian government ensures that broadband prices are kept at reasonable levels. The Australian government certainly doesn't. I was also told that Australia must pay for all traffic both to and from the US. 4 years ago, this was apparently about 12c/MB, and was the justification for the traffic caps and excess charges.However, these traffic charges are not only passed on to the consumer, they are also apply to everything - even Australian sites, and even if the content is cached by a local web proxy. Certain "popular" files may be mirrored for free by the ISP, if you're lucky.
It's not hard to see why Australian broadband costs so much, and why so few people can afford it.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I started using Telstra ADSL back before they started capping the bandwidth, and all I can say they are absolute shit.
When ringing them when the net is down, I had to wait at least 20 minutes before I got through, and when I did, they wouldn't help me because I wasn't using Windows, their USB-to-Ethernet converter, and my computer was plugged into a network. When I finally had reverted my network back to whatever they wanted, they finally started helping me, and the problem was on their end, as I already knew. Usually it takes around a day before it starts working again, and that's nowhere near satisfactory.
After endless hours of surfing, I found iiNet, a Perth-based ISP that offered 512/128, 6gb on peak and 6gb off peak for $79.95 AUD. Which was much better than the $100 we were paying for unrealiable 3gb. And if you go past the limit, you get 'shaped' to 72kbits, which is good enough for surfing. Plus, they have an extensive peering network, PIPE Networks, which include a large amount of ISPs and FTPs to grab latest trailers, etc., off.
But wait! There's more! iiNet has an unique way of counting your bandwidth limit. It adds up the last 30 days of usage, and if it goes over your limit, it starts shaping the next day. That means if you manage your download effectively, you can squeeze in 12gb of downloads easily. Only downside to iiNet, however, is you have to pay in blocks of three months.
Otherwise, iiNet is a great ISP to look at if you wanna get of Telstra.
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
Do you have 1 - 3 second pings when you're doing nothing, absolutely nothing, on your link except a ping?
If so - yeah, something is FUBAR. Consider a traceroute to watch where the holdup actually it. It's quite likely a Telstra problem (remember, your ADSL is mostly Telstra no matter who you sign up with).
Here's what I see:
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"?
Telstra suffers from a disease that is quite common ammong companies who have a monopoly: imcompetence. For instance, we tried to solve why our australian branch could not make an isdn connection to Amsterdam. Turned out that telstra simply forgot to route to Holland..
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"?
I can't believe all these ridiculous figures I'm reading from users in Oz, didn't anybody think of shopping around?
I'm with a smaller I.S.P. for my broadband here in Western Australia and the plans speak for themselves - reasonable monthly fees for realistic traffic levels (given the costs imposed on the I.S.P. by the carriers) - all a bloody sight better than what I'm reading for Telstra and Optus.
Monthly excess can either be charged or a soft cap imposed - but still at higher speeds than dial-up. The other good part of the smaller I.S.P. is you don't get the "customer rep." if you have to phone for tech. support, you get the guys who run the place and can solve the problems without having to R.T.F.M!
Anyone who goes with the big guys down here is a mug - shop around, ask around or just plain Google it, there's plenty of good deals out there to be had.
Go permanent? In your dreams and my worst nightmares.
If you think broadband down under is a disaster, you should see our Digital TV situation.
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 don't know why it's come to be like this, but I think it's a happy result of the IT-boom era. My ISP started years ago to dig real fibre to common households, and since IT was the main fad those days, they got all the money they needed. But they made clear from the beginning that they weren't expecting to make profit at least until five years later. I think they are starting to about now, but I'm not sure. But I'm sure they will in the not too distant future. And since that company has such a great offer, the other companies are forced to invest in better technologies, too. The only catch for the fibre option is that it's not available for single houses, at least not normally. And you have to connect all apartments in the house, but I think the initial investment cost isn't too high. After that, you're free to sign up for an account or not. You don't have to subscribe, you just have an ethernet socket in your apartment if you want to. And now they have the VDSL option for those who can't get fibre, so things are looking good :)
Meep.
Oz is a landmass equal to the USA, but with only 18million people. We are able to enjoy the outdoors for most of the year, so more people have a life away from fkn computers and the internet. It costs more to install bacause of lower population density, and the example of things better in the USA are often only based on local or regional prices, and not on national prices. ADSL will only work over 4 kms or so, on ggod copper pair, while the average distance for a suburban customer is not much less than that, so someone will miss out. The monoply is shrinting, but the returns are too low for other companies to take up the slack. The originator and Wirlpool distort the story for their own benefit, try to get more facts before posting crap!
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Most people who have a phone connection in Australia use Telstra. In the old days we used to get charged Line Rental. I assume this was for the use of the copper between your home and the exchange. If you get ADSL your ISP pays around $30 a month "line rental" for the same bit of copper you are already renting for your standard telephone. Take that off the price of most ADSL deals and your looking at a decent price for Broadband, ie paying for what you use. I haven't looked at my phone bill in great detail recently but I belive what used to read Line Rental is now referred to as a service charge.
I remember back in high school, there was this economics simulation game we all played in class where every team owned a pen company and competed with the other teams. One of the first lessons that we learned is that 1000 pens at $1 each actually nets you mor emoney than 1 pen at $1000. It sounds like they should be the same, but in the $1000 pen case, you either get it all, or get nothing, but in the $1 pen case you can still make some money even if you don't sell everything.
The problem is broadband in Austrailia is that the monopolies cannot understand this fact of business.
The current population of Australia is about 20 million people. So at a 2% adoption rate, even if they could really, REALLY gouge thier customers at say $500 a month(!) then they stand to gain $200,000,000 a month, gross. Now, if by charging $25 dollars a month they could get a 50% adoption rate, then they will actually make $50,000,000 MORE a month than they did charging $500. That's a 20% increase in income and a 2,000% decrease in price! Everybody wins!
That's right, you can charge less of a price and still make more money, it really is possible... Even a hard core monopoly should at least care about making more money. If you can make more money as a company AND provide better service to more customers, then do it! It is absolute blind, and stupid, greed, and probably a little misanthropy mixed in for good measure, that they don't spend a few days to crunch the numbers and actually see that it's possible to make more money and more happy customers doing things a different way.
I don't think there is anything special about Sweden, it's just that several companies got the idea that they should market Ethernet to the home, and it turns out it's not that much more expensive than DSL or cable. I'm surprised that no corporations in other countries have attempted to do the same.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
I'm actually using this telco as we speak, and sometimes, i actually consider NOT clicking on the comments section on the fear that its not worth the 146kb ( 1024 / 14c/mb ) people think that they are giving me.
Sometimes your comments cost ME $0.02 AUD
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!
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!
Well, actually this is the same situation we have in Spain:
Telefonica controls the local loop, is the largest mobile carrier (Movistar), is the largest ISP (forked Terra and now is buying it again), is the major shareholder of Grupo Admira, wich controls the biggest pay TV company (Via Digital) and part of several media groups.
And now, for something completely different...