Australia Gets 8Mbit/s Broadband now, 20Mbit Soon

danwarne writes "Whirlpool is reporting the 'bad old days' of slow, expensive broadband in Australia might be over, with the large ISP iiNet unveiling broadband internet up to 8Mbit/s, from $29/mth. It has been installing its own DSLAMs into the exchanges of Australia's incumbent telco, Telstra, which limits internet access speeds to a maximum of 1.5MBit/s. iiNet boss Michael Malone says as soon as the ADSL2+ standard is approved for use in Australia (which should be in a month or two), he intends to switch the DSLAMs over to offering 20Mbit/s speeds. It looks like Telstra and Optus, the two incumbent telcos in Australia might have their duopoly on high speed broadband (10Mbit/s cable internet) challenged, with potentially great ramifications for price competition in Australia. The only downside noted by Whirlpool readers is that iiNet is forcing customers to take their long distance phone service as well to get access to the 8Mbit/s speeds, a move which is ironically reminiscent of the tactics used by Telstra and Optus."

Comments

Nice, now when are the RIMs going?

[Aurix]

I just wish there'd be more of a focus on extending ADSL coverage across Australia. I mean seriously, how much longer must we be on prehistoric RIMs and the like?

You bastards!

[winterdrake]

Now why can't they have that available in the states...

Re:Not so lucky

[EvilCabbage]

This isn't even newsworthy yet.

It's available to such a small slice of the population with such small data allowances, only the truly stoned and miraculously wealthy will be in line for it.

Picture a pair of cans connected by a string hanging over a cesspool. That is the current Australian "Broadband" situation.

Re:Michael is gone!

[skurk]

Heck, I might as well burn some points as well:

Michael's departure, if true, would be the best thing to happen to Slashdot in a long time... and I've got two karma points to burn for saying so.

I've been reading slashdot for a few years, but have no preferences amongst the editors. I've never noticed anything negative about Michael.. However I have noticed the frequent "MICHAEL SUXX!" posts from a bunch of AC's.

Why do people dislike him so much?
Can someone please enlighten me?

Re:Unfortunately, bandwidth costs in Australia...

[Solilok]

Not quite true; Australia is one of the most urbanized 1st world countries.
>95% of the population live in the major cities.

Which is also why they are offering wireless internet (http://www.unwired.com.au/ , http://www.iburst.com.au/ )

Re:only 256k up?

[asaul]

This page has some of the gory details:

"The ITU has approved a global industry standard for full-rate ADSL, known as G.992.1, or G.dmt. This specification calls for operation rates of up to 10 Mbps downstream and up to 768 kbps upstream when operating over telephone lines at distances of up to 18,000 feet."

So basically the specification for the signalling has allocated a slab of the frequencies to upload, and the rest to download. Your provider can mix and match within that, but I expect that due to signal attenuation and overall bandwidth demand they limit it to what is currently provided.

Symmetrical DSL (512/512) is designed to run over a shorter loop (so limited customer range), and as most users dont use much upload capacity there is little point in providing it generally - the users that do want it will pay for a service that delivers it.