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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."
That might sound fine but in reality there is not enough bandwidth in the IINET network to handle even 100 of these connections at full speed let alone having thousands of users. The price per port for the IP ports (Oc12 or whatever) is still way to expensive to be able to cover the costs in any sort of reasonable time frame.
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?
Most times I connect to overseas, and the latency/window size is the biggest speed issue. Even sitting on a 100Mb/s pipe to MCI at work you rarely see speeds above 2Mb/s to any site overseas especially if using TCP not UDP due to the latency issues and the nature of TCP windowing. OK so it might be fast to connect to other people on IInet, but thats the only bonus. Currently I have 6Mb/s ADSL to home in Australia (only one on my ISP with it from what I understand) and while I reach breakneck speeds to mirror.aarnet.edu.au on the Optus network to whom my ISP's primary provider is, I rarely see anything above 512kb/s to overseas sites. Going to just get unlimited 512k to the ISP I work for. No point getting any higher in Australia if your connecting to international stuff most of the time. And no its not because my ISPs are shit its just how it is being on the other side of the world. Fast to Singapore tho!
meridian at tha.net
That's still strange though. While 1MBit upstream is nothing to sneeze at, I'm really curious as to the technical aspect of why we can't have 8MBit full duplex, or even half-duplex, but in each direction. Back in the day you could order 512MBit, and it came with 256Mbit upstream... which was reasonable, since they were offering the 512down/512up to buisness owners for roughly triple what the "home" upstream bandwidth cost, my guess being for website hosting reasons.
Nowadays it's cheaper to buy hosting at XYZ company for $100/yr and do it that way rather than host your own web site, and very rarely do buisness customers (I assume) go through their telco for webhosting, so it would make sense to no longer artifically restrict the bandwidth to home users.
moox. for a new generation.
8Mb is max based on distance, it drops to almost current ADSL speeds after a km or so. It has the same 4km reach as current ADSL, so for many people there is only a marginal speed gain, yawn, which still makes cable faster in most cases. Also at the mubpond was announced that Telstra was looking at equipment that will extend the reach of ADSL, potentialy to 12kms or more, and make ADSL viable in small towns etc.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
no, no it is not.
.iso in a few minutes.
it is 8Mbit/s.
No one in Australia is ever under the misaprehension that they have unlimited downloads, so they always look at both the speed and the download allowance, and therefore choose a plan that has the right combination of download size and speed.
Leechers are probably always better off with slower plans with larger allowances (and unlimited ones do exist at a lot of ISPs, but obviously cost a little more than capped ones), but the rest of us are quite happy to be able to download the occasional
We have better things to do with our time than spend all day, every day downloading DVDs we'll never watch.
40GB is more than enough for most mortal uses.
Complaining about caps simply DOES NOT APPLY to Australian broadband, because apart from the very early days when barely anyone used it and Telstra and Optus cable were the only way you were going to get it anyway, ISPs have always capped the plans, and always been very clear about the capping.
There are various plans at various rates - one provider offers 512/128 for $70/month with no restrictions, not sure about the cost for higher peaks. I wouldn't look for any vast improvement over this sort of capped plan for at least another 5 years, and that's only assuming the standards don't improve the peak speed even further.
iiNet have spent $10M on installations, and only have customers numbering in the tens of thousands of dollars. They obviously can't give the service away, but the rates are still reasonable especially compared with the telco offerings. As I understand it, there are still per Mb costs from at least some of our international trunk providers too. Anyone who can refute that, or that has details?
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
I live in the USA. For an 8Mbit/s line, I would not only gladly accept having to use their LD, I would also turn over my liver and owe them some unspecified favor involving dead bodies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Much to learn, you have.
Let me tell you about telstra.
When I had my internet connection moved from another ISP to iiNet, they had to plug me into the iinet DSlam. Normally this would be a simple thing to do- just move the cable to the next rack and plug me back in.
Telstra, however, turns this into:
1: request disconnection
2. after a few days, tech goes out and unplugs me
3. Telstra sends a bill
4. Pay bill
5. request connection
6. after a few days, tech goes out and plugs me in
7. Pay bill
8. Line doesn't work. Turns out telstra fucked up
9. request telstra to fix it
10. wait a few days, tech goes out and fixes it
11. Telstra sends a bill
12. pay bill
well, you get the point.