99% of Australians With Broadband By 2009?

Recently a study of broadband penetration rates around the world was in the news, because the US has fallen to 24th place worldwide, at 53%. Now comes word that the Australian Prime Minister has announced a $1.68 billion (US) plan to move Australia to 99% penetration within two years. If they accomplish this goal they will be the most-wired nation (South Korea currently occupies the top spot with 90%). The Prime Minister's plan was attacked by his political opponents because it would create a two-tier system with the country's vast (and almost empty) interior served by wireless at "only" 12 Mbps.

Comments

The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[tpgp]

Remember - This is the same Prime Minister of Australia (John Howard) who phone spammed the continent prior to the last election, then paid his smug looking son to email spam the nation.

The reason Howard's talking about broadband (apart from the fact that he's running scared from a buoyant & surprisingly competent opposition with a better broadband plan) is because this will give him access to more Australians to spam, spam spam.

My apologies for being ontopic. I now return you to your scheduled 'why broadband is crap in the US' offtopic flamewar.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies for being ontopic. I now return you to your scheduled 'why broadband is crap in the US' offtopic flamewar.

Uhuh, and what do you say about how every single thread ever posted on Slashdot about the state of US Broadband is spammed by Australians whining about the state of Internet services in their country?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, the government is proposing WiMax for rural areas. Labor may be spending a bit more, but at least fibre is a tried, tested and reliable technology.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[nighty5]

This is the most ridiculous comment I've heard on Slashdot in a while.

The reason why the interest in the broadband is because each party now feels that if they can clinch the outer seats it will tip the balance in the votes.

The Libs want to spend money on wireless ($900 million), Labour want to spend the money on fibre ($4.7 billion (!)).

Labour love wasting money, taking 4.7 billion from the Future Fund is a direct abuse of powers....

At least the Libs want private sector to fund it, it shouldn't come from our pockets.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[tpgp]

Labour love wasting money, taking 4.7 billion from the Future Fund is a direct abuse of powers....

How can it be a direct abuse of power, when its an election promise? Surely they have a mandate to fullfill their election promises?

At least the Libs want private sector to fund it, it shouldn't come from our pockets.

How do you think the private sector's going to recoup their investment? Go on, have a think about it. Do you think it will come from corporate altruism, or perhaps from our pockets?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Frogbert]

taking 4.7 billion from the Future Fund is a direct abuse of powers

They aren't just going to take the money out and blow it, they are investing in the infrastructure, meaning they expect to get some return on that money. Assuming their plan works I think it would be safe to say it could prove very profitable.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

My apologies for being ontopic. I now return you to your scheduled 'why broadband is crap in the US' offtopic flamewar. The problem with that sort of flamewar is Americans are complaining about 10mbps not being fast enough to be called "broadband". Or that there is a lack of reasonably priced gigabit backbones for them to host servers off.

Here is Australia we're still using the good old tin can bush telegraph system provided by a now "private" and utterly substandard Telstra, which the government goes to for all telecommunications needs (ignoring other private company efforts). 10mbps is the speed at which the WHOLE of Australia communicates to the world with. Or at least it feels like it.

In Australia, 512kbps (yes, you read KILOBITS/SEC correctly) is considered broadband. Lower the standards enough, and 99% reach is very easy to accomplish. We don't need "Fibre to the node" (which is really just another way of saying SOME people will get ADSL2+) - we need international submarine cables to the rest of the world.

If Australian companies can't host servers within Australia because it is 10-20 times more expensive than equivalent hosting in the US or Europe, there is NO incentive for growth in Australian broadband.

What Australia really needs is a huge overhaul of the telecommunications systems. Rip out the copper and put fibre in its place, which will solve the problem for decades to come. And this is certainly not cheap. But what you have to realize is that new housing estates are STILL having copper cable put in, and NO attempt is made to use fibre to new housing estates. For these new projects, there is no/minimal difference in cost between laying copper vs fibre. We're actually going backwards in Australia, not forward.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[kgbspy]

Good to see Labor (bless their cotton socks!) turning their attention to the weighty issue of irritable bowel syndrome.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[QuantumG]

Oh, the Future Fund. Right. Is that what it's called? For over 10 years now the government has been taking insanely high taxes and spending it on nothing. In fact, they've been cutting costs and paying back international debt (like we're some kind of third world country). Now you tell me they are spending it on The Future, well why didn't they say so? Boy, that makes me feel much better.

Of course, the "Future Fund" will eventually be used to buy gunships from the US.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[NoMaster]

... taking 4.7 billion from the Future Fund is a direct abuse of powers. Whereas selling the public back their own asset in order to fund the government employee superannuation fund isn't?

(Hint: If sucessive governments - both Labor and Liberal, so no bias there - hadn't treated the government employee superannuation funds as consolidated revenue over the years, it would have been completely self-funding.)

(Hint #2: The same goes for the 'Social Services Contribution' - a tax / levy designed to pay for pensions - which dates back to early last century. You're still paying it; it's just been subsumed into general taxation - but it no longer goes towards paying for pensions...)

The whole 'Future Fund' is a con. The name is brilliant - it sounds good ; a visionary creation by a government focussed on looking ahead - until you realise it's nothing of the sort. It's sole purpose it to either a) replace money that's been misappropriated by governments in the past, or b) be absorbed onto con. revenue once everyone has forgotten its real purpose.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you think the private sector's going to recoup their investment? Go on, have a think about it. Do you think it will come from corporate altruism, or perhaps from our pockets?

You silly hippie... The free market will solve it all with its magic invisible hand. You know, the one that no one ever sees, but everyone always believes is there.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[wall0159]

Further to this, they're focusing broadband roll-out on marginally-held seats (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/19/195 5664.htm) - if that doesn't highlight what a cynical election ploy this is I don't know what will.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[0mni]

Is that worse than letting telstra make it so expensive that any person living in country areas can't afford it?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[dbIII]

No - selling off the telecommunications infrastructure for very little and then having to dig deep into public money to duplicate some of it is the problem. The private sector is not going to fund this or they would have already done so. The reason this is going to be expensive is due to the sale of Telstra and the problem that the current fully imported management team refuses to be directed by either it's shareholders or the regulating authorities.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Howard has already spent the ~$1bn on this "broadband plan". So it is concrete, not just a promise.

Maybe this is a move to undermine Labor's attempt at a broadband plan, as Labor now have to go back and change it to accommodate whatever mess has been signed onto with OPEL.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[vandan]

Remember - This is the same Prime Minister of Australia (John Howard) who phone spammed the continent prior to the last election, then paid his smug looking son to email spam the nation

Exactly. I'm glad someone remembers this. Not many do, unfortunately.

But the biggest problem I have with Howard pushing his broadband 'revolution' is that he's privatising Telstra ... against the wishes of the majority of Australians. Why should taxpayers have to pay for this investment? Clearly they shouldn't. It's Telstra's responsibility now. Of course they'll only do so when profitable, which goes a long way towards explaining why it shouldn't have been privatised in the first place. But now that it IS privatised, I don't see why my tax dollars should subsidize Telstra's equipment. They're only going to charge me through the roof for using this equipment that I just paid for.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you think the private sector's going to recoup their investment? Go on, have a think about it. Do you think it will come from corporate altruism, or perhaps from our pockets?

This is especially the case since many of the places aren't economically viable to deliver to at the moment.

So, the only option is for the Government to stump up some cash. Otherwise, Australia's epidemic problem with people and businesses leaving towns for the major cities will be exacerbated. Smaller towns would become second-class-citizens when it comes to connectivity.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[kocsonya]

Not to mention that the (then government owned) Telstra infrastructure was built from our pockets and now (the privately owned) Telstra is screaming that it is its private property now and letting others to use its copper/fiber would be a communist plot to enslave the free world as we know it. So every telco that wants to provide a broadband service *has* to build their own network (based on the assumption that we will pay for it in access fees) anyway.
Thus, the Libs sell you the status quo as a big achievment and put some half-assed measure (well, a promise of it anyway) for the bush (which would never be served by the private sector for the profit margin there is way too low) to gain a few votes in marginal seats. The usual election year BS.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[sortius_nod]

hahaha, you're a monkey... yes you are...

seriously though, this is another ploy by Johnny "Kiss Bush's Arse" Howard to get votes before an election. It's a joke, he's saying "broadband for all" but it's merely "broadband for major cities, sub standard broadband for rural areas". The opposition party has a much smarter plan of delivering fibre to 98% of the nation, rather than attempting to use ADSL2+ in a massively sparse population.

As an ex-Telstra worker, I can attest to the fact that copper just doesn't work in the bush. It degrades so quickly that they can barely replace it at the rate it's installed.

While fibre isn't the answer, it's a better alternative to copper... much better.

Maybe, instead of using your narrow view, look at the bigger picture.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[speaker of the truth]

You might have overlooked the possibility he simply wants to provide the circuses part of bread and circuses. Although it could also be a nefarious plot to spam people. Or both.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[consonant]

You guys have it cushy. In India, it's 256 kbps that's considered broadband!

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[speaker of the truth]

Well to be fair it will come from the pockets of people who WANT broadband, rather then the pockets of everyone, including those who have no interest in it.

Now while society should help in the payment of some basic human needs (such as health care, something our country has yet to realize), is broadband truly one of these needs? As a geek who loves the internet, I think not.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[dwater]

I heard that in China, the gov are laying fibre whenever they lay a new road. I would've thought you could do the same in oz fairly easily, no?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[dwater]

shouldn't that be 'labour'? or do you really spell it like the 'cans?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[mrbluze]

As an ex-Telstra worker, I can attest to the fact that copper just doesn't work in the bush. It degrades so quickly that they can barely replace it at the rate it's installed.

As an ex-Telstra customer, I can attest that the reason it is degrading at the rate it is being installed is because it takes Telstra so long to install it!

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

The Future Fund was set up to pay superannuation obligations to public servants; previously this just came out of the budget, and had been doing since the superannuation system was set up. The only reason for the "separation" was to ensure the government could take that off their books too and make future budgets climb into "surplus" without any real change to spending or cost-cutting.

It's a clever ploy disguised in a form you can't object to because of the way it's framed. Typical Howard.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[ozmanjusri]

do you really spell it like the 'cans?

Yep, but only for the political party.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Labor_Part y

The rest of the time we spell it properly.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to be fair it will come from the pockets of people who WANT broadband, rather then the pockets of everyone, including those who have no interest in it.

I say the same thing about roads. I never drive on them. I use public transport. I shouldn't have to pay for them. Yet my GST dollars go towards road maintenance.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[cute-boy]

Yes the Australian company I work for host our servers in USA because bandwidth costs are so much cheaper, and we use quite a bit of that. Which is a bit crazy when you thing of that traffic, having done an intercontinental jump, actually ends up back over here in Australia taking up space on pretty much the same infrastructure. We can live with the slight latency well enough. Our sites are certainly not un-responsive (well one is... a Xen domU instance...).

-R

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Colin Smith]

How do you think the private sector's going to recoup their investment? Go on, have a think about it. Do you think it will come from corporate altruism, or perhaps from our pockets? Insightful? There's a difference. The private sector, you can say. Nah, thanks but I don't want it. You are free to make a decision for yourself. With the government, they force you at the point of a gun to hand over your money, no matter how frivolous the spending by the politicians.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Odddmonster]

Nah. There's no demand for internet access. Governments shouldn't be "forcing" broadband on people. Very frivolous investment indeed.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[speaker of the truth]

I use public transport. Do you also never use services that take advantage of them? If you've ever been sent mail (especially a package) then you have. If you've ever bought any goods that were trucked somewhere, then you have. As such, you have used them, just not driven on them.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

A few things i've noticed is a lot of people say why should i pay for roads when i don't use them? The roads were probably used to bring in the materials to build your house, deliver the goods you buy at the market, transfer raw materials to build the stuff you buy, etc. Now if you were really disconnected from those around you i'm sure you could feel that way, but you'd really have to be disconnected.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Pseudonym]

At least the Libs want private sector to fund it, it shouldn't come from our pockets.

The Future Fund isn't supposed to just sit there gathering dust. It's supposed to be invested so it makes money.

Investing it in broadband is not ridiculous. It makes money directly (the telcos will pay rent on it) and indirectly by growing the economy.

I'm not saying that Labor's plan is a good one, merely that it's not ridiculous (or an abuse of powers).

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[kubrick]

(apart from the fact that he's running scared from a buoyant & surprisingly competent opposition with a better broadband plan)

For all that I want to see the back of Howard and also want FTTH, giving more taxpayers' money to Telstra to further tighten their monopoly grip is not good policy. If Labor can work out a way to force Telstra to wholesale at reasonable prices, I'm all ears...

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[cammoblammo]

Seriously moderators, this needs to be modded + 1 Insightful -- don't even think about a 'Funny' mod. If they spent half the effort installing the infrastructure they guaranteed to give us as they do complaining about how they shouldn't have to keep their promises we'd have had fibre to the door of Uluru Tuesday last week.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[trippeh]

Yep, the private sector will fund it, and it still won't work because the private sector is profit based so they'll spend the minimum. Besides, what else are we going to use the bloody Future Fund for? I know, let's use it to kickstart desalination. Or even better, windfarming.

Ok, sorry, that was my knee jerking uncontrollably. I just get that way whenever anyone mentions the Future Fund, which as far as I'm concerned is a cop-out excuse for not spending money to do things that will benefit lower income groups and reduce the income gap.

Man, can you tell I really don't know anything about politics?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[trippeh]

Oh crap. Now we are going to have to whine about Australia's inadequate broadband coverage for ANOTHER twelve years.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[trippeh]

As long as you paid for your ticket, it's okay.

And I bet you're gonna sign up for a Myki too...
Actually, I want one of those. It sounds really neat, as I prefer to never carry money around with me, not even account/credit cards. Because I ALWAYS spend it. The only exception is the emergency money in my sock. Besides, I like cards. I even applied for a second University ID card because it's prettier than the old one.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Chris Pimlott]

Not unless they start building roads across the Pacific. The largest problem is international connections, and in case you hadn't noticed, Australia is an island.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[trippeh]

I dunno, when I look at the bigger picture, all I see is clouds and that bit in the corner of the sky where I lost a piece a couple of years ago.

Despite my original "jerk-of-the-knee dance" reaction, the Libs' plan is starting to look like a better idea. It's cheaper, easier to replace/upgrade (I'm only guessing this part), and seeing as how most of Australia is already used to 'substandard' broadband, it won't really matter that much. And it will be easier in terms of connectivity. And it will happen soon.

Please pull apart my argument, I don't want to side with the coalition on anything, because I don't know anything about politics and that's the honest truth. I voted Labor because I liked Kim Beazley. He said funny things all the time, and his jowls wobbled when he made impassioned pleas on behalf of the Aussie Battler (whoever that is).

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if the Government still had a stake in the telecoms infrastructure.

Telstra was privatised, and now they are happy to provide us with tin-cans and a piece of string. Then they charge a wholesale price of $40 per month for competing ISPs to to access the piece of string.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[blackdropbear]

As a current Telstra customer^h^h^h^h^h^h^hsucker I have found out they are measured on how many faults they attend and sign off as being fixed. Not on how well they are fixed. They have also had all the equipment to install ADSL1 into the local exchange sitting in the local exchange since November last year. I'd much rather they were forced to install that rather than we have some wankerous proprietary WiFiMax system installed that won't even get out into the country area where I live(bit like the u-beaut mobile phone system). We can't even get them to give us a stable phone line that degrades over months rather than days.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[dwarfsoft]

What the government SHOULD do now is create this fibre network and keep the equipment in public trust, by perhaps creating a NEW entity that Telstra will have to lease connection off. Then, this entity can be responsible for asking Telstra for higher wholesale rates than it sells to other business customers.

We should be able to recoup a whole lot, and perhaps introduce some competition into the marketplace in the meantime... It's not going to happen though. I'm still waiting for better than 1.5Mbps to get to my area. Apparently Telstra just upgraded one of the exchanges in this town to DSLAM. Shouldn't be long before I can get ADSL2 here (forcasting 3rd quater this year). It has been 3 years since it was first scheduled for rollout (before Telstra was privatised).

Let us hope that prices are somewhat better too.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

The same goes for internet access.

Chances are that most businesses you deal with connect their offices via broadband.

So, if dealing with businesses that use roads is justification for Government money to be spent on roads, then dealing with companies that use telecommunications infrastructure is reason enough for that infrastructure to be funded.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet was used to deliver me services too. It is also vital in co-ordinating transport of goods. Most businesses would grind to a halt without it.

So it should be classed as vital infrastructure, just as roads are.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Tsagadai]

As previously in your sisterpost it will be recouped by 99% penetration. They are talking up $85/month for a basic plan.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[speaker of the truth]

Alright, if you believe internet access to be as important as roads, I'll say we simply have to agree to disagree. I believe it isn't, you apparently believe otherwise.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[rtb61]

Does it need to generate a profit, after all it is investing in Australia's future. The cheaper the broadband, the more cost effectiove the copmaines that rely on and use it become.

Telstra profit margin is just a cost borne by other companies and by the electorate at large. Producing a cost efficient telecoms infrastructure is what it is all about, not creating another profit bloated corporation.

All profits are some one elses cost, some body has to pay and then pass those cost onto their customers.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[frieko]

The problem with that sort of flamewar is Americans are complaining about 10mbps not being fast enough to be called "broadband". I live in rural New York (really) and around here, "broadband" means "at least it's not dialup". I have no access to cable or DSL. Thank God Verizon put in a tower so I can get EVDO. So no, you're not the only people living under a digital rock.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The reason Howard's talking about broadband (apart from the fact that he's running scared from a buoyant & surprisingly competent opposition with a better broadband plan) is because this will give him access to more Australians to spam, spam spam.

Well, I guess a loudly self-proclaimed fiscal conservative like John Howard could be forking out hundreds of millions of dollars just so he can add one more irritating email to peoples' mile-long list of spam in their email addresses...

On another hand, he may just want the re-election prospects of finally bringing decent speeds to the 80% of Australia who don't have broadband.

On another less plausible hand, he may just want to go down in history as being the prime minister who pushed Australia into the 21st century.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember - This is the same Prime Minister of Australia (John Howard) who DJ's like a Mad Cunt http://www.plus613.net/image/39465

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[smellsofbikes]

For the record, my mom has two houses in the US, in Colorado -- a fairly high-income and technically-oriented-jobs state -- and at neither house can she get better than modem access. At one, I've never seen modem speeds better than 28.8kbps. So 512kbps would be 20 times faster than the max rate she gets, so I would absolutely consider that broadband. Which is to say: quit yer complainin'.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

If we were a third-world country, roads would be the main infrastructure that we need.

But we aren't. Telecommunications is just as vital to the economy. Most workplaces cease to function if the phones or internet go down.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[hedwards]

This sort of attitude never ceases to amaze me. America accounts for more than half of the native English speaking population in the world, and yet people insist that the other portion is correct. Australians of all people really ought to have a better view of us considering how often they send troops to support our foreign policy.

Back on topic, why isn't WiMax and such a good solution for the rural areas? Isn't it easy to get line of site in a lot of the rural areas, or are we talking more the parts of the continent that aren't that spread out, with a bit easier time connecting up fiber?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[trippeh]

Oh go and buy one of our scientists and get him to write you some better lines...

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[SySOvErRiDe]

It's a joke, he's saying "broadband for all" but it's merely "broadband for major cities, sub standard broadband for rural areas". The opposition party has a much smarter plan of delivering fibre to 98% of the nation, rather than attempting to use ADSL2+ in a massively sparse population.

I disagree with this. As much as a I dislike Johnny, I'd say their broadband plan is much more feasible than Labour's plan. John's plan is to have 99% of Australian population with access to broadband. Part of that 99% is those who live in bush rural areas, they get wireless broadband. This is why there's criticisms for the 'two-tiered' system. People who live in the bush don't get the same quality/speed of wired broadband as those in urban areas.

However I agree to Johnny's plan. It's more fiscally responsible than Labour's broadband plan. Labour wants 'equity' (which is all fairy lovey dovey) in broadband infrastructure; they want everyone in that 99% to have the same broadband services. But they want to spend AUD$4 billion on it, $4 BILLION. Compared to John's AUD$2 billion plan. I personally don't think its worth spending twice as much money to get fast broadband to something like less than 3% who still lives in the bush. Those who live in the bush still get wireless broadband, which might not be as fast, and perhaps might not be as fair, but these are the tough decisions that they have to make. And saving AUD$2 billion, I think it's the right one.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[kestasjk]

taking 4.7 billion from the Future Fund is a direct abuse of powers

They aren't just going to take the money out and blow it, they are investing in the infrastructure, meaning they expect to get some return on that money. Assuming their plan works I think it would be safe to say it could prove very profitable. They're also responding to lots of criticism they've received about the lack of broadband, and now people are going to start complaining that we have too much broadband.

It was bound to happen I guess. People just love complaining, and I love meta-complaining.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Thomo The Lost]

It's even worse than that. In Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia fibre is being laid across the entire city as well as across the country and along the north-south route from Russia to China. Of course, Mongolia is so much more wealthy a country than Australia so this is obviously why they are doing it with fibre now!

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[figgypower]

How can it be a direct abuse of power, when its an election promise? Surely they have a mandate to fullfill their election promises?
Oh yeah, because politicians have such an awesome track record of fulfilling election promises.
How do you think the private sector's going to recoup their investment? Go on, have a think about it. Do you think it will come from corporate altruism, or perhaps from our pockets?
Of course, it will come out of Australians' pockets, either way. Except the private sector is a LOT more efficient at allocating resources and then using them. And oh yeah, it might spur industry leading to a bigger economy and more jobs. But we all know only politicians can magically "make jobs".

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[NeilTheStupidHead]

America accounts for more than half of the native English speaking population in the world, and yet people insist that the other portion is correct. Maybe you shouldn't have arbitrarily decided to modify the language back in the 19th and early 20th Centuries because the words were too hard. I guess "No Child Left Behind" is older than most of us think.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actually go and read Smith, the invisible hand is, in fact, God's.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[F1re]

The private sector is not always better at allocating resources. If it works better as a monopoly then the government can do a better job.

How would things work if there were 10 companies with garbage trucks driving past your house and you had to choose one?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[fireman sam]

Problem is that most of the voting public are morons who will gladly sell there vote for a one off payment of $400. John Howard has the best spin doctors on the planet. They got the Australian people to vote for a tax that they didn't want (GST). They got the Australian people to vote against a republic they wanted.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[figgypower]

The private sector is not always better at allocating resources. If it works better as a monopoly then the government can do a better job.
You're right; a lot of private ventures in building paved roads have gone so spectacularily, for example. I don't think telecommunications/Internet/data services are better provided by the government. Examples abound. Sure, it may be better if government owns the infrastructure, but the actual bandwidth and/or leasing of pipes will be much better with private enterprise. The U.S. has great examples of what happens when government tries to hand down monopolies for such services (i.e. shitty local cable and phone service), but surprisingly it also has great examples of what happens when government owns only the infrastructure and/or chooses not to allow a local monopoly (i.e. certain communities in California and Utah that I know of).
How would things work if there were 10 companies with garbage trucks driving past your house and you had to choose one?
That would be fantastic; I would choose one of the 10 companies to pick up my trash. The one that does the best job keeps getting my money. Imagine how much cheaper trash collection would be. Though, don't think for a moment that I would be okay with 10 garbage trucks just showing up at my private residence; I would authorize (and more importantly, pay) only one to come to my premises.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[timeOday]

Not unless they start building roads across the Pacific. The largest problem is international connections

Are you sure? There isn't much to get in the way out there, and one fiber bundle carries a ridiculous amount of traffic. I would have guessed the last mile problem is harder.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[timeOday]

Internet access may become as important as roads, but that can't happen until it is universally available. Look at it this way, do you think electricity is important to some undiscovered tribe in a jungle? Of course not; they have nothing to plug into it. Infrastructure takes on new economic value when you can rely on most everybody having it.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Kalriath]

Either are correct really, there are subtle differences in pronounciation between US and UK as well that often justify different spelling. Our country tends to use UK English. I only consider it a misspelling if you use the UK spelling in the US or vice versa.

On topic, my understanding is that the rural areas will be either bush type areas, or hilly areas. Neither of these works well with wireless tech of today

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[redcane]

I agree... Hell, I'll take 12Mbps wireless if it's going!

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is to say: quit yer complainin'. Are you charged AU$0.15 per megabyte (AU$150 per gigabyte) after you go over your 10GB monthly quota?

Even at the data centers in Australia, an average rented server costs about AU$300/month and the most bandwidth you'll get for that price is about 200GB/month (counted in both directions). The port is 100mbps but you'd be lucky to pull more than 200kb/sec from other countries and 1MB/sec within Australia (single thread).

Compare this to the US where you can rent servers for US$100/month with 3 terabytes of bandwidth quota each month.

Now you can hopefully see why Australia's international links are struggling. We can't host anything here in Australia (which would make sense) because it costs far too much. Companies like YouTube, Google, etc aren't going to build a data center mirror in Australia because bandwidth is (if you're lucky) AU$2/gigabyte. That equates to AU$2000 per terabyte. In the US you can get a 1:1 contention 100mbps link with no limits for US$1300/month (example) - which lets you transfer 30 terabytes of GUARANTEED data center grade bandwidth each month.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[pookemon]

"(which is really just another way of saying SOME people will get ADSL2+) "

Uh - no, Fibre to the node promises much faster speeds than ADSL2+ (100Meg? vs 20Meg). ADSL2+ is already available - but with Telstra's pricing structure no one wants it. I live in 10min West of Ballarat. It's very low density around here (maybe 1000 ppl), but our CMUX is ADLS2+ enabled - but you can't get it unless you sign up with Telstra.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[dangitman]

That would be fantastic; I would choose one of the 10 companies to pick up my trash.

I don't think you'd be so thrilled when there are massive traffic jams, because there are 10 times as many garbage trucks on the road, competing for space.

Seems like a huge waste to me, the exact opposite of efficient allocation of resources. Large environmental impact, too, all that extra fuel being consumed. Lots of money being wasted employing more garbage collectors than are needed. Why do you assume it would be cheaper?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[figgypower]

I don't think you'd be so thrilled when there are massive traffic jams, because there are 10 times as many garbage trucks on the road, competing for space.

Seems like a huge waste to me, the exact opposite of efficient allocation of resources. Large environmental impact, too, all that extra fuel being consumed. Lots of money being wasted employing more garbage collectors than are needed. Why do you assume it would be cheaper?

I know it seems counter-intuitive, but repeated studies have shown that increased competition and choice is a good thing for consumers, even after considering all factors. And yes, we can estimate models that take into account environmental costs. After looking at the data, it's hard to believe what I used to.

How about this... In my area, we have four different delivery organizations that I can think of right now. We have DHL, UPS, FedEx, and the U.S. government's own offering: USPS. Those aren't the only ones either: Aramex is another that mostly deals with large scale shipping operations. All these choices, competitors, have grown and arisen over the years. Has it let to congestion? Significant environmental issues? No, because everyone wants to reduce costs; burning up unncessary fuel and sending out trucks unnecessarily costs money -- lots of it. What we see, quite obviously, is that shipping costs are nowadays (in the U.S., anyway) extraordinarily low.

Imagine all the industry that competition has created; all the jobs it has lead to. Not least of all online shopping.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[dangitman]

Significant environmental issues? No,

Nonsense. People get shit shipped everywhere, even when they don't need to, because of that "competition." People have stuff shipped across the globe just to save a few bucks on eBay. There's no way that has no environmental impact.

You are also making the mistake of comparing vastly different services. Global delivery is far more distributed in both time and place. Garbage trucks are intensely local, and they don't have as many options in distributing their times of operation. Either you have garbage trucks annoying the neighborhood every single day, or you have ten garbage trucks trying to serve a single area on the same day. Either way it's pretty dumb.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[fj3k]

I bought a brand new AGP motherboard just as the first PCI-E boards were coming out, thinking 'sure PCI-E is newer but I won't be upgrading the new graphics card I bought with it sooner than the motherboard, right?' The stupid graphics card died, so I had to settle with the only graphics card that would fit the board, a $100 piece of carp.
Sure, the fibre network is more expensive, but it's got a whole lot more bandwidth. It may not be much better, but it's better right? So the only thing that would make it bad is if something much better comes out soon and we need our network to be that technology, and we wish we had that $3.75 billion we would have saved building Howard's equally obsolete network, so we could upgrade to this new one. Is there any such technology or need on the horizon? Maybe, but my bet is that we'd be just as safe with the great fast network that would with all probability last longer than the decent fast-but-two-tiered network that Howard is proposing.

Of course, all of this is dependant on the promises of politicians. And on that we have much less reason to doubt Rudd (if only because he hasn't been tried yet, but I'm all for forgetting this fact because I'm kinda sick of Howard).

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah! Create a new entity to do the job that Telstra was originally created to do! Maybe we'll have more luck with Telstra Mk2.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[smellsofbikes]

And if your max connection rate is 28.8kbps they can charge you $2000/gigabyte and you won't care because you won't ever use it. Services like YouTube are completely irrelevant at that kind of speed.

You *are* screwed because you have enough bandwidth to run up some huge bills, but not enough to do what you'd like. But I bet you wouldn't trade that for near-unlimited transfer quota that you can't use because it's too slow.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[figgypower]

Nonsense. People get shit shipped everywhere, even when they don't need to, because of that "competition." People have stuff shipped across the globe just to save a few bucks on eBay. There's no way that has no environmental impact.

Yes, peoeple do get shit shipped everywhere and they do it all the time. There's definitely a consequence to increased shipping to the environment. That hit to the environment will happen so long as there is an increased demand for said shipping services. And define "need"; how often do people get items shipped when it's actually unnecessary? Have you reduced your online shopping due to the increase in your carbon footprint? Remember, you're reducing your carbon footprint by not driving or waiting in traffic; that delivery truck with 50 packages is certainly more efficient (enviromentally and economically) then if 50 people went out to a store and got their stuff. If someone really wants a particular good, then they'll get it; without our competitive global shipping services, a store would pay a higher price for that good to be delivered to the store and then you would drive to the store to go pick it up. Yeah, that sounds efficient and more enivornmentally friendly... And I can't imagine you can actually save some real money by taking a completely inefficient shipping route; very often, you do not have the choice of a shipping route. But you do for time, so route efficiency would not also be a cost reduction but *is* a marketed feature.

Yes, there are exceptions to what I said, especially when you consider the airline industry. It is heavily regulated. In some instances I think this is absolutely necessary (i.e. safety reasons). Some regulations are just completely stupid, however, and do increase costs. In the airline industry, for people (and not cargo), an inefficient route is often taken because the ticket prices are cheaper for an individual. For a shipping company, they're going to take whatever route is cheapest and that's usually the shortest route.

You are also making the mistake of comparing vastly different services. Global delivery is far more distributed in both time and place. Garbage trucks are intensely local, and they don't have as many options in distributing their times of operation. Either you have garbage trucks annoying the neighborhood every single day, or you have ten garbage trucks trying to serve a single area on the same day. Either way it's pretty dumb.

Do you know *why* garbage trucks are intensely local? Because many local governments hand one company a monopoly. Of course, why would you decentralize garbage trucks? Literally because what's trash in one area may be useable in another area. Not to mention the efficiency in processing trash in a larger centralized location rather then having a central area for every single location. Oh and there's the fact that monopolizing trash services leads to companies like Waste Management, Inc. who can pretend to be environmentally friendly when they aren't anymore then any other trash company. A freer market would at least give you the option of choosing a legitmately environmentally friendly trash company.

And why do garbage trucks have to come at a certain time of the day? In a freer market you could choose time. It's not as if 6am on Friday (or whatever) is some awesome time to collect trash. And just how do you expect to be severly annoyed by garbage trucks? I mentioned delivery trucks, because they DO go in an out of local areas. It does not lead to chaos. They come and go as they please. Global delivery may be far more distributed in time and place, but that doesn't mean I don't see at least three different delivery trucks in my local area every other day. Maybe you don't live in an area as urbanized as mine, but I can assure you that nothing dramatic has happened yet.

You're using arguments similar to those that people use in order to keep phone and cable company monopolies. How do you not see that monopolies are rarely a good thing?

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[figgypower]

I should also add that having 10 different trash companies will not lead to 10 times as much garbage truck traffic. You're basically saying that if we double the amount of local grocery stores, we'll double our local food supply. Maybe, but probably not.

Re:The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[dwarfsoft]

If it were still in Public ownership then yes, Telstra Mk2... maybe they could call it "Telecom Australia" or something new and innovative like that?

the measurements are wrong!!!

[flukus]

I saw our communications minister (Helen Coonan) on lateline last night. She had the perfect solution to change all our broadband woes, change the way the measurements are taken. That sums up the current government though. If you don't like the statistics change the methodology.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[Chandon Seldon]

Hey, that's how we're doing so well here in the USA. The international (ITU) standard for broadband is "Faster than a T1 (1.5 Mbps up/down)". Here in the USA, the standard is "200kbps in at least one direction". If you Aussies want to upstage us, just define broadband as "able to receive radio transmissions". You can have 100% coverage and beat everyone!

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[kaptink]

yes, a very shady approach to say the least. It's a response to the opposition government who want to build theyre own infrastructure with telcos outside of current government favourite, Telstra. The transcript of the interview with the current minister for communications - http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s1954846.h tm or video - http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200706/r152558_545863 .asx. Helen Coonan is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[flukus]

Yeah, she mentioned changing the "standard" with US pressure too.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[Snad]

Here in the USA, the standard is "200kbps in at least one direction".

Here in New Zealand, the definition of "broadband" is essentially "anything that isn't a dial-up modem". Hence the telecoms monopoly gets aways with a 128kbps ADSL link being referred to as "broadband" and although I've never actually seen it as such I'm sure there will be those who consider a 64kbps ISDN line "broadband".

Note for the geographically challenged : NZ isn't part of Australia (yet ... give it time) but we like to whine with the best of them...

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[NoMaster]

So, she was still referring to "a gigabyte of power" like she was on the 7:30 Report a few hours earlier, was she?

(Silly Americans are still dicking around with tubes - whereas we in Australia have Gigabytes of Power!)

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[PenguSven]

I've seen ISDN (128k) advertised here (oz) as iDSL. couldn't f**king believe it. however having said that, im quite content with my 16mbit ADSL2+ for now.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[mjwx]

NZ isn't part of Australia (yet ... give it time)

Are you sure you want that?

Under the Howard government we have practically been turned into the newest US state.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[0mni]

I would be happy with my 1.5mbps connection if I could get an unlimited download plan.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[drsmithy]

So, she was still referring to "a gigabyte of power" like she was on the 7:30 Report a few hours earlier, was she?

She actually said "a gigabit" - and while the terminology is grating to people with Clues, what she actually meant was perfectly clear in context (for those who didn't - or couldn't - watch, a gigabit of bandwidth ("power") [into the home]).

However, people with such a poor grasp of the technology shouldn't be in charge of it. While I can excuse Howard for clearly not having the foggiest clue what the bloke meant when he was talking about "spectrum", for the Minister of Telecommunications, etc, not to know the terminology (or to get so flustered as to bollocks it up) is ridiculous.

The scary thing is, compared to the biggest luddite in history she's a towering intellect regarding the Intarwebs.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[QuantumG]

Under the Howard government we have practically been turned into the newest US state. Except we don't get to vote.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

NZ isn't part of Australia (yet ... give it time)

Wasn't there an Australian guy on eBay who tried to auction off New Zealand? If NZers have that to look forward to as their future, I'd think you'd all be a bit worried....

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[hdparm]

...and you're sure that's worse than Clark/Cullen private state?

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[kiddygrinder]

You can, you just have to pay for the bandwidth you're using, a 1 meg pipe costs about 300 wholesale so a 1.5 will be 450 a month if you're going to flood it. go talk to an isp i'm sure they'll be able to hook you up with something.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[mrbluze]

(Silly Americans are still dicking around with tubes - whereas we in Australia have Gigabytes of Power!)

I heard the news reporter tell us that we will be getting 25 MEGABYTES of bandwidth. And I bet we have to pay 40 cents per megabyte too.

Sounds like a right royal rip off to me.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[cammoblammo]

Note for the geographically challenged : NZ isn't part of Australia (yet)

That really depends on your reading of Point Six in the Preamble to the Australian Constitution

I asked a constitutional lawyer once about the mechanism by which NZ could ever become a state of Australia, but she never got back to me. However that turns out cricket would never be the same again.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[NoMaster]

I was pretty sure she said "gigabit" too - but the transcript said "gigabyte", so I went with that. I wasn't going to feck around with the whole video thing just to embarass the dopey cow even further.

And, sorry, it still makes no sense even in context - it's either conflating two totally different things (power vs bandwidth), or showing a basic lack of understanding of the very 'initiative' she's promoting. Read the rest of the transcript, or watch the video - it's clear that she's got no idea of what she's talking about and is just winging it from poorly-remembered briefing notes.

Look, I'd dearly love to believe the woman was a decent politician with a clue. I actually thought she might be one, particularly compared to the last couple we've had (Alston, for example, was just an arrogant arsehole). But, having read pretty much all the transcripts of Senate estimates committees related to her portfolio since she got the job, and seen the absolute feck-up she and her government have made of DTV and media legislation in this country, I've come to the conclusion that she's just arrogant and clueless about the actual practicalities of her portfolio.

I don't agree she's got a better grasp of it than Alston - at best, you can only say she presents better than he did (which isn't saying much). And she delegates the attack-dog role to someone else - Senator Fierravanti-Wells.

I've actually had some correspondance with her opposition counterpart, Senator Conroy. And while I'm not naive enough to believe that he has a clue either, at least his staff and advisors do (from the quality and intelligence of their replies). He certainly displays a better knowledge and understanding of the issues involved in the portfolio - ignore the press releases, soundbites, and electioneering; go and read the estimates committee transcripts and Senate Hansard to find out for yourself.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[dns_server]

IANAL but I believe it would just require a referendum to be called to change the preamble. I would suggest it would function the same way as the failed referendum to become a republic.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Would being able to vote help?

Here in the UK we are going to have a new PM we have not voted for, but I have given up voting where I live - none of the parties are fielding anyone worth voting for.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[CrazyTalk]

Lateline? Isn't that the fictional News Show that Kent Brockman hosts on the Simpsons? Surely you mean "Nightline".

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[Maelwryth]

Why? You would still lose.

Sorry, had to say it. I think Australia's won more games than us anyway.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[Kadmos]

... or human rights.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[bh_doc]

Isn't Conroy the guy pushing for ISP-level internet filtering of porn/violence/sedition/etc. (for the good of the-children, of course)? With a waste-of-resources policy that unfeasible, how's that bode for the knowledge of him and of his advisers?

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[dangitman]

That was Smartline. This is Lateline.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[NoMaster]

And that's one of the things I emailed his office about (the rest were mostly DTV & public broadcaster related). The 'official' Labor policy is

• parental education
• PC-based filters
• more resources/education for law enforcement, and
• requiring ISPs to offer a 'clean feed'

Now, while I don't agree with the last (and I'm not really convinced about the second-last either), it's not quite the "Labor wants to filter ur Internetz!" spin you got from the media, is it? For a start it's optional (to the end-user), not mandatory...

My questions to his office about this were along the lines of "how would such a legislated responsibility sit with / affect the de-facto 'common carrier' status of ISPs in Australia?". The replies were well thought out, sensible, and in at least one case quite critical of certain members of his own party for making stupid, ill-informed, populist public statements. One particularly telling point on their cluefullness was that they knew - and named - the many ISPs here using both transparent and used-configured proxies on port 80, and included information on and links to ISP-based filtering being done in the UK and Europe.

On the other hand, from Coonan's office, I got a (snail-mailed!) form letter thanking me for my interest, with a URL scrawled almost illegibly on the back pointing to the government's list of 'approved' net-nanny software (that URL is now defunct - this was mid last year).

Seriously, if you're interested in this issue, fire off an email yourself to the offices of both of them. One (minor) criticism I have is that it can take a go or two to get past the front-line tard-filter both of them have in place (you can imagine the kind of emails they get every single day!), but if you act reasonable and show a clue or two you might be surprised at what you find out about each side.

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[IchBinEinPenguin]

>Under the Howard government we have practically been turned into the newest US state.
Except we don't get to vote.

Voting only counts if the votes are actually counted.

99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[L0k11]

There is a difference between being able to get a product and actually buying it. To say that 99% of Australians will have high speed broadband is ridiculous.

Re:99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[Frogbert]

However if it does turn out to be true that 99% of Australians could get broadband if they so desired then that would be a very positive step.

Re:99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[Yoda's Mum]

In the case of the network the Australian Government is proposing, uptake in areas where FTTN will be installed (ie, most non-remote areas) will be very close to those area's accessibility. The plan is to remove the old telephone system completely from the equation in the majority of areas.

Re:99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[0mni]

The difference between the 98% of labour and 99% of liberal is the people who don't get access to a landline phone. OR Maybe they will kill people who live in the outback.

Re:99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[dbIII]

It is a bare faced election lie which will be dismissed later as not being a "core promise". My workplace has to rely on a 512/512 DSL connections because they are the best available 15km from the centre of a state capital - and those two lines are expensive - that has been the state of Australian broadband in many areas for the last decade. Communications in Australia have stagnated for a decade while the government has been arguing about selling off all the infrastucture at bargain prices and finding the worst of US management to run the decaying mass of it.

Re:99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[Chrisq]

I wouldn't mind betting that 99% already could get it. Think private satellite uplinks, dedicated leased lines, etc. Now to be able to get it affordably would be something else.

Re:99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[ThePengwin]

Just yell out "Im disadvantaged!!" They should make it cheaper :)

Seriously though, broadband in Australia is definitely crap. 99% coverage isn't going to mean a lot for us because we are all still on bandwidths below 10mbps.

I know that where i live there is an ADSL2+ (which would be slow compared to USA's standards) hub ready to roll, but its not turned on, and for some stupid reason wont be for a while longer. No one can access it, and its pissing me off.

Australia really lets me down in technology :(

Re:99% Accessability != 99% uptake

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, we're not ALL on sub 10mbps. And I think you're suffering from the old 'grass is greener' syndrome. And the whole point of this article is that there's a plan to move Australia up in the digital world. If you want to be whiny, move where it's cold and miserable, at least there your whines will have company.

And like most Australians here

[Frogbert]

I think I speak for most Australians that post here when I say that I'll believe it when I'm connected to it.

Re:And like most Australians here

[dasmoo]

Hear hear!

Re:And like most Australians here

[donaldm]

And lets not forget "by 1990 no Australian child will be living in poverty" :-)

Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[largesnike]

As per normal, Howard's doing this because, after attacking the opposition over more or less the same plan, he discovered that the polls show that Australians want this. So he's decided to adopt the plan, but make it even better than the opposition's idea, by increasing the penetration by a massive 1% from 98% to 99%.

sigh

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because they managed to put a $2 billion plan together, out to tender, consider the tenders and choose someone in the few weeks since the opposition started talking about it. This has been in the pipeline for a very long time.

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[Architect_sasyr]

You forget the arse kissing he's giving us by delivering it 3 (or 4?) years earlier as well...

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[largesnike]

You've got it around the wrong way, OPEL (a consortium lead by Optus) has been working on this for a while, they made a completed submission a couple of weeks ago, which the Government decided to adopt. They didn't start the process. Also, it was not a billion-dollar contract, but the first 958 million or so for upgrading the existing ADSL network. The wireless part will be put out to tender later.

There is no commitment to fibre in this, not even to the node. But as usual, the Government has taken credit, and there's always an army of drones to believe them.

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

... and decreasing the cost from $4.7b to around $2b...

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[Chuq]

OPEL (a consortium lead by Optus)

Just to clarify, Optus is a part of two groups: (By the use of the word "consortium" I'm guessing you you might be confusing the two.)

• OPEL is 50/50 Optus (telco) and Elders ("rural" company) - they are responsible for the plan being discussed in this article.
  
• The G9 consortium is a group of 9 companies, ONE of which is Optus, and the other eight of which are other telcos/ISPs.
  

The G9 has been working on a fully fledged FTTN plan for some time. The OPEL announcement was a bit of a surprise - the fact Optus/Elders were working on this plan wasn't really known, so whether Optus is still working on another larger plan with the G9, who knows.

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[cranos]

And not even getting half the job done.

Remember, there is still the "competitive tender" for metro FTTN to come. Which means that we are still stuck in the same place as we were before, with Telstra and G9 both acting like children.

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Yeah, it's true, but whaddaya gonna do? So long as one of them gets the job done, I'll be happy.

And by the way, that "massive 1%" will be the hardest 1% of the population to reach. Plus it is cutting the number of people missing out in Labour's plan by a massive 50%! I, for one, am impressed (at both Labour and Liberal).

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. A fraction of the price for an upgrade with a fraction of the lifespan.

Australia has to eventually implement FTTN (then FTTH later). What the Liberals are proposing is a stopgap measure that will smooth things over until "the market" (i.e. Telstra) decides to do the necessary upgrades.

It's a band-aid. I'd rather see a solution that addresses the real issue, and puts the infrastructure in the hands of a body that is separated (at least operationally) from Telstra.

Re:Howards just doing the oneupmanship thing

[Anonymous Coward]

...by increasing the penetration by a massive 1% from 98% to 99%.

You put the "massive" in sarcasm tags, but that's the difference between 2% without it and 1%. So fully half the people who wouldn't get broadband under Labor would get it with this. That's significant.

It's like reducing unemployment from 4% to 3%. Big whoop. But from the view of the unemployed, 25% of those unemployed before would be employed now.

Problem is links going out of Australia.

[Anonymous Coward]

As discussed in:

    http://australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,2192 6920-5013040,00.html

the real problem is that the lack of links out of Australia means we are being charged way too much. This will only get worse if more people are able to get connected.

Re:Problem is links going out of Australia.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.

On high-download-quota plans, 90% of the cost comes from the price of international data.

Re:Problem is links going out of Australia.

[TrickiDicki]

Quite right - Australia only has 2 major international links. There's 20 million Aussies. Lets be generous and say 10 million households. That would work out at about 2kbps per household overseas.
 
Australians - no YouTube for you.

Re:Problem is links going out of Australia.

[Matt_R]

The total over(under?)seas capacity will increase 10x in the next year.

Telstra are building their own 1.2Tbps cable to Hawaii, Pipenetworks are building a 640Mbps cable to Guam, and Southern Cross are upgrading their cables from 240Gbps to 1.2Tbps.

So things are actually looking good.

Re:Problem is links going out of Australia.

[Chris Pimlott]

Spot on.

Here's a map of the world's undersea communications cables. Notice the massive of connections out of the US, particular between US and Europe. It's practically a single line. Now look at Australia. The larger two going between Australia and the US is the Southern Cross Cable. The other major cable is the Australia-Japan Cable. The rest are low-capacity links used primarily as back-ups.

Re:Problem is links going out of Australia.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just pointing something out, the cables from US to Europe most likely serve both north and south America, as well as traffic from Europe. Which is a lot more people then Australia.

metrics

[bobby1234]

99% looks great on paper but is most likely political vapour ware (or even worse not a core promise)

The Australian Government has allowed the Telstra monopoly to restrict ADSL broadband in this country to an artificial limit of 1.5Mbit downloads for years now (only just releasing the full 8M plans). We also have restricted downloads (quotas per month).

So the metric of 99% looks like we would be miles ahead but considering it is a political promise and the quota on downloads it isn't as good as it sounds.

Re:metrics

[Anonymous Coward]

Bollocks. Nothing is stopping other telcos and ISPs from installing their own equipment in exchanges and providing any damn speed they want, which is exactly what has happened with ADSL2. It's the companies wanting to make a quick buck by reselling Telstra's product that could only offer 1.5M.

Re:metrics

[bobby1234]

Bollocks. Nothing is stopping other telcos and ISPs from installing their own equipment in exchanges and providing any damn speed they want, which is exactly what has happened with ADSL2. It's the companies wanting to make a quick buck by reselling Telstra's product that could only offer 1.5M. excuse me but do you have any idea how much that costs. especially at the rates that Telstra charge (it only became an option for isp due to Telstra lack of adsl2+ infrastructure (until recently) and the ACCC (watchdog)'s intervention).

there is a fundamental problem when the wholesaler (infrastructure provider) is also one of the retailers (selling the product). Telstra have used their monopoly of the wholesale business to control and slow down broadband (literally).

Re:metrics

[zaydana]

Not true. Telstra is restricting access to new estates where RIMs are installed. Even relatively suburban ones (such as where I live). Even if other ISPs wanted to install their own DSLAMs in them, they wouldn't be allowed. Which means until recently, I havn't been able to get anything higher than 1.5M. I'm still with a limit of 8M, which I'm not using because they charge through the roof for it.

Re:metrics

[Xyde]

This is true - is talking about using Telstra's Next G technology which isn't particularly fast nor affordable. From the bigpond.com site for wireless:

$54.95/month 256/128kbps, 200MB allowance
$84.95/month 256/128kbps for 1GB

or if you want 1.5/384 it costs

$114.95/month for 1GB
$184.95/month for 3GB

These aren't reasonable broadband prices for anybody but the very wealthy especially when you include that excess usage is charged at 30c per MB over, and usage is charged as upload AND download.

Also add that they require a 3 year contract to even get it in the first place, and if you cancel because P2P probably doesn't work for shit over a wireless connection or because they block ports or because it's expensive and slow and shit in general you're up for a $299 modem cost + remaining contract.

It's best to not use Telstra where at all possible (as i sit here posting this on dialup because Telstra stuffed up my ADSL churn)

Potential Problem

[Frogbert]

While this would certainly be a great improvement for Australia I have to wonder if we will have enough offshore bandwidth to keep up with the demand this network will create. Australian offshore bandwidth is in short supply after Telstra gave everyone access to 8mbps ADSL1 plans, I can only see this getting worse. As far as a short term solution I think it is time that the Government reformed library laws to allow an "Australian Online Library" that hosted television shows and movies for the country. It wouldn't be popular with the media companies, but then again Australia is its own nation so there isn't much they could do about it. I know it would never happen but it would be sweet.

Re:Potential Problem

[largesnike]

I'm afraid Australia is run by vested (not public) interests.

Partisan submission much?

[fabs64]

The reason that this proposal has been attacked, is because its way of delivering that 12mbps to the country, is with ADSL2+ and WiMax, instead of any real infrastructure upgrade.
Obviously that 12mbps will only be available to those with an apartment on the roof of the telephone exchange itself, or who have access to the unproven WiMax option.
The opposition has promised to upgrade the entire country's infrastructure to fibre-to-the-node, unlike the govt which is only willing to encourage private investors to do this in the cities where it is profitable.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[Frogbert]

Actually if you lived a stones throw away from the exchange you would be getting 24mbps with ADSL2

Re:Partisan submission much?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does FTTN help people on farms? I spent a few years designing telephony systems for rural areas in Australia, and many, many of them have their phone line over wireless links. There is no cabling out there at all. The only way they are going to get broadband is via some sort of wireless.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[fabs64]

The amount of farms that get their phone over wireless, even in Aus, is pretty damned insignificant compared to the population living in rural towns.

I'm not saying there shouldn't BE a solution for them, but it's not even a blip when forming a national broadband strategy.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[ozmanjusri]

I'm about that far away from the exchange, and my data rates on an uncapped ADSL2+ plan (iiNet) are:

Download Speed: 3375 kbps (421.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 802 kbps (100.3 KB/sec transfer rate)

Re:Partisan submission much?

[PenguSven]

I'm about a KM from my exhange and i get about 16mbit (reality is about 1.6mbyte/sec max) down and 1mbit (reality is about 130k/sec max) up

Re:Partisan submission much?

[SimonInOz]

"Actually if you lived a stones throw away from the exchange you would be getting 24mbps with ADSL2"

And indeed I do - and I do. Or at least that's what the modem pretty much says - 20mbps. In fact I live about 500m away (let's say 500 yards for metrically deficient people - no idea about how many rods that is, sorry).

The restriction seems to be from there on, though. I can certainly measure an 8mbps connection to a test site in Canberra, but many sites are still pretty slow.

Australia is the most urbanised country on the planet. Thus most of us live in fairly densely populated areas (Sydney, Gold Coast, Melbourne, etc). The idea of all these vast numbers of folk living in "the bush" is, in fact, a myth. There are some, but not many and they are really, really sparse - a satellite service to cover them sounds great to me. Probably them too - a heck of a lot better than a struggling land line.
There are of course a fair number of folk living in country towns (like the wonderfully named Orange) where service is pretty poor. For the townsfolk wimax sounds good, and the more suburban would do well with satellite. What's the problem with that?

Gosh this all sounds pretty sensible doesn't it? Well, yes it does. It's not often I support anything from Mr John (slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan) Howard, but this seems pretty reasonable. (I still won't vote for him though).

I don't think it would be a good idea to try to connect every station, township and run down cattle farm in Australia with fibre. Don't they live in the bush to get away from it all?

Re:Partisan submission much?

[fabs64]

*sigh* and in less than 10 years, when your absolute bare minimum quick-fix wimax is once again well BELOW the bare minimum required, you now have to a) roll out a completely new and better wireless technology (presuming our wireless technologies keep improving at the same rate as broadband consumption) or b) roll out almost the same fiber optic lines to what you should have rolled out now.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[Marlor]

The problem is that there are plenty of people who live in "semi-urban" areas in the outer suburbs of cities, or in "satellite towns", with terrible connectivity.

I'm in the Hunter Valley, in a satellite town of Newcastle, and ADSL only became available at our exchange a couple of years ago. ADSL2+ is still way off.

They would need to run less than 10KM of backhaul to connect us with the nearest ADSL2+ exchange, and the backhaul could keep on running to the Upper Hunter. However, nobody is willing to do this.

There have been wireless internet trials around here, but the performance was totally erratic and unpredictable when compared to ADSL.

I'll be supporting which-ever plan is most likely to give the hundreds-of-thousands of people in semi-urban "blackspots" the best broadband.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[drsmithy]

Gosh this all sounds pretty sensible doesn't it? Well, yes it does. It's not often I support anything from Mr John (slightly to the right of Ghengis Khan) Howard, but this seems pretty reasonable. (I still won't vote for him though).

Can't say I'm a huge fan of Howard (although he does fit into my "least worst option" category), but he's not even close to being "far right". Indeed, most of our American friends would probably consider him centre-Left (although that's somewhat skewed by the whole US system being biased a long way Right in the first place).

Howard, like Rudd, is pretty much centrist (ie: populist). Which is why it would be quite difficult to pick between them, if it wasn't for that Communist wench standing just slightly behind ol' Kevin.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[trawg]

The opposition has promised to upgrade the entire country's infrastructure to fibre-to-the-node, unlike the govt which is only willing to encourage private investors to do this in the cities where it is profitable. The people of Australia voted away their rights to have the government do things with their telecommunications infrastructure. They voted in Howard, who had promised to sell Telstra and privatise it, with a goal of making it more profitable, better structured, increase competition in telecoms, etc.

Now all of a sudden the people of Australia are expecting the government to step up and drop billions of dollars wiring up the rest of the country? I think its ludicrous of Labour to propose spending $4 billion of my hard earned tax dollars wiring up people who probably voted for the government to wash their hands of the telecoms market.

This is what happens when you privatise industries. Everyone should have thought about this before they voted for someone who wanted to privatise it.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[fabs64]

Privatising telstra the government promised that it would increase competition and provide better service, unfortunately the government was stupid enough to allow telstra to keep its monopoly upon the country's infrastructure.

I realise this is what happens when you privatise a monopoly, however the majority of australians will accept the assurances of the 'great economic manager' john winston howard.
But the fact that the majority of the population are gullible is not a good reason to let economically essential infrastructure go down the crapper.

As for your tax dollars, what the hell ever, that's what governments do.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[cammoblammo]

I don't think it would be a good idea to try to connect every station, township and run down cattle farm in Australia with fibre. Don't they live in the bush to get away from it all?

No, they live in the bush because city folk don't like living next door to several hundred head of cattle or herds of sheep being driven up the street. And a hundred hectares of burning wheat stubble is sure to upset the neighbours.

That said, most farms I have had anything to do with are run by thoroughly modern people. For all the stereotypes getting around farmers are early adopters of new technology. Have you ever seen a header cropping wheat and guided by GPS? Or a robotic dairy?

Your average farm these days is a well oiled business that needs the same access to communications as the next. How are farmers supposed to do their banking? They can't run into town every other day. No, just like you they do it all electronically. When their tractors need new parts, do they take it down to the local mechanic who just happens to have it in stock? No, they email a photo of the part to the John Deere rep who has the part couriered off within the hour. When you need your tractor, you need your tractor. And how do you get the vital stats on bull scrota come AI season? Wait for the catalogue in the mail?[1]

And let's not forget the rest of the family. If the children aren't within cooee of a bricks and mortar school, how do you suggest they learn? School of the Air's great, but internet plus radio is far better than just radio. And I'm sure their need for on demand p2p and YouTube is no different to the average townie.

Admittedly this is a little unusual, but I have a friend who runs a small farm. His wife has IT degrees coming out the wazoo, but they live five hours drive away from anywhere she can use them. Despite that, she has a six figure job that is done predominantly over the internet. That particular connection isn't great -- she's got a pretty fat pipe coming into the house via satellite, but the uplink is via a very intermittent 28.8 kbps dial-up. That can be really frustrating, especially when her boss needs those commits yesterday.

The idea of the bush being very lightly populated is true, depending on what you mean by bush. 'The bush' doesn't simply mean the Simpson Desert -- if you were to go to Orange[2] and drove twenty minutes in any direction you'd pass through several towns without access to piped gas or running water. These areas are only lightly populated, but they do service the bread, meat and milk basket for most Australians. As such, why should we presume they don't need reliable, fast and comparatively cheap internet access?

[1]Okay, fair enough -- that's how they do it, not to mention the travelling salesmen hawking their wares. But studs are starting to publish stats on line.

[2]I've never been to Orange, but if it's a typical 'regional centre' of between 20 and 50 thousand people, I'm pretty sure my point stands!

Re:Partisan submission much?

[Fex303]

I used to get these kind of speeds from from iiNet. Then I switched to TPG and was getting something in the order of 17Mbit connections at about 1.5km from the exchange. I changed exchanges too, so it's hardly an objective test, but my points are a) ADSL 2+ speeds can actually be pretty good and b) iiNet are overrated.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[GeckoX]

To where pray-tell?

It appears if you are suggesting that the entirety of australia should be carpeted with fiber, have you ever looked at the size of AU, and the distribution of it's population?

That'd be like running fiber to every community in the arctic. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[GeckoX]

Then start up a local telco in your town. Build it yourself. Unless of course there aren't enough people to make it cost effective. If that's the case, can you really expect someone else to do it for you?

It doesn't take much to set this kind of thing up for a small suburban centre, it really doesn't.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[GeckoX]

You make good points, but you make it sound like there is no alternative, like they wouldn't exist without broadband...which they don't even have.

Farming has been around for a long time. I'd suggest that just maybe they've been farming there longer than the internet has existed...just maybe.

Aside from that bit of sarcasm...there is still nothing you mention that would indicate it being economically feasible to run fiber all over hells half acre. That would be a total and complete waste. Satellite can more than cover the uses you mention above, and for a remote and dispersed population, it probably makes the most sense by far. Sure, it's not 10 Meg broadband, but is that really necessary?

And if it really is deemed necessary, the fact is, it will NOT be cheap, it simply CAN'T be cheap. Fiber is not cheap, and unless you're sharing it with a lot of people, you're going to be paying a lot of money to use it.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[Marlor]

Then start up a local telco in your town. Build it yourself. Unless of course there aren't enough people to make it cost effective. If that's the case, can you really expect someone else to do it for you?

Well, considering I'm a poorly-paid research assistant, I don't exactly have the time or money to be investing in things like laying backhaul and bargaining with Telstra (to convince them to give me access to their network and exchange racks). I think an established ISP/telco is better placed to do that.

However, they probably aren't willing to do so, since there's quicker profits to be made elsewhere. That's why I think the Government should be helping out.

The Government created the mess where 99% of the infrastructure ended up in the hands of a private company (Telstra) who has no motivation to upgrade it (and is actively hostile to any company who tries to create their own infrastructure), so they should help rectify the situation.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[GeckoX]

Just note that there is a difference between 'you' and 'your community'.

You alone likely can not do much. Your community can very likely do much.

Or you can wait around for a government handout that may never come.

Just pointing out that despite what is being said, there most certainly are other options available, there are always other options available.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[fabs64]

I live in Australia, grew up in rural victoria, even the rural population lives in towns averaging a couple of thousand that are fairly tightly packed around an exchange, the exchanges already have fiber to them.

I'm not suggesting running fiber out to farms, that's the 2% that aren't covered.

Re:Partisan submission much?

[cas2000]

I think its ludicrous of Labour to propose spending $4 billion of my hard earned tax dollars wiring up people who probably voted for the government to wash their hands of the telecoms market.

it's not 4 billion of your hard-earned tax dollars.

it's 4.7 billion dollars from the proceeds of the sale of Telstra (you remember the T3 float, don't you?)

personally, i think that the infrastructure should have been split off from Telstra before it was privatised, but what's done is done.....and i don't think that it's at all unreasonable for some of the proceeds of the sale of our ex-public telco being used to fund public telecommunications infrastructure.

Slightly offtopic but...

[Matthew Strahan]

Why is the Sydney Morning Herald running an AFP report on an important Australian issue? The report's badly written, misspells the name of one of the two major political parties in Australia and measures costs in US$...

For the record, much more accurate and informative news on Australian Broadband can be found at Whirlpool at http://whirlpool.net.au/.

Re:Slightly offtopic but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh, Australian journalists always talk about "The Nationals", the "New Zealand Federal Government" and the "Labor party" when writing about New Zealand.

not penetration...

[Anonymous Coward]

...only availability.

Don't you just love election campaigns? The politics of envy are a glorious thing.

The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal

[definate]

Great, so we're going to pay twice as much, than if the entire market was de-regulated and Telstra was completely sold.

Additionally, a lot of people don't want broadband. We don't live in a densely populated country, we can't provide these facilities economically, however the government now wants to provide it to use forcefully an inefficiently, and force everyone to pay for it with taxes and inflation.

Great, I can't fucking wait.

Re:The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal

[fabs64]

In reply to your signature as well as your post; they built the copper network.

Re:The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal

[abcgi]

"The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal"
The Liberal Party (a conservative party) in Australia is big "L" Liberal not small "l" liberal.
Therefore your subject line I perceive to be a non sequitur.

Re:The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal

[drsmithy]

Great, so we're going to pay twice as much, than if the entire market was de-regulated and Telstra was completely sold.

You think Telstra's prices would go *DOWN* if that happened ?

WAITER ! I'll have what he's having !

Name one time government did any good.

That's easy. Building the phone system in the first place. Now can you name one time privatising a government-held utilities monopoly improved service and prices ?

Re:The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal

[LordLucless]

Yeah, because deregulating a monopoly is going to lower prices way down.

The connectivity situation in Australia sucks. Deregulate it in its current state, and it would suck more. If you want to fix, have the government split up Telstra (they still own a controlling share), spin off the infrastructure into a government department, and the rest into a private corporation. Rent the infrastructure to the telcos, and use the money to keep it up (ideally, the infrastructure department should then be cost-neutral, but knowing government, it probably wouldn't be). That levels the playing field between Telstra and every other provider - a situation where deregulation might be considered. But to do so now would just line Telstra's pockets at the expense of everyone else.

Re:The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal

[David at Eeyore]

I was just about to say the same thing! The Government could appoint a new National Information Infrastructure body or just add to the ACMA (Communications and Media Authority). Its a pity that the other mob don't put it into their platform...

Re:The Liberal Party doesn't seem so liberal

[quenda]

> The Liberal Party (a conservative party) in Australia

ah, but by the standards of Slashdot's home country, the party is indeed liberal, socially and economically.

Oh yeah?

[The Bandit]

My country of 5 acres in Florida has 100% broadband. A T-1 actually. Since DSL stopped 200 feet from my house and BellSouth (now AT&T) refused to bring it to me, I made them install a T1. :) You should have seen the look on that tech's face. WHAHAHAAHAH

Bullshit.

[EvilCabbage]

I live in a very well populated part of regional Australia. I can barely get DSL at 1500/256 and I pay through the nose for it.

The state of Australian telecoms is utterly shameful and no amount of empty promises by this clusterfuck is going to change things.

Re:Bullshit.

[kramulous]

I totally agree. I used to live in a unit 2.5km from Brisbane CBD and I could not even get the phone connected !!!???? WTF?

Re:Bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

on the other hand, I live in one of the cheapest suburbs in my city and enjoy rates of around 10mbps/1mbps.

See, my unsubstantiated and meaningless anecdote trumps yours!

Re:Bullshit.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

I live in a very well populated part of urban Australia (Newcastle), and I can get (theoretically) 24Mbits per second (I've reached that speed once, but mostly it's around 6.5Mbps) for $40/mo with 4GB limit on peak, and 32GB limit off peak (midnight-noon), and $3.00 per GB for excess downloads.

I reckon that's not too bad.

Very difficult task.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's put this into perspective here.

Australia is a big country. Really big. We're talking roughly the same size as the forty-eight states (ie: not counting Alaska or Hawaii.) All this space to hold a population that's one third the size of the United Kingdom (roughly - 20 million people or so).

Rolling out broadband to the big cities, where the majority of the population lives, isn't all that hard. It's also pretty damn profitable. The trouble comes when you try to roll it out in the country; the population is pretty sparse (as you can imagine from the size of the country versus the population), meaning that you have a much higher amount of infrastructure to roll out, for a much lower return.

The regulations require equality of access, as much as possible. That's a large part of what killed ISDN in Australia; it was priced at a level that allowed Telstra to at least break even regardless of where it was requested, making it too expensive for most people.

To be blunt, I doubt that current technologies can make even a reasonable stab at providing universal fast access across the entire nation, or even 98% of the population. I'm more comfortable with the Labor party's proposal as being workable than the Liberals', but even then, I have my doubts. All this strikes me as being political hot air that won't go anywhere once the election is decided.

Re:Very difficult task.

[Anonymous Coward]

how is the Labor Party's proposal more workable? they want cables run to everywhere? liberals at least acknowledge that is economically moronic and want wireless to much of the country.

Re:Very difficult task.

[mdhoover]

$4bn is a bucket of cash, but methinks it wouldn't come close to the _real_ cost of implementing what the Labor Party is proposing... Then again, why let proper costings in a detailed published policy document (btw, where is it? More policy vapourware...) get in the way of a good 15 second soundbite?

Heck, No

[freedom_india]

Heck, i could not even get Optus to provide a telephone connection to my apartment in Ashfield, Sydney, let alone getting me a broadband.
My employer was in Hurstville and he has a 2 Mbps broadband line as small business.
Most of the time, the line was out and Telstra support sucked.
If this is how broadband is going to be, i guess Aussies are worse off than Indians in reliability of broadband.
My colleague who was in production support for Westpac Bank, was "advised" not to rely upon the company-funded broadband connection to his home to remote telnet into their servers as it was not reliable.
If Westpac could say Telstra was unreliable (and they are as high as Woolworths), imagine for poor folks at home who see their modem lights blinking...

Heck, even in India (Chennai/Madras) my Tata broadband had a failure rate of 3 hours in a full year.

Good luck aussies. Telstra will deep fry your b....

Re:Heck, No

[glittalogik]

The safest computer is one that isn't connected to the Internet. That's why I use Telstra Bigpond ADSL.

Re:Heck, No

[Kangburra]

The safest computer is one that isn't connected to the Internet. That's why I use Telstra Bigpond ADSL.

LOL so true! One of my customers put the mail servers in as mail.bogpond.com and I have been calling them that ever since.

Re:Heck, No

[wintermute000]

If you think Telstra's bad..... you ain't seen the likes of Soul, Optus, AAPT in action at enterprise level. OPTUS: I have had carrier ports (Onramp 30s) where we've had to abort TWICE IN A ROW because Optus couldn't deliver the service as requested (ie tagged and looped back at the krone frame). a.) they left it in the fibre cabinet, didn't even run a cable to the comms room the PABX was in, b.) they told us they sent someone again but they actually didn't, so we sent our guy back... who reported that everything was untouched..... c.) AAPT: When I did a mercifully brief stint at AAPT, I had an incident where someone in provisioning arbritarily cancelled 12 business grade ADSL services belonging to one customer. They spotted a billing issue and decided to cancel the services, despite the fact that you could clearly see regular traffic on links BELONGING TO AN ENTERPRISE CUSTOMER WITH OVER 50 SITES WITH YOU. Without even looking at traffic stats or asking ANY technical area. Even funnier, Telstra reassigned those ports in the local DSLAMs so some of the sites took TWO MONTHS to get their connection back. SOUL: Now I'm dealing with a carrier called Soul. This is a company who takes THREE BITES OF THE CHERRY to implement BGP routing with our main data centre. THEN, they tell us we need ANOTHER PLANNED CHANGE because the secondary link we ordered off them SPECIFICALLY TO PROVIDE REDUNDANCY - was on the same router at their POP. THEN, we discover through auditing, they had duplicated a subnet in the fallback routes for two separate sites (ie if both sites went to their fallback links at the same time, there would be an addressing clash in the carrier cloud). Hilarious. Another story about Soul, there are cases where they CANNOT upgrade the IOS on their routers to resolve issues because they refuse to PAY MAINTENANCE ON THEIR ROUTERS. This is a carrier whose taking out ads everywhere, but they won't pay for support on their hardware. Say what you will, and I know that Telstra's consumer grade support is as bad as anyone else's, but at the enterprise level, everybody in Australian telecoms will tell you that you get what you pay for, and if its business critical, go Telstra.

Re:Heck, No

[cammoblammo]

Dude, I've been posting here for years and I never thought to use RANDOM CAPITALISATION to make my posts more readable. I always just

put paragraph breaks in odd places instead.

Re:Heck, No

[jagdish]

Heck, even in India (Chennai/Madras) my Tata broadband had a failure rate of 3 hours in a full year.
Weirdly enough, that is quite true. Even though we have slow speeds (think 128kbps), there is very little downtime. This is true even in semi-rural areas.

Snicker

[psaunders]

In the context of election promises made by Howard's government, I think the term 'penetration rate' begins to take on an entirely different meaning...

Re:Snicker

[mjwx]

In the context of election promises made by Howard's government, I think the term 'penetration rate' begins to take on an entirely different meaning...

.
Actually the term "penetration rate" refers to John Howard s new Industrial Relations policies.

Re:Snicker

[bh_doc]

And it's been 100% since they were introduced.

Offshore Bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to wonder if we will have enough offshore bandwidth to keep up with the demand this network will create

Whilst we probably do have the capacity of more concern is whether it will be made available, and for how much ... see http://australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,2192 6920-5013040,00.html/
I believe that the Southern Cross Cable has spare dark fibre available, but how much they charge to bring that capacity online is another erthing altogeth

Re:Offshore Bandwidth

[Kalriath]

Southern Cross is quadrupling capacity on their cables later this year - Q3 apparently they upgrade their 10 stations from 256Mbps to 1.2Tbps for each link. Should be good, except that it'll prove that neither NZ nor Australia have the requisite backhaul capacity attached to their DSLAMs to use it.

Slightly OT but

[Frogbert]

I think this story is a great spot to point out that once again Telstra has taken down their online polls on their propaganda site because it wasn't swinging their way. When will they just accept that people hate their service, and that having an American group running the show is just adding insult to injury.

Re:Slightly OT but

[dbIII]

and that having an American group running the show is just adding insult to injury.

Currently this group is complaining about the Australian workplace culture. It turns out we never had slavery here and they are actually calling some groups of workers at the company "savages". Are US management typically nasty idiots with criminal tendancies or do you just ship the worst of them to places like Australia?

Re:Slightly OT but

[badman99]

The US is the land of unpaid overtime, however generally they get paid a reasonable base salary. Since the privatisation of Telstra, wages for full time Australian based I.T staff have dropped an average of 35%. It's hard to get people on 50k AUS a year to work weekends and be on call 24x7 for that sort of money.

Re:Slightly OT but

[Anonymous Coward]

Are US management typically nasty idiots with criminal tendancies or do you just ship the worst of them to places like Australia?

Don't blame us! Some English consultants we hired suggested it.

Re:Slightly OT but

[cranos]

Oh and their running an ever so slightly xenophobic campaign against their foreign owned competition. The irony of an American in Australia telling people that the opposition is evil cos they're owned by singapore seems to be lost on them

Re:Slightly OT but

[Nazlfrag]

Did you ever listen to that Alanis Morrisette song? I'm inclined to think some Americans wouldn't know irony if it came up and bit 'em.

Err.. the rest of you yanks are great blokes though! *ducks*

To be fair...

[distantbody]

...this plan is largely a catch-up response to the the opposition Labor Party who announced a similar plan a few weeks ago. IMO, the oppositions plan is superior because it doesn't rely on half of the funding to come from the private sector who would surely (and currently do) rape customers above and beyond what is a healthy profit and go into price-gouging territory. It is also FTTH (fiber to the home) as opposed to the government who, although are promising the same, are almost certainly lying and will default back to the FTTN (fiber to the node) that they so short-sightedly love.

Re:To be fair...

[fabs64]

Actually, the opposition is FTTN for everywhere funded by government money as an investment. (expensive outlay, good return)

The govt's plan is FTTN in the cities funded by the private sector (as they're profitable), and a mish-mash of ADSL2+ and WiMax in the country, in other words outdated and unproven junk. (inexpensive, zero return, no future)

Gee, no wonder it's so cheap.

I have yet a more ridiculous comoment to make:

[mrbluze]

...to move Australia to 99% penetration within two years. If they accomplish this goal they will be the most-wired nation (South Korea currently occupies the top spot with 90%)

I say that 99% penetration will do wonders for Howard's hopes for an increased birth rate, and will also satisfy many social liberals on the other side. We'll probably become the most screwed nation on earth, beating Niger at 48.91 per 1000 head of population per annum.

Re:I have yet a more ridiculous comoment to make:

[nick_davison]

I say that 99% penetration will do wonders for Howard's hopes for an increased birth rate I think you're a little confused:

99% penetration is just another way of saying, "Baby, I promise I'll pull out before I cum!"

Sure, you've got to factor in the numbers that don't live up to their word. But subtracting those who do, does the actual figure go up or down?

Re:I have yet a more ridiculous comoment to make:

[mrbluze]

But subtracting those who do, does the actual figure go up or down?

Well first the figure goes up, and then it goes down.

Wait a sec

[JimboFBX]

interior served by wireless at "only" 12 Mbps.

What is that in US Megabits?

But seriously can you even get wireless that fast and have any range?

BS

[BladeMelbourne]

There's a big difference between broadband penetration (how many people have access to broadband) versus the actual number that will choose to sign up to a monthly service. A service that has a fairly decent monthly fee, and hardware requirements (modems, wireless gear, etc.).

To say that Australia will knock Korea off the top of the list is absolute bullshit.

99% of my family on the internet? Oh the pain.

[Heir Of The Mess]

At the moment I'm lucky enough that only my sister is experimenting with using the internet. I can't imagine the pain of having to provide tech support to 99% of my family who would be trying to work out this new internet thing.

At least there's the hurdle of neading to be able to be able to buy and operate a computer. What would be interesting is if broadband connection was made to be mandatory when you bought a telephone connection. Then people would feel compelled to use it. That would really open up the market for internet appliances.

Re:99% of my family on the internet? Oh the pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you and your sister appear on a webcam together "playing" with each other.

Re:99% of my family on the internet? Oh the pain.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I think that would be great, if Telco's were required to include a very slow (even say 28,8 kbps) internet connection, which then could be upgraded when the need for speed arises.

The Gospel as spoken by John

[dleigh]

The current Australian PM has a history of announcing shit like this, allocating X billion dollars to it, with no results a year later. This is the guy who invented the phrase "non-core promise", from the same administration that spent 12 million buying every family a copy of net nannying software. Australians will take this announcement with a Liberal amount of salt (pun intended).

Internet access in Australia seems similar to the US horror stories posted here. All exchanges are owned by Telstra, a company created when the telephone system was privatized. They charge each ISP a rental of around AU$30-50 for each ADSL line, which pushes up the cost of casual user low quota plans. Most people can't get anything faster than 1500K, and dialup is the best available in rural areas. Cable providers are few, come with anal restrictions (e.g. you aren't allowed to run servers), and have limited coverage even in urban areas. The government was subsidizing new ADSL2 DSLAMs, but they canceled that program earlier this year, so the only ADSL2 coverage is in capital cities.

Whirlpool is a good place to look if you want more background on the state of broadband down here.

99% of Australia upgraded, but read the fine print

[jimmybishman]

According to Tasmania's leading newspaper, The Mercury, the whole state is classed as regional and does not get the upgrades. Currently down here, the main connection we have is ADSL 1.5mb/256k. Some have a connection with a theoretical maximum speed of 8mb, but they have to pay twice the cost and, in practice, may only get 4-5mb based on how far from the phone exchange they are. The contract only says a minimum of 1.5mb. I currently pay AU$49.95 for my 1.5 meg plan with a 10gig download limit per month. Download any more and it's slowed down to a 64k connection. This is actually the fastest and best value plan available to suit my needs and I live in a suburb within 10kms of our state's capital city centre!

Some really lucky people get ADSL2, but AFAIK, that's only 1 exchange down here in the whole state, servicing Hobart (the capital city) with a radius of only a couple of kilometres.

So, while we're classed as broadband, we'll still be stuck on connections with a fraction of the speed of our other Aussie counterparts. And forget wireless. Unless they lower the prices significantly, only businesses and the wealthy can afford that!

Source:http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,2288 4,21929477-3462,00.html

Summary wrong.

[jibjibjib]

The summary is completely incorrect. They're not aiming for 99% to actually *have* a broadband connection, they're aiming for broadband to be *available* to 99% of the population. So 99% will be able to get broadband, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll all get it.

Re:Summary wrong.

[raju1kabir]

they're aiming for broadband to be *available* to 99% of the population

...so long as those people are willing to move to Sydney.

its easy

[doktorjayd]

just change the definition of broadband.

then change the definition of 'internet'

then pay a consultant $A2b.

now, about my fee...

Re:its easy

[wondercool]

0.02 AUD?

Re:its easy

[Anonymous Coward]

youve just solved the south park riddle...

      1. Collect Underpants
      2. ??? Pay Consultant!
      3. Profit!

Re:its easy

[miro f]

that's all you have to offer?

Why not change the definition of "Australian"?
or the definition of "Available"
or "2009"
or "99%"

99% penetration?

[rucs_hack]

Hmm, how, by tying together the rear legs of all sheep?

Re:99% penetration?

[tuxette]

Um, I think you would have to spread them apart...

Government controlled internet access?

[WarwickRyan]

Is that really such a good idea?

If the gatekeepers are the same people who hold power in the country, there's kinda a big conflict of interest going on.

Much better to have a competitive market-based model (i.e. competition regulated by government to ensure there actually is competition) than to have the politicos in charge. Especially given the track record of Australian politicos..

Re:Government controlled internet access?

[Frogbert]

No it's not, there is precisely zero reason a company would roll out regional broadband. It just isn't cost effective and I doubt it would turn a profit for many years.

Re:Government controlled internet access?

[kramulous]

To respond correctly, you have to know something about most Australians. We are criminals. Our fathers were criminals. Our grandfathers were criminals. Wait ...

int IsCriminal(int generation){
if (generation == 1)
return 1;
else
return IsCriminal(generation--);
}

The government is in on it as well.

Re:Government controlled internet access?

[cranos]

Slight problem, we don't have a competitive market based model. What we have is an 800kg gorilla in the shape of the previously state run telco sitting on a tonne of dark fibre as well as the existing network saying that unless the government lets them price their competition out of existance for access to their network, they're just going to do nothing.

Very misleading submission

[caitsith01]

I thought the exact same thing.

A foreigner would get the impression that our brilliant Prime Minister is taking innovative steps to bring Australia to the bleeding edge of Internet accessibility and uptake.

The reality is that we are effectively in an election campaign, the Government is getting thrashed in the polls, and the opposition Labor Party announced an attractive broadband policy designed to lift Australia from its current woeful speeds and levels of access (256kbps is described as "broadband" in this country, and you pay upwards of $60/month for a capped allowance of 10Gb of downloads). This move by the Government is reactive at best, and a political stunt at worst. There is a widespread perception that the Prime Minister does not understand the slightest thing about broadband and the Internet.

As others have pointed out, Australia's real problem is a lack of big pipes to the rest of the world. Add to that a government-created-then-privatised monopoly (unlike the US we didn't split our telco into "baby Bells", we just privatised it, gave it all the essential infrastructure, and let it dominate/distort the hell out of the market), and you've got broadband fit for the late 1990s.

Re:Very misleading submission

[TapeCutter]

I saw "our brilliant Prime Minister" on TV last night, he was talking to a guy sitting at a PC and asking insightfull questions such as: "How long does it take to download a movie?".

Re:Very misleading submission

[shmackie]

Just a few pointers: The coalition isn't getting 'thrashed in the polls' anymore it seems. The truth of the matter is that Kevin Rudd's broadband plan is insane. Firstly, before any of this started, OPEL were designing a submission for infrastructure investment for the national broadband network. They had already invested hundreds of millions of dollars and were planning to invest a couple of billion. If Labor's plan goes ahead they'll loose all of that because the government will be doing it all themselves (and we all know how efficient state owned organizations are). Secondly, they plan to take the money from the future fund. A fund which was setup using mostly the proceeds from the sale of Telstra (more about that later) to handle the massive increase in super payouts caused by the large public servant retiring population in the next 5 to 10 years. This problem was compounded by the super contribution bonus's setup by this government, to encourage people to contribute to their own super fund. Using this fund to invest in a broadband network will NOT have the economic return needed to handle the super payouts. No where near. I agree with you about the PM's understanding of the internet and its importance. This certainly wasn't helped by the previous IT Minister, Senator Richard Alston. Labeled as the worlds biggest luddite. I have been following and using broadband in Australia since 1994, and Telstra has been slothful, monopolizing barstard company since before then. Since privatisation, it has become more competitive, but there's still a long way to go. I don't think splitting the company into smaller ones would have solved the problem because we just don't have the same market as the US did. What was considered was splitting Telstra wholesale and Telstra retail, but that was shelved, and I'm not sure why.

Re:Very misleading submission

[drsmithy]

I saw "our brilliant Prime Minister" on TV last night, he was talking to a guy sitting at a PC and asking insightfull questions such as: "How long does it take to download a movie?".

Seems pretty germane, given that movies, MP3s and warez^H^H^H^H^Hlinux distros are what 99% of people want a fat pipe for...

Re:Very misleading submission

[trawg]

I saw "our brilliant Prime Minister" on TV last night, he was talking to a guy sitting at a PC and asking insightfull questions such as: "How long does it take to download a movie?". From the quotes around "brilliant", I assume you are being sarcastic - but that's pretty much the exact same question many people are going to be asking. Many of the small groups we have over here whining about our "insufficient broadband infrastructure" are doing so because they can't download their torrentz fast enough.

Further - I saw that clip. It was a single sound bite. You shouldn't make any judgment calls based on a tiny clip that the media chose to present to you.

Re:Very misleading submission

[TapeCutter]

"You shouldn't make any judgment calls based on a tiny clip that the media chose to present to you."

I wasn't, I was basing it on my 40+yrs of eating vegimite and my 7yrs working with Telstra exec's in the 90's. Anyway, I take your point that it was a "joe sixpack" type of question, my point was the question is meaningless.

"they can't download their torrentz fast enough"

Agreed, I have worked in the industry for 20yrs - persistent speed problems are almost exclusively the fault of internal coporate networks and I don't hear "bussiness" screaming for better broadband (other than the phone companies).

Re:Very misleading submission

[Tinman_au]

"What was considered was splitting Telstra wholesale and Telstra retail, but that was shelved, and I'm not sure why."

Liberals canned the idea cause it would have meant they got less money from the T3 sale. They need to get a good return for their investors...er...wait a minute...

Re:Very misleading submission

[shmackie]

Sorry about the lack of formating.

That's the last time I don't preview before post.

Re:Very misleading submission

[zig007]

Add to that a government-created-then-privatised monopoly (unlike the US we didn't split our telco into "baby Bells", we just privatised it, gave it all the essential infrastructure, and let it dominate/distort the hell out of the market), and you've got broadband fit for the late 1990s. Interesting thing, we did exactly the same in Sweden..
We created a privatized monopoly(Telia) which by combining bureaucracy and greed to almost totally halted the development of broadband services in Sweden.
It is actually just in the last 4 or 5 years the market has got going, as Telia's perks slowly eroded.
And not until this year Telia lost all parts of it's monopoly, now forced to let others in on the action.

Re:Very misleading submission

[cibyr]

Telstra has had a monopoly on Australian telecommunications for 14 years (longer if you count before it was called Telstra)! No-one in power wants to admit that we fucked ourselves over by creating the monster and the best thing we could do for broadband in this country is break it up.

Re:Very misleading submission

[zig007]

Telstra has had a monopoly on Australian telecommunications for 14 years (longer if you count before it was called Telstra)! No-one in power wants to admit that we fucked ourselves over by creating the monster and the best thing we could do for broadband in this country is break it up. 14 years? That's horrible!
I have always thought that the Australian government was more on the right wing than the far left, which must have been the case for this to happen.

MOD PARENT UP

[MikShapi]

MOD PARENT UP

Population spread vs. broadband saturation

[Asterra]

Not sure why this persists as being such a big deal. The US is perpetually under the spotlight but the statistics are fond of ignoring just how much land (per population) needs to be covered in order to accomplish broadband penetration. Korea, for example, being a country the size of a small US state but with a highly disparate population, has no excuse for failing to be 99%+ broadband; if anything, their 10% presence of non-broadband solutions is conspicuous.

Re:Population spread vs. broadband saturation

[holywarrior21c]

so seriously you want me to teach my grandpa to use computer(internet)? :p or to my 4 year old starcraft playing cousin? r u kidding me? (yeah i am from Korea)
In Korea, only old people care about penetration. and in soviet korea, you get penetrated.

Re:Population spread vs. broadband saturation

[Nazlfrag]

The summary completely messed up. First, I'm not sure where the 90% comes from, but from these OECD figures 14 million out of 48 million South Koreans have broadband (~3.4 to 1) compared to 3.9 million Australians out of 20 million (~5.1 to 1). So around a third of individuals in South Koreans are broadband subscribers (which could work out to 90% of households), while only one in five in Australia are.

The fact is, you won't see 2 million extra subscribers with this upgrade, which is what Australia would need to match Korea with the above figures. It's just political spin to get marginal seats in the upcoming elections. What you will see is everyone with their farcical 1.5mbs connections get a whopping 10-12mbs boost, slowly crawling closer to a fraction of Korea's 100mbs connections - its not broadband, its a freakin LAN!

How did this come about in Korea? Oh yeah, a government with foresight and vision, not just empty promises. Neither Howard or Rudd inspire me with any confidence in their vision for broadband. I hope that all that will end up happening is Optus and Elders will go ahead do it and the government just beats Telstra into compliance.

99% is misleading

[pls_call_again]

A friend recently requested broadband near a major Australian city, and was told that the exchange had broadband, and there should be no problem getting broadband in the area. However as it turned out there were no more available ports at the exchange. The politician (both sides) count broadband at the exchange as broadband to everyone in the area covered by the exchange which is plain wrong. -- An expert learns more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.

This pisses me off

[kramulous]

Little boy Johnny is running scared about the upcoming election and is making a two-bit effort to 'fix' his last ten years of office. This tight-wad is only spending money because the other guy has made it a major priority to upgrade *every* household in Australia with fibre to the node. This announcement will hurt Australia's future Internet connectivity. This quick hack will bring our Internet to a bare basic level and nobody will attempt to fix it for another decade. Essentially this means that Australia will continue to live in the dark ages. Infrastructure on a national scale, like this, requires a budget similar to that of roads and shit.

Smells strangely like the same that happened to our health system.

Boo, Howard. Shame on you, you dumb-shit, Coonan. Stop pretending you know what you're talking about. "Gigabit power" - dumb-arse.

Re:This pisses me off

[MichaelSmith]

Little boy Johnny is running scared about the upcoming election and is making a two-bit effort to 'fix' his last ten years of office.

This is the funny bit. He has been holding out against Costello for years on the basis that he is the most popular leader in federal politics but now that Rudd is doing well he is attempting to patch things up. If he gave a shit about his party he would cut and run right now. Give Costello a small chance of winning the next election. Better than the chance he will have if Howard resigns on the day the election is called, or the day after he loses it.

All this complaining!

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Dianella, a central suburb of Perth, Western Australia. The most isolated capital city on Earth. I have 2, count 'em two, DSL2 lines in my *house*. one 24mbit (iiNet) and one 8mbit (Westnet). I get about 16mb and 6mb respectively, for the speeds. Oh, it's rock solid btw. Probably less than a day downtime, combined, over the last 3 years.

All these people complaining we have no infrstructure wake up and look at options other than Telstra. iiNet's had 24mbit DSL for years, guys...

As for the costs, well i get a 40GB limit on each per month, which is ample and I charge one single company some money a month to host their offsite backups with me... and I run it at a profit...

Re:All this complaining!

[kramulous]

Lucky bastard. I lived in a unit 2.5km from Brisbane CBD and could not even get a phone line. Optus - no. Telstra - no. Perhaps I should have made the journey west.

Re:All this complaining!

[jimmux]

I'm sure all these people complaining about lack of infrastructure have looked at other options.

I live in our nation's capital. Half an hour away from the nice shiny house in which Mr Howard made this generous promise. The best speed I can get here (in a practical sense) is about 1.5mbit. Until last year I wasn't able to get DSL at all, and it was only with the help of a very good alternative ISP that I was able to put enough pressure on Telstra to upgrade the dodgy copper lines to my home, making DSL a possibility.

(Handy Hint: if the other ISPs say that DSL is not available in your area, try Internode)

Re:All this complaining!

[dasmoo]

IInet ripped me off. I asked to get connected, gave them my credit card believing that I would be connected. Was told a month later that Telstra had to replace the lines. Waited 6 months! Found out that I was charged for this time, and if I were more astute, probably would have checked my credit card bill before paying it. $600 for the time waiting for telstra to connect the line is in my book a pure scam. I get my own back now though. Working in the industry has cost IInet more than $60,000 in referrals. The Singaporeans get my praise currently, but they are treading on thin ice.

Re:All this complaining!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I live 200 meters from the primary exchange in Toowoomba. (120 000 population, Largest non coastal city.) I have three available providers of which one has no access left to the main exchange so would need to wirelessly bounce me to a suburban exchange. The others are the big two telephone companies (mind you one has to pay the other every time I make a call) and they won't give me better than 1024/256 12 gig cap and this is costing effectively 100 a month ($60 for DSL1 and $38 for line rental.)

The service in many other areas of regional population (50 000 +) gets no better than 512.

Australia, where BB prices go UP.

[ian-live]

Currently I'm renting a place 10-mins from Adelaide city centre, and am lucky enough to get an 11MBps. Silly thing is, when I come to buy a house, I'm going to be looking at only those areas where I can get the same speeds or greater. Also, I think Australia is the only place in the world where internet prices go UP - I pay $60 a month (40-gig cap) which has now gone up to $65 a month. I guess I could always give up with the internet all together and rent movies, wait for TV episodes on the TV and suffer adverts every 10 minutes, listen to crap radio. Yes, what we need is more tubes Into the country.

256kbps is broadband in Oz

[implex]

Actually 256kbps (yes, you read KILOBITS/SEC correctly) is considered broadband. And that's only download. 64kbps upload is acceptable to be considered broadband.

Re:256kbps is broadband in Oz

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yea? Well in Soviet Russia broad banned meant KGB put APB out on you with shoot first orders.

Re:256kbps is broadband in Oz

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually 256kbps (yes, you read KILOBITS/SEC correctly) is considered broadband. And that's only download. 64kbps upload is acceptable to be considered broadband. Ouch. The lowest definition I've ever heard is "faster than ISDN". But ISDN has 128k upstream..

Re:256kbps is broadband in Oz

[bh_doc]

Ours (AU) is basically "faster than dial-up". And it's not like we aren't charged the earth for the privilege, either. :(

Right because 1.7 billion couldn't be better spent

[Colin Smith]

I'm sure there are many poor and homeless in Australia. Then there are the schools, hospitals etc etc. Or, they could just not spend the money at all.

If we take 'accessibility' into account...

[wesley96]

Then South Korea is already pretty much at 99% - nationwide HSDPA networks have been fully deployed SEPARATELY by two carriers (yeah, it's an overinvestment) last March (KTF) and last May (SKT). If you have a capable handset, you'll get 3.6Mbit service from pretty much anywhere in the country. I've surfed internet from top of the mountains this way for a while.

Re:99% of Australia upgraded, but read the fine pr

[Anonymous Coward]

That's incorrect. http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20070618/pdf/312zj3xm qjxvpl.pdf states that Tasmania gets 45 WiMAX access points, along with 15 ADSL2+ exchanges.
The only problem with that is that at the moment Telstra is the sole provider of backhaul across Bass Strait, which allows them to charge more for transit from Hobart to Melbourne than it costs for transit from Melbourne to Los Angeles.

This is not Govt vs Opposition

[Namarrgon]

Don't confuse this OPEL proposal with the recent G9 vs Telstra fibre-to-the-node arguments. This is an entirely separate thing, and much anticipated by the rural community (many of whom are still on dialup).

Country towns are small - most houses are easily within close range of the exchange, and should have little trouble getting 12 Mbps. Outlying farms can use WiMax, and since there's relatively few of them, RF bandwidth contention should be minimal. And none of this affects the metro broadband debate one bit - this project is entirely independent of who builds out the FTTN backbone in metro areas.

Nobody is suggesting that fibre to the node for the whole country is remotely practical - it's only being considered in built-up areas. The argument comes down to whether you trust Telstra/BigPond (and their unbroken record of monopoly abuse) to manage it, or an independent consortium of ISPs. Funding will be paid for by the public, ultimately, one way or another - but you do get to choose whether to chip in for Trujillo's next massive bonus or not.

Re:This is not Govt vs Opposition

[fabs64]

Sorry, the ALP policy document seems to indicate that 98% of the population will be covered by the to-be FTTN network, I guess I'll have to go work on my reading comprehension skills because you tell me I'm mistaken.

Note: I consider 98% to be close enough to 'the whole country'

http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/a_broadband_fut ure_for_australia.pdf

How about the blackspots?

[OverflowingBitBucket]

You know, it'd be nice when rolling out these huge links to the country areas if they stopped for a few moments and looked at those of us in modern suburbs who cannot get broadband for love nor money- even when there is complete and total ultra-high speed coverage four streets away in every single direction.

There are a whole bunch of blackspots through the country, reasonably new suburbs where Telstra cheaped out on the phone connectivity initially and won't pay a damn cent to upgrade it. 12Mbit/s to the country? How about letting us have something better than .056Mbit/s over dialup modem here in the suburbs without splashing out for ultra-expensive wireless?

Broadband penetration defined.

[svunt]

Being reamed anally to the tune of $170 a month for 12mbps down, 2mbps up, with 90GB a month of downloads before being capped to 128kbps. Now THAT is "broadband penetration" and it hurts.

Re:Broadband penetration defined.

[dickohead]

$170 for 12MBps with 90GB of data?

I pay $90 for 1.5mbps with 50GB of data!

Wanna swap?

Re:Broadband penetration defined.

[bonezed]

thought I'd join the bandwagon...

I pay $100 a month for 20GB on an ADSL 1.5/256 connection

gotta love Aussie 'broadband'

99% of Australians Without Water By 2009?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, global warming is so totally a myth, good job on re-electing Howard. Enjoy!

99%, eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So that means both Sydney and Melbourne, then.

A lesson in economics

[Ogemaniac]

Well, if those profits are too "healty", why don't YOU step into the market, under-cut those prices a tad, and make a killing? And why not the next guy. And the next guy. And the next guy, until those profits are similar to those expected for other equally-risky investments.

Wow. Markets at work.

Re:A lesson in economics

[CrankyOldBastard]

All the exchanges are owned by Telstra. They were the Government monopoly telco until Howard started selling it off. Now it's a public company that has to sell services to all its competitors. Telstra also owns the majority (by I believe at least an order of magnitude) of the glass and copper in the ground. It's not a level playing field so market forces don't work.

fibre to the door of Uluru

[weierstrass]

and what would its traditional owners have to say about that?

Re:fibre to the door of Uluru

[cammoblammo]

Unfortunately I have no way to find out. It seems they don't have the phone on.

Re:Right because 1.7 billion couldn't be better sp

[doktorjayd]

even better,

it turns out all this is to be spent in 40 of the conservative co-alition's seats.

hmmmmm.

Be lucky with what you have

[dementedWabbit]

AU$65 for an 11mps line? My god man, that's nothing. In Ireland, it costs about 30euro for a 2mb up/512k down connection which is usually shared by 40 people (average contention ratio is 40). To get a contention ratio of less than 20, and bump that speed up to 3mb up, 1mb down costs an average of around 50euro to 70euro depending on who you use. Availability is around 33%, give or take a handful of percent. Currently most businesses are leaving Ireland citing, among other things; "over expensive and low quality internet connectivity, low availability for remote users". Why do I mention Ireland? Guess who owns a nice healthy chunk of Eircom - yeah, your good buddy Telstra.

fuck the abos

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck the abos

And still have imposed caps?

[Sunar]

And still stuck with imposed caps on GB per month, right?

Sure broadband is better then dial-up but broadband with download caps still stinks.

I hope the US continues to fall

[gelfling]

Universal access will just mean higher costs for everyone and ubiquitous censorship legislation. I have mine already and in the true spirit of American Libertarianism, fuck you.

$600+ per year is why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, with my Comcast internet-only service costing me more than $600 per year, it isn't surprising or alarming that most Americans are willing to afford such a service.

I think most Americans would rather eat.

I don't like the chances

[Tsagadai]

This is the same government that has seen aboriginal life expectancy drop by 10 years to almost 54year old for the average aboringal male. As someone who actually lives and works in a remote area of Australia if they got broadband here I would be very amazed. But it's never going to happen this is just another election "promise". Remember this is the same Howard with a never ever GST and children overboard expecting any single word he speaks to be true is bordering on insanity.

Re:I don't like the chances

[astrec]

Wake up man! Obviously this is a "non-core promise".

WiMAX

[brucmack]

Aren't technologies like WiMAX going to make the issues of broadband availability disappear? I guess there are still issues with a sparse population even with an effective radius of 10 km or so, but it should be a heck of a lot cheaper than running fiber everywhere, at least in my uninformed opinion.

Re:WiMAX

[cdrguru]

As soon as they figure out how to do 100GB/sec wirelessly we will see that. How many homes are in a 10km circle? What speed is WiMAX? How much does each house get then?

Mass use of wireless for general Internet access is pointless and a waste of time. It can help some data services in mobile applications but it isn't ever going to be practical for more than a few users at time. When you get your 500th customer that is downloading movies you can now give everyone 100K/sec or so.

Re:WiMAX

[PigIronBob]

Wimax won't work in the bush mate, Friends of mine live on a cattle station (ranch) outside Mt.Isa, their nearest neighbours are a mere 4 hours drive up the road!

Re:WiMAX

[brucmack]

Of course it won't work there... but nobody is talking about 100% broadband penetration either. A quick Wikipedia tells me that of ~21 million Australians, ~14 million of them live in the ten biggest cities. So I still think it is feasible to deliver broadband to 99% of the population based on some wireless tech.

Tie me kangaroo down, jack...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Prime Minister's plan was attacked by his political opponents because it would create a two-tier system with the country's vast (and almost empty) interior served by wireless at "only" 12 Mbps.

Call me heartless, but how much porn bandwidth do the aboriginees need? They're running about butt nekkid anyway.

Re:99% of Australia upgraded, but read the fine pr

[Chuq]

One thing that the Mercury article doesn't mention, is that part of the OPEL plan involves using the (currently dormant) Basslink fibre under Bass Strait, as well as construction of a second fibre. This will create a Telstra-free, fully redundant backhaul path from Victoria to Tasmania, which is what one of the biggest problems is with supply of broadband here - Telstra previously had a monopoly on it.
See http://www.minister.dcita.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf _file/69976/Fact_sheet_OPEL_Network.pdf

In the past, getting data from Victoria to Tasmania cost ISPs way more than what it would cost to get the same data from Sydney to Tokyo.
Source: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t =635221&p=4#r65

All Australians...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seeing as the vast majority of Australians in Australia live in coastal cities (and those that don't are mostly near inland towns for a purpose, like Manjimup (Western Australia) for logging or Moranbah (Queensland) for mining), it shouldn't be too difficult to give 99% of the Aussie population, in the country, broadband.

The problem I see is getting that connectivity to the high-percentage of Australians currently living in one flat somewhere in the vicinity of Parsons Green tube station, London SW6. You can't move on the New King's Road or Fulham Road without bumping into a crowd of Sydney/Melbourne/Perth's 20-somethings.

Who's going to hook THEM up to the Aussie internets, mate? That's what I want to know.

The parties are miles apart on this

[ynotds]

All this strikes me as being political hot air that won't go anywhere once the election is decided.

In this particular case the hot air is all from one side, though I wouldn't generalise from that to too many other issues, where much of Rudd's appeal is that he will be as "safe" as Howard, but from a younger generation.

This report had me running to my bookshelf to extract my copy of the December 1994 Networking Australia's Future: The Final Report of the Broadband Services Expert Group, one of the flagship efforts of the final term of the Keating government. (I was responsible for a commissioned sub-report on future demand for broadband in education, so what happened next cuts deep.)

Fifteen months on, well before the long term thinking that had dominated Keating's too-brief reign had any chance to become entrenched, our electorate decided it was finally time to give then recidivist opposition leader Howard "his turn" ... a very Australian sentiment ... compounded by Keating never having really connected with "the masses".

Then Howard installed his despicable power-broking deputy senate leader Alston in a mega department of Communications, Information Technology and The Arts, reportedly because the now high commissioner to London had at some stage expressed an appreciation of "The Arts" and that became the tail, reviving its long diminished role in film classification, which wagged the IT&C dog right through the boom and bust ... leaving Australia an internet policy-free zone.

Even worse, the Howard regime, ever blinded by a pathological hatred of its opposition, pigeon holed all the long term policy work that Keating had bank rolled. Even Tweedle Beasley didn't let go of the idea that we should continue to build on the impressive export education industry built during the Hawke-Keating years rather than profit skim it to a degree that even the worst of the private equity players must envy.

Others here are right that better pipes to the rest of the world have always been the core issue and that Telstra is afflicted by an even worse case of monopoly culture than Qantas or M$, but that culture problem the market will eventually sort out, unlike broadband access which our vast distances make potentially even more valuable than anywhere else.

L-fucking-ULZ

[Anonymous Coward]

Which fuckwad wrote that articule? 99% LULZ my ass.

99% of Austrailians are alive.

Re:Bullshit - Absolutely and theres more

[Anonymous Coward]

"Heavy" Australian broadband users (who can get it ONLY in the six metropolitan areas) are capped at a 10 Gig quota per month, (unless you wish to donate an organ for excess usage fees).
Howard's bullshit "high speed for all" election pledge (yep theres one in a few months here), would mean most Aussies would hit their quota after 6-9 hours if they actually used it to do anything useful.

Does it Matter

[Anonymous Coward]

> ... then paid his smug looking son to email spam the nation.

Does it matter that his son looked smug?

At $120/year from AT&T, USA may not be far beh

[davidwr]

Dialup services run around $5-$10 from most providers.

AT&T is offering low-speed DSL $10/month with a 1 year contact.

For people who use dialup more than a couple hours a week, this is like having a dedicated 2nd line for the modem for about $10/week.

The $5 difference is about the same as voice-mail.

If AT&T starts advertising this service, most remaining dialup users will switch within a year. In areas that offer this plan, dialup usage will drop to single digits.

Senile old fart trying to gel with the cool kids

[Hyperwolf]

Well they say elections are not won by the opposition party but lost by the incumbent. Since Howard has lost the next election there seems little point wasting time examining his plans for our Internet, which like his other notions of late, show increasing signs of senility.
~ Hyperwolf

Questions

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

If you don't mind me asking, what reason was given for restricting the speeds to 1.5Mbit? Also, how exactly do these restrictions help Telstra over other carriers?

Re:Questions

[bobby1234]

the 1.5 speed was deemed by the wholesaler/retailer (Telstra) as "as much speed as a domestic user would require" and prior to the opening up of the wholesale market (caused by the watchdog) it was all you could get without going over to the very expensive commerical options (which is what they where trying to protect with the speed limitations).

This has changed now as we have 256k, 512k, 1.5M, 8M+ and 24M+ (where the + indicates the maximum potential speed) but we still have download quotas (part of a duoploy on connections outside of the country and our remoteness).

To give you an insite to the crazyness. As telstra was forced to provide other ISPs access to their exchanges to install the isps own adsl2+ hardware (which they charge like wounded bulls for) they started to get some competition problems. So what did they do. They introduced their own adsl2+ plans by taking the artificial restrictions off their hardware, so now you can get adsl2+ from telstra. But only from their retail arm (refuse to wholesale it) and only where another isp has installed their hardware (and not in the rest of the country where they could do it but choose not to.)

Re:Questions

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

the 1.5 speed was deemed by the wholesaler/retailer (Telstra) as "as much speed as a domestic user would require" and prior to the opening up of the wholesale market (caused by the watchdog) it was all you could get without going over to the very expensive commerical options (which is what they where trying to protect with the speed limitations).

Perhaps, but wouldn't it have more to do with infrastructure limitations? At that time, did we have the bandwidth to offer 8Mbps/24Mbps? I have an adsl2+ plan now that only goes to about 6.5Mbps. I'm only about a kilometre from my local exchange, so theoretically, if the lines were clear, I should be getting higher speeds. I'm thinking that if everyone back then started buying unlimited bandwidth, they wouldn't get nearly the speed advertised, and the result would be that the commercial lines (the ones requiring the most bandwidth) would become as bad as the common lines. I don't think it was just some money-grabbing scheme.

This is all just a theory based upon my flimsy knowledge of internet infrastructure and corporate reasoning. Feel free to disillusion me if I happen to be way off target.

Re:Questions

[bobby1234]

Perhaps, but wouldn't it have more to do with infrastructure limitations? You have a good point but I don't think that is why they did it. Telstra the wholesaler limited the connection to 1.5M (from your house to the exchange). The individual ISPs are responsible for providing the capability for the volume of traffic that is used on this infrastructure. There was no physical reason why the limited it 1.5M (to my knowledge). The link to the exchange isn't dependent upon bandwidth (you get what you get... no sharing). This has been shown to be true when they turned on the 8M plans. They always could do it (part of the standard ADSL specification) but just choose not too).

Here is another insight. In the old days (a couple of years ago), when you ask your isp to test to see if you can get ADSL, they ask telstra to check. Telstra then do a check and tell you if you can get 1.5M or not. This is the only test they do. So if you sign up with your ISPs for 512k and Telstra comes back and says you cannot get 1.5M. There is no way of knowing if you could get 512k (you might be able to get it but telstra don't test it they just test 1.5M). So lots of people who couldn't get ADSL could probably get 512k but not 1.5M. Just and insight into how messed up the system is.

Re:Questions

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Telstra the wholesaler limited the connection to 1.5M (from your house to the exchange)... The link to the exchange isn't dependent upon bandwidth (you get what you get... no sharing).

I was under the impression that was some merging between telephone lines before they got to the exchange, which would explain the limited bandwidth theory. If I'm interpreting your post correctly, you're there's basically a dedicated line from each house to the exchange, where the signals are relayed through the world-wide web, which would completely discredit the theory altogether.

Here is another insight.

Good to see "insight" spelled correctly. :)

No Chance

[ear1grey]

There is zero chance of this happening. To understand why, you have to understand the population of Aus. Aside from all the convict decendants, the ten pound poms, the former military staff, the asian families who had their land taken away after WWII but who struggled on, the more recent immigrants from Asia, Europe and the Americas, the Aboriginal folks... and the aquaduct: there is an important "other" demographic group. The retired luddite. My dad is one of them. He moved to Aus upon his retirement, and if his former employer couldn't get him to use a computer there's no way he'll allow one in his home now - his screen was famously used as a convenient place for post-it notes. I've tried reasoning with him. I've explained the advantages; sold the concept of video calls to see his relatives overseas, etc. All to no avail. For retired luddites in the sun, broadband is irrelevant. Aus has more than it's fair share of retired luddite poms, many of whom have never operated a mouse and are too old and arthritic to even try. 99% is a dream.

Blue bloody ruin

[Bloke down the pub]

he's saying "broadband for all" but it's merely "broadband for major cities, sub standard broadband for rural areas".

Strewth mate, what would a load of abbo's and shearers want with broadband anyway? Most of them think it means an all-female musical ensemble. Chuck another roo on the barbie will you, I'm off to bring us some tinnies from the eski.

Re:Blue bloody ruin

[eobanb]

Chuck another roo on the barbie will you, I'm off to bring us some tinnies from the eski. What?

Re:Blue bloody ruin

[Anonymous Coward]

Chuck another roo on the barbie will you, I'm off to bring us some tinnies from the eski.

What?

Please put another kangaroo on the barbecue. I'm going to fetch some cans of beer from the cooler.

On Other News

[kibbled_bits]

US to have 105% citizens with broadband by 2010 Longhorn (Vista) to have WinFS

U.S. Vs. Aus Broadband

[s4m7]

Americans are complaining about 10mbps not being fast enough to be called "broadband".

I don't think it's quite as drastic as you think. Sure, most people living in major cities here in the U.S. can get 1-2 Mb connections. or at least that's how they're advertised... However that's "up to" speed, meaning that you might get that in a burst, when the pigs are out flying. My cablemodem service is advertised as up to 1.5 Mbps but it really averages close to 300k or so, depending on load. I've peaked it at about 978 kbps. This is through our cable providers which ordinarily have municipal monopolies (oftentimes regional however) and legislation to open these circuits up is often met with resistance because we "already have competition in the broadband sector" in the form of DSL which is unreliable as hell and normally caps at 256 or 512 kbps.

How much do I pay for my connection? Well, I really have no choice in the matter: it's $65 USD per month, Which I understand is only about 3 Euros, but it's quite a lot of money to me. :)

Fiber service is just starting to be rolled out in major coastal cities here in the U.S. with prices around $250 per month for 100mbps service-- according to a pal who works for Verizon on the west coast. Agreed with you on the point of fiber being in a lot more U.S. Infrastructure, but the last mile is still mostly twisted copper and coax.

On the bright side, it looks like Australia is now outstripping the U.S Technologically and Economically, the next move is militarily, and then you guys can be the kid on the block everyone else hates :)

Re:U.S. Vs. Aus Broadband

[Kalriath]

Wow, and here in backwater Noo Zeeeland I get 6.5Mbps connection. Up to. When pigs fly. During correct planetary alignment. About 5Mbps is marginally typical. $70 down the drain for it though.

The problem with broadband in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

ISPs are still charging for broadband as if it's a premium service. I pay US$100 a month for combined cable TV and internet, and I get a pretty minimal package. That's extortionate. The cable company can get away with it because they know they are the only game in town. I'm a college ("university" for non-US readers) student and I can only afford this because I split the bill with other people.

If the US is to get more people using broadband, someone has to do something about this. Break up the regional monopolies. Fix prices. I know that ISPs have to make a profit too, but it's kind of ridiculous as it is now. They are marking up their service too severely.

Telstra should have given it up for the G9.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The Prime Minister's plan was attacked by his political opponents because it would create a two-tier system with the country's vast (and almost empty) interior served by wireless at "only" 12 Mbps.

No. 99% of the population. Not the land mass. The wireless is just to cover the fringes of the population that don't have sufficient copper.

My lightbulb joke

[TheLink]

Q: How many free market economists does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Free market economists don't change lightbulbs, they prefer to write their papers in the darkness while waiting for Adam Smith's invisible hand to do it for them. ;)

It's Easy When...

[Nom du Keyboard]

It's easy to have enough broadband capacity for the entire country when they crack down on almost every use beyond simple browsing and e-mail that most people might otherwise use it for.

Political Mumbo Jumbo

[csk_1975]

How does an election promise make it onto the front page of Slashdot? Are publicists for the PM of Australia so good that they can get his hollow election promises broadcast into completely unrelated media? Pork barreling is not news.

Oh and on topic... Internet access in Australia is abysmal. My work sometimes takes me back to Australia and its like going to a third world country. In most of Asia Internet access is simple and no one uses modems. In Australia using a modem is normal. My brother good 2Mbps broadband in the back woods of Thailand yesterday and it took 2 days to be installed. I had to get a 2Mbps business Internet connection installed in Singapore. Took 5 working days for the DLC and was pretty cheap - they wanted to install ELL but the cabling up the riser to the basement distribution would take 14 working days and I had time constraints - that would have been cheaper than the DLC. ($850 install and $1200 per month).

At the same time I also had to get a 2Mbps connection installed in the Sydney CBD. What a nightmare. Jumping through hoops, waiting (and waiting) for Telstra. Then they charged $20,000 for the installation and $5,000 per month for access. And took 21 working days to install the circuit. This is in an already wired building in the main street of the biggest city in Australia.

The ONLY reason Howard has said anything about broadband is that it is entirely unacceptable in Australia for both home users and businesses. The opposition has made this an election issue so Howard has made promises knowing that follow through if he is returned to power really doesn't matter as it won't be one of his core* promises.

*For those of you not up to speed on Australian electioneering. Howard coined the phrase "core promises" to describe anything he promised during an election campaign and had some intent of following through - every other promise is a lie which was made with zero intent of ever acting upon. Is broadband a core promise? I'll let history decide.

Re:Political Mumbo Jumbo

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow you're full of shit, but then it's Telstra so I wouldn't be that surprised if it is true.

Had you any semblance of competence, there exists are plethora of competitively priced and efficient carriers. I myself am sitting on a 16Mb/s ADSL2+ line that's $60/month. If you want serious connectivity you can get a burstable 100Mb/s ethernet service for the same price you reckon you're paying each month for a 2Mb/s service (I'm guessing it's ISDN or SHDSL)

Everyone seems to be missing the two big points about the OPEL announcement - 1. that it's an open-access network and 2. it's smashing the Telstra stranglehold on regional backhaul. (It's more expensive to send data between Victoria and Tasmania than it is to send data from Victoria to California!) ADSL2+ will be available to people in rural towns and WiMAX will be used for people on properties beyond the towns. There's also anecdotal evidence from carriers already delivering ADSL2+ services to rural areas that customers get better speeds at the same distance as their urban counterparts due to wiring in rural areas being of a heavier guage (and less density so less crosstalk, etc. as well I'd imagine.)

So yeah, initial reaction is that it's an election stunt - which it is - but if you scratch beneath the surface it's a surprisingly competent stunt. Right now if you want broadband in "the bush" you're pretty much stuck with Telstra's HSDPA NextG network and being reamed by the bill each month. A new open-access wholesale network is going to do wonders for driving down prices and it should all be coming online in time with upgrades to overseas transit capacity - Telstra is about to lay a Tb/s link, SXC is upgrading to that speed and Pipe Networks are also planning to lay a link as well.

MODS ON CRACK

[Greego]

+4 Interesting? I can't stand Howard either but this is just flamebait. The crappy state of broadband is a major national issue and within six months of a national election this is hardly a surprising announcement.

Re:At $120/year from AT&T, USA may not be far

[Anonymous Coward]

If they have AT&T, or their phone lines can handle it, sure. For example, I have Qwest, and it's just not available here where I am on the outer edges of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Why, I don't know.

MOD PARENT UP - they were right all along

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the "Future Fund" will eventually be used to buy gunships from the US. And it only took one day for your prophecy to be fulfilled...

June 20, 2007 - Australia's navy is to get new, advanced, Spanish-designed air warfare destroyers and large landing ships at a cost of as much as $11 billion.

Although the US isn't to be seen in this deal (unless they're hiding behind a Spanish front).

24th place isn't so bad really...

[jon287]

Here in America we have to find a way to stop teenagers from downloading "Fergalicious" before we can even think about more broadband rollouts...

Re:Political Mumbo Jumbo - I call shenanigans.

[Anonymous Coward]

This comment is complete garbage and almost certainly from a staunch Labor (opposition to Howard) supporter, mascarading as someone outside Australia. I'm the same guy who wrote above about 2 DSL lines in my house in Western Australia. The first was installed 3 days after I moved in, the second 2 weeks after I ordered it and that included the *physical* installation of a new line (as in someone getting in my roof, etc). Part of that wait was for me to book a time that suited. That's not bad for residential service. And the installation cost, including the brand new line and DSL modem /router was $0. That's a zero.

Now as to these stupid costs quoted above, again, I call shenanigans. My 8mb with Westnet is like $40 a month, the iiNet one is like $79 and thats the most expensive. But don't take my word for it: http://www.iinet.net.au/products/broadband/plans.h tml - those are sticker prices.

$20,000 installation? $5,000 a month? C'mon tiger - show us the web page which advertises these costs. Complete shenanigans. If you're going to make stuff up, make it vaguely realistic, next time.

With apologies to Bob Hawke...

[bandmassa]

...by 2009 no child will be without MSN {rolls eyes}

Re:Political Mumbo Jumbo - I call shenanigans.

[Anonymous Coward]

No point in wasting karma... Sunshine you go get a 2MB Telstra ELL service installed in the Sydney CBD and then get back to me. Who gives a fsck if you can get some dicky home service in WA for less? Sure 2MB to 100MB are available. BUT THE INSTALLATION COSTS ARE THE SAME. The service is a business service for large clients. And the pricing I received was promotional pricing. What is your problem? Why are you a fscking apologist for Telstra?

And I've done installations across Asia, HK, JP, SG, BK, SZ, SH, etc. All the Telcos in those countries provide quick service and fair pricing. In Australia the pricing is like it was 10 years ago in the rest of Asia. 10 years ago US$8000/month for a 128K ILC was the norm. Now I pay US$3000/month for COS1 8MB MPLS international circuits. A huge reduction in pricing and this is pretty much the norm accross Asia. Apart from in Australia where the pricing is still usurious.

Someone I was speaking to at Communicasia yesterday was complaining about the quote they are doing in Sydney and Telstra wants to charge $30,000 installation. Their client of course is complaining and doesn't want to proceed. These are real costs - not the figment of some supposed labor supporters imagination.

And I'm bipartisan I don't care about politics - fscking labor and the "no child will be living in poverty" bs was just as much an election stunt as Howard's broadband promise.

Go get your facts straight before saying others are lying - ya fscking moron.