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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.
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.
My pics.
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.
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.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
I think I speak for most Australians that post here when I say that I'll believe it when I'm connected to it.
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
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
As discussed in:
2 6920-5013040,00.html
http://australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,219
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/.
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.
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...
Karma police, arrest this man. He talks in math. He buzzes like a fridge. He's like a detuned radio.
...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.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
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.
"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.
codemonkey dotsrc org / blog
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
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.
Read Pynchon.
Actually 256kbps (yes, you read KILOBITS/SEC correctly) is considered broadband. And that's only download. 64kbps upload is acceptable to be considered broadband.
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.
Serving time in Aristotelean prison for violating laws of physics
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.