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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 $1.68 billion (US) plan to move Australia to 99% penetration within two years. If they accomplish this goal they will be the most-wired nation (South Korea currently occupies the top spot with 90%). The Prime Minister's plan was attacked by his political opponents because it would create a two-tier system with the country's vast (and almost empty) interior served by wireless at "only" 12 Mbps.
I saw our communications minister (Helen Coonan) on lateline last night. She had the perfect solution to change all our broadband woes, change the way the measurements are taken. That sums up the current government though. If you don't like the statistics change the methodology.
There is a difference between being able to get a product and actually buying it. To say that 99% of Australians will have high speed broadband is ridiculous.
"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything" -- Josef Stalin
As per normal, Howard's doing this because, after attacking the opposition over more or less the same plan, he discovered that the polls show that Australians want this. So he's decided to adopt the plan, but make it even better than the opposition's idea, by increasing the penetration by a massive 1% from 98% to 99%.
sigh
"Laugh while you can a-monkey boy!" - Dr Emilio Lizardo
As discussed in:
2 6920-5013040,00.html
http://australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,219
the real problem is that the lack of links out of Australia means we are being charged way too much. This will only get worse if more people are able to get connected.
Why is the Sydney Morning Herald running an AFP report on an important Australian issue? The report's badly written, misspells the name of one of the two major political parties in Australia and measures costs in US$...
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.
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?
My pics.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]