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Raising Doubts About Australia's Broadband Upgrade Plan
RcK writes "In addition to the rising controversy of the possible Australian version of the Great Firewall Of China already mentioned several times of late here on Slashdot; the viability of the proposed AU$5Billion internet infrastructure upgrade promised by the Federal Government during their 2007 election campaign is under fire. The MD of arguably Australia's leading internet company, iinet, has branded the proposal a waste of taxpayers money. Steve Ballmer, during his current Australian visit, has also weighed in on the topic and diplomatically indicated that Australia should get on with the job. Much of the current criticism appears to surround the likelihood of people in remote areas being left out of the proposed plan. Ironically, where I lived previously (remote town in central Aus — nearest town over 400km away) everyone had, at the absolute least, subsidized satellite internet, and most had ADSL. In my case a flawless 512k connection for ~4years. However, I now live 5 minutes from the center of a capital city and due to archaic telephone infrastructure cannot get ADSL, and even line noise is too great for dialup!"
Today's front page at
Whirlpool Broadband News also features several articles relating to the saga.
> "However, I now live 5 minutes from the center of a capital city and due to archaic telephone infrastructure cannot get ADSL, and even line noise is too great for dialup!"
Must have taken hours just to type that sentence. That's what I call d e d i c a t i o n!!
The point that they're playing on the fact that the majority of Australians have no idea how technology works, nor do they have any understanding about the terminology behind it. Simple things like you mention to someone, "I use a 512k connection" -- they would assume that you would be downloading at 512kb/s, not 1/8th of that.
Couple this with the fact that IT has always been the sort of subject that kids used to figure out ways to get around their schools proxy (so they can waste time on bebo at school instead of actually hanging out with their friends), rather than learning how a computer works.
This is also the reason why Australians get sucked into those stupid Nigerian scams so easy -- because a lot of us don't use common sense. Not saying that Australia is alone in any of these aspects, it just seems to be that because our Government has no idea how the series of tubes works, the rest of the country hasn't really taken any interest. Discussion about things like the proposed internet filter are great for the general public, because it gives them a chance to understand how intricate the internet and networking in general is...
Or they roll your eyes at you and put their iPod headphones back in -- they won't have to worry about security with Web 2.0.
[/rant]
People are still paying attention to Steve Ballmer???
Quite a lot of people in Australia can already get a working ADSL connnection. They aren't going to rush out to sign up to a new network if it will cost twice as much per month and not necessarily offer higher bandwidth. I've read that this is one of the obstacles to the "build an entire new network from scratch" approach.
Another idea of building lower-cost add-ons such as wireless where coverage isn't currently available was planned by the previous government administration, and cancelled by the current.
One thing that I cannot understand about Australian, particularly in Brisbane is the attitude of 'Australia: love it or leave' combined with the surreptitious nationalism. Our easy going nature is simply apathy that we will not admit to. When constructive criticism is made, it is often met with derision by the general populace because it is not the Australian way. For all the multiculturalism in this country, tt concerns me the bigotry, racism and provincial mindset that so many have on this island.
Sadly enough, it makes me want to hand in my pass at the door. We are the 51st state of the US (foreign policy, economic policy, etc) , and have learnt it's lessons and bettered them. (ie we are more litigious per capita then the US). A country that chooses to play second fiddle instead of stand on our own two feet.
I guess we shouldn't knock bacteria, after all it's the only culture that some people have in this country.
The Tao that can be named is not the Tao
Pff...by the time we get this, the filters will be in place and it'll bring us back up to our current speeds anyways...Filter + Upgrade = Waste of money that could be better spent extending broadband availability to regional and remote Australia.
The point that they're playing on the fact that the majority of Australians have no idea how technology works, nor do they have any understanding about the terminology behind it.
You seem to be claiming that Australians are somehow different from other humans. I am not Australian by birth, but I've been living there for a few years, and I've observed that the geek quotient of the population seems to be quite high. What makes an Australian any more likely to get sucked in by a scam than, say, an American?
The simple fact is that we (finally) have a change of government, replacing the morons who had had their heads up their asses for so long they had obviously started to enjoy the view in there. The trouble is, the new government doesn't really want to actually _do_ anything, their preference being to push pieces of paper around and bleat platitudes.
TELSTRA (don't even get me started on this rant...)
...Among Slashdot editors to post the greatest number of Australia-related stories or something? Is there any chance they'll tire of the game and begin posting stories from countries other than Australia? Or is this some freakish form of patriotism at work by Slashdot's Aussie editors? I ask because I am so over stories from-and-about that country. Especially when they're of such little relevance to anybody other than Australians. I could understand if it was a Great Nation(tm), but there are, what, 20 million people there? At most. Suburbs of Mexico City have more people in them than that.
Telstra and Freedom of speech Last week I was involved in an interesting but disheartening incident - one that further highlights the problems we are facing with Telstra in Australia.
Tomorrow I will be chairing Day One of the Broadband World conference, organised by terrapin. This event included a panel session entitled 'Can open access regulation truly work in Australia without retail separation?' in which Telstra had agreed to participate.
At the last moment, however, Telstra asked the conference organisers to withdraw two people from the panel, saying they wouldn't participate otherwise. It was also very interesting to see that they even came up with the names of the people they would like as replacements. more
Use Adsense for Charity
What really ticked me off about the proposal by the Rudd Government was that they said they would bring everyone on to a 10 mbit connection. WTF? If you are going to spend 5 billion dollars of taxpayer money, and build new infrastructure anyway why not shoot for 1000 mbit connections for everyone? Whats the point in aiming so low that in 5 years time it wont matter if you succeed anyway?
Ultimately I never thought it would go through. To those in the USA, if you think your Telcos are bad, you need to come to grips with the ultimate in evil and greed that is Telstra.
I'm not being funny here. Why is broadband rollout, even if only to metropolitan areas, such an issue in Australia? I honestly would like some knowledgeable people to explain it.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
I remember watching the National Press Club Address about five years ago from the then-current parliamentary technology adviser who lamented that Australians have the highest acceptance of technological devices in the world, yet most people have no idea, or intention, to use them beyond their rudimentary functions.
For example, the majority have a multimedia phone, and the majority of those people use call and text at most. 60% of households (circa 2003 figures) have a computer connected to the internet in the same room as the main TV (average of two TVs per household), yet what is it used for but Facebook?
To further complicate matters, University students entering IT, Electronics and related fields are down because of the perception that "everything" already works, so why shouldn't they just be using the technology available? What is the point of working to improve it?
I'm pleased I'll graduate soon in a technological environment where people with my skillset are thinning, yet I fear a future as foretold in Idiocracy: people just don't look beyond the nose in front of their face any more.
</rant>
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
...and this is only ONE reason they should never try to build & operate Nuclear Power stations, no matter how many treaties they have or will sign on non-proliferation... Non-cooperation is a hallmark of Australian technology... overpriced, underwhelming, restrictive in offerings/service levels, etc.
Local (Aussie) business doesn't want to see their sales go off-seas, so, they're happy with all the news of costly broadband, currently slow uptake, problems finalizing the so-called National Broadband Network (NBN).
They're happy that - if / when the nonsensical Aussie Gov't's proposed forced Internet filtering come - it will further slow an already slow broadband Internet for its citizens & resident (a.k.a. consumers).
We -need- more access to the world, but we're going to get more S-L-O-W, monopoly (read: Telstra)controlled
C-R-A-P.
Even out Internet "Service" Providers can't cooperate to push monster Telstra into its place.
Break-up the monster, then let remaining players strive to compete, for a change... At this stage,
by force of habit, they're mostly fat, dumb (and seem to aim to keep their customers just as sumb) &
happy to live from exploitative over-priced "allocated" downloaded data...
Enough of Telstra's nonesense. Enough of ISP's that don't know how to do any more than imitate costly
Telstra's "big fee wallop" for naively exceeding pituful ~200 MB data quotas.
We've had enough of this nonesense!
I live in a new suburb in Melbourne and the infrastructure installed in the new suburb by Telstra (the local monopoly) is Fibre to the Node. Which is great. Except they go an put rubbish equipment at the nodes. So across the suburb about 40% of people can get ADSL1 and the rest get nothing (except a basic phone line).
I spent 4 months sending applications to the local ISP until eventually one of my neighbours sells up and disconnects from the node and luckily I get his spot.
This is not as uncommon.
But if the government encourages faster Internet speeds, the government-required filtering equipment has to be bigger and more expensive in order to handle the larger amount of data. So it only makes sense to spend less on filtering by using slower Internet connections.
Surely you can get 2400 bps with error-correction protocols enabled.
What, your service provider doesn't offer 2400 bps connections? Well, don't blame that on phone line noise.
Survey: Who has loaded a web page over a 300bps or less dialup connection? I'm not talking a nominally-faster connection with low throughput I'm talking an actual, 300bps connection.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
[quote]Much of the current criticism appears to surround the likelihood of people in remote areas being left out of the proposed plan. Ironically, where I lived previously (remote town in central Aus â" nearest town over 400km away) everyone had, at the absolute least, subsidized satellite internet, and most had ADSL.[/quote]
I've never understood the need to subsidize internet (or water or anything else for that matter) for people in remote areas. Living in the middle of nowhere is a choice- why should everybody else have to pay higher taxes to subsidize your choice?
take fast internet for granted.
I met a young Australian guy (about my age) in a bar last summer. He was shocked that FREE wireless (hotel/coffee shop) internet was faster than ANYTHING he could dream of buying at home.
We really need Australians on the internet... I don't want to seem racist- but the one's I have met all seem to have the greatest personalities (much more interesting than us...)
As an aside- it's funny that the ONLY thing Americans know about their culture is what we see in movies... and vice-versa. His big shock in talking to me was that a lot of Americans get summer jobs in HS and college... According to television shows I guess we all just hang out!
Since they are on the southern hemisphere they need to remember to turn the routers upside down before they install them, assuming the routers were produced in the northern hemisphere. Otherwise it really would be a waste of money because everyone would have to browse upside down, or at least flip their monitors over when using the Internet.
err... We are really Spanish?
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...