Slashdot Mirror
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???
Well you obviously didn't read the rest of my post when I clearly pointed out:
Not saying that Australia is alone in any of these aspects
The trouble is, I see a lot of kids who say they know a lot about technology, they're interested in gadgets and high tech gear, but when it comes down to actually being able to google for something, or to trouble shoot software when an unexpected error occurs, or even something as simple as going through the options in a program to see what you can change/customize -- these sort of things are beyond the average Australian. Don't be naive and believe that the rest of the country who loves only sports and hot women, are like your friends who enjoy IT and are IT savvy. I don't want to burst your bubble, but a lot of Australians are very shallow, and generally very "sheepish".
Don't get me wrong, I want to see this country thrive and strive with it's IT industry just as much as you do, but it only takes 5 minutes to step into any Government workplace to realise that most of them have no clue beyond checking emails in Outlook and reading news sites in Internet Explorer.
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
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