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Obama Looks Down Under For Broadband Plan
oranghutan writes "The Obama administration is looking to the southern hemisphere for tips on how to improve the broadband situation in the US. The key telco adviser to the president, Sarah Crawford, has met with Australian telco analysts recently to find out how the Aussies are rolling out their $40 billion+ national broadband network. It is also rumored that the Obama administration is looking to the Dutch and New Zealand situations for inspiration too. The article quotes an Aussie analyst as saying: 'There needs to be a multiplier effect in the investment you make in telecoms — it should not just be limited to high-speed Internet. That is pretty new and in the US it is nearly communism, that sort of thinking. They are not used to that level of sharing and going away from free-market politics to a situation whereby you are looking at the national interest. In all my 30 years in the industry, this is the first time America is interested in listening to people like myself from outside.'"
Oh good lord.
That's what we've been doing, and it sucks.
If Obama is asking Telstra / Australia or the Australian government ANYTHING about broadband than my American friends, I am very very very sorry for you, quite sincerely - this can not end well at all.
Telstra is one of the most vile companies in existence, Microsoft may get mocked a lot here but that's only because the evils of Telstra are not known internationally. (We're talking about a company that first introduced Bigpond cable with a 100mbyte per MONTH limit, no - I'm not joking)
As for the broadband network, it's a load of cobblers, we won't see it for a decade at least, it's one of those dopey empty promises which mean absoloutely nothing (no, I'm not a liberal, not even close)
How is more landmass an excuse for why a rural area has better connectivity than the middle of a city of a million people?
It only sucks because the government didn't force companies to upgrade their networks when they took money from the government to.......upgrade their networks.
All the government had to do was actually enforce the measures they enacted and we wouldn't be having this conversation. So yes, while the companies are definitely in the wrong for essentially embezzling the money, the politicians who gave them the money and then let them just pocket it are even more in the wrong.
**Apologies for any typo's - Firefox doesn't want to run on my system without crashing every 5 seconds since I overclocked it (everything else runs 100% fine, and no system crashes - so the problem is with Firefox) and good ol' Shiternet Explorer doesn't have spellcheck.**
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~Thomas Jefferson
Ha! I'll believe that when I'm connected to it.
As a town in Minnesota discovered, all you have to do is threaten to roll your own. Suddenly 50Mb/s for $50/month is available.
The problem isn't technology, population density or land area. The problem is that local government provide a monopoly (or oligopoly), so there is no incentive to truly cut margins and invest in infrastructure. Stop that, and companies will find a way to keep getting that check in the mail.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
"Because Japan doesn't have the landmass... they have fewer lines to lay and less overhead."
If we lit up all of our dark fiber we'd surpass most nations. the telcos and cable companies aren't doing it, though, preferring to overcharge and under-deliver.
They should be sued for $200 BILLION for fraud and contractual violations.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
As an Australian I agree, why not look to Zimbabwe for an economic recovery plan?
I exaggerate, but there are surely better places to look.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
There has been several cases where Broadband quality has been drastically improved when the local governments get fed up with the slow speeds and move to install new networks of their own. The Telcoms either jump to provide better service or the residents get better service from a local government run Telcom. It's a win-win situation: nothing like a little competition (especially in a near monopoly) to shake up the status quo and get the results we want.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well pulling cable is going to get pretty pricey if you have 20 different outfits doing it.
Are you going to be able to pay $small_ISP $20k to rip up the street and pull you a run of fibre? But once you do, your neighbour can get it for $1k, so the rest of the street will naturally follow suit, rather than going to a different ISP and also having to put down the initial $20k.
Having a bunch of different ISPs serving different houses on the same block really isnt feasible.
I think, ideally, the last mile would be municipally owned, and they then lease the lines to $small_ISP of your choice, at a flat rate. That's the only way I can see a bunch of ISPs working out.
Sent from my PDP-11
And what government DOESN'T?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Without "government intrusion" there would be no telecommunications market. Do you think that private companies are going to bury millions of miles of fiber and then just let their competitors use their cables? And how do you think these telecoms are going to get access to dig up all these endless miles of public property? Taxpayers pay = you answer to our elected officials.
So wrong it doesn't deserve a full answer
Sometimes, something can be so ridiculous, that just pointing and laughing is sufficient.
This attitude of "The US shouldn't look at other countries as examples. If we didn't come up with the idea ourselves, it doesn't deserve to be used in America!" is really weird to me, as an outside observer. The same attitude is present in the current healthcare reform debate and in metrication. Surely Americans are aware that foreigners do come up with good ideas, and that you haven't failed as a country because you used some?
I find it always depressing, when my government tries to come up with its own plan and doesn't bother to have a look how other nations did it.
That is either ignorance, arrogance or misplaced pride.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
They simply need to take over the pipe like any utility, and then rent the pipe to broadband providers. That would ease the issues with getting things like fiber layed out, while opening up the market to competition. I think one of the biggest hurdles is getting permits and licensing to actually lay the pipes themselves. Too expensive, time consuming, and too political.
Internet has become just like any other utility. It should be treated that way.
Unless anyone has forgotten, it was the deregulation of cable that caused an explosion in pricing. It's also allowed these markets to become limited to one or possibly two providers if your lucky. Now these exclusive agreements is preventing anyone else from entering the market. If the government takes over the pipes and then just rents those to providers at a fair price, it would remove that hurdle and open up competition.
There is no competition now and painful pricing is the obvious result.