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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.
Seriously why not Japan, or most European countries?
I live in Australia. Our broadband *sucks*. Try Korean or Japan if you're after inspiration.
Why can't we be a leader and make our own plan?
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
This is good news. We all hate Americans so it seems good to hear that while we're screwing ourselves we're screwing you too.
Is Obama going mad? Here in NZ we have one of the WORST internet "solutions" in the world! Its: -Slow -VERY expensive -Lots of area's don't even have access to internet -Heavily Data Capped (I pay $120 NZ for 10mbit (which is more like 7mbit) with only 40GB of data!)
Because Japan doesn't have the landmass... they have fewer lines to lay and less overhead.
I question if looking to Australia is still a bad idea because they generally have most of their population along the shores, right? Our problem is that we have such a landmass with people spread out. Obama always likes to think of "everybody" when he does something and thinks that my parents who live 50 miles from the nearest major city need ultra fast broadband.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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?
Most of the problems I see presented on this issue stem from the fact that competition is artificially limited through regulation.
I once took an excursion to Reddit, and later HN. Unlimited up/down voting sucks when dealing with a hive-mind.
Goodness, the $40B broadband plan will be a disaster.
Lets see.
About 10 Million possible connection points (Business + Households) with say 25% takeup (after they will still be competing with ADSL/Cable which is already > 10 Mbits/sec to most)
Thats $16k per connection. Lets assume cost of capital (6%) + maintainence(4%) is 10%/annum.
So it will cost $1600/annum or $133/month before we add any data costs.
So USA, don't follow our example.
Our dear leader K.Rudd is intent on sending us as broke as you.
46137
We have about 1/10th the overall US population density. OTH our urban population density would be quite similar.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
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
Or rather, competition is reduced by a natural (mono | duo)poly in most areas, and current regulation prevents utter ridiculousness, but isn't enough.
Sent from my PDP-11
Foolish man Obama looking to Oz and NZ when South Africa has it all wrapped up. No infrastructure, no data lines, hubs, switches or routers to support. They just use data pigeons! Not only are they cheap, they're as fast as broadband and they appease the tree huggers!
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.
What am I saying, this is slashdot, bash away before thinking about it...
But honestly, Nowhere does it say "Obama has hired Austrailian Telco Analysts", or "Obama is modelling the effort after the Austrailian effort". Looking for inspiration means asking around and picking up ideas. Just like a software engineer who goes to Google to look for inspiration. The bad ones just copy and paste, but the average and above just look at the other results and try to mold a better solution. I would say this is allegorical. We'll see what happens.
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
force the telco's to either invest the billions they were given or return the money.
If it was me, i'd roll out government owned last mile fiber or high quality copper in population densities greater then 100 people per square mile, and allow private enterprise to use this for a nominal fee and have them provide the backhaul and support services. in area's with lower population density auction off spectrum to ATLEAST 4 different providers in any area.
this way poviders aren't trapped into making huge investments they won't see a return on, and customers aren't trapped by monpoly providers. everyone wins without tax payers having to foot 100% of the bill or making the bill larger then it needs to be.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
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
If that rural area has more connectivity, it's just because a telco exec lives in the area.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
Sometimes, something can be so ridiculous, that just pointing and laughing is sufficient.
There is no 'natural' monopoly or duopoly. These situations are only created through Government intrusion into the market.
Based on actual history, you speak quite a bit of truth. However, it's not *only* created through government intrusion.
When a company is so successful that it can "get it" and "do it" for less... when a company offers something over an infrastructure that is so expensive and offering a product/service on a huge, national scale is the bar that has been set... That company will be so incredibly entrenched that it will never be rooted out by a startup. Ever.
It's the reason 100% free market capitalism can't work on it's own. It needs a little help from the big G, sometimes.
I totally agree the government effed up in the past and basically made AT&T a monopoly. They also continue to eff up in many ways, but without *some* government regulation, you'd STILL be stuck with AT&T anyway. In fact, their actual goal was to be *the* only telecommunications provider back in the early 1900s as they gobbled up the little companies in buyouts. AT&T would have been able to do it too, even without the government's help. I have no reason to believe AT&T or any other company in that position would feel any differently about the Internet.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
It is not only that, but also the belief (sincere or not) that equality ought to trump quality... Government-provided schools, clinics, roads, subways, postal service, inevitably suck, but they suck equally for all — rich and poor — except, maybe, for the superrich like the politicians, who view themselves as more equal than others and send their own children to very expensive private schools.
To the holders of this opinion, the fact that parts of the country can get an ultra-fast optical connection (without government's subsidy), and that there is not a person any more, who can't get a high-speed dial-up (without government's subsidy), is nothing compared to the inequality between the two extremes.
The trouble with this attitude is that it is impossible to make things equally good for all people. So all attempts to do so end up making things equally bad. Equality is achieved, and quality was secondary anyway.
It is this crusaders for equality, who keep bringing up "growing income disparity" — and advocate taxation and regulation to make things "fair". Why they haven't yet thought of amputating a limb of Michael Phelps — to "level the playing field" between him and other swimmers — is beyond me... Clearly, his 8 Olympic gold medals is grossly unfair towards the rest of the swimmers, who swam the same distance at nearly the same times, but got no or one gold medal only.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
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"
Ha! In Australia its the regulation that makes the market competitive. The American's who ran our version of pre-breakup AT&T (Telstra) got very frustrated at not being able to kick their competitors off their network (a former government asset), and left.
Seriously why not Japan, or most European countries?
Most of those countries don't speak Americanese, dammit! At least the Aussies have something vaguely close...
If you computer isn't stable enough to run firefox for 5 seconds when you overclock it, shouldn't you just not overclock it? Or overclock it less?
How much speed are you actually gaining? You're not saving much time if something goes wrong every hour or so.
Sometimes, something can be so ridiculous, that just pointing and laughing is sufficient.
Nail, meet hammer. To elaborate, there is still NO indication that Australia's fabled broadband network is ever going to eventuate. There's been a couple of years of blow-hard yapping about it, but the government has yet to come up with a single concrete proposition as to how it is going to go about it.
Don't get me wrong, I was one of those who helped this government get elected (and I'm all for the roll-out of a decent network), but while its members are nowhere near as openly malevolent as their predecessors, much of their policy to date has been the application of "spin" to somehow justify their lack of action.
But only Firefox crashes! Everything else just suffers silent data corruption...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Here's an empirical counterpoint:
Denmark has the second most equal distribution of income[1]. It's also the country where people are the most happy about their lives[2].
What does this prove? Well, I'm probably guilty of cherry-picking evidence, and correlation isn't necessarily causation, but I think it suggests that equality doesn't ruin our lives (yes, I'm probably also biased, being a Dane).
That certainly matches my personal experience. Free medical care, free education, well-stocked public libraries, a postal service I was happy to use (and still am, I just use it much less), the state even gives you money while you're studying and you can life off of it if you're a bit frugal. Sure, you get to pay a lot of taxes, but I'm happy to do that, seeing how I'm getting my money's worth for it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality (sort by "CIA Gini").
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index
(note that [2] doesn't say that life satisfaction correlates with income equality, nor that it doesn't. Make of that what you want.)
>>>the government takes from us while providing almost NOTHING in the way of services
False.
Study-after-study has shown that rural citizens (i.e. the red-colored zones) get MORE money, per capita, than people in the cities/urban areas. This is because the rural citizens have their electricity subsidized and their phone connections subsidized by government or corporations via the Universal Service Fund. And soon their internet will be subsidized too. If rural citizens paid the *true* cost of these long-distance runs of electric/phone they would not be able to afford it.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
>>>This is one of the textbook cases of how natural monopoly/duopoly arise.
Except in the case of cable television, which is most areas the monopoly did not arise naturally. It was *mandated* by the local government when they granted Comcast (or Cox or Time-warner) an exclusive license in the neighborhoods or counties.
The government should revoke that exclusive license, and let other companies to move-in. Imagine if the metal pipe under your street not only had Comcast, but also Cox, Time-Warner Cable, Charter, Apple TV, and so on. You could just pick the one you liked, the same way you can choose a Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota, Kia, or Dodge car.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
The problem with Net Neutrality is the last mile. Thus instead of adding more regulation in the form of Net Neutrality, the government needs to address the issue of government granted monopolies on the last mile. Once that is addressed, Net Neutrality issues will fade away. But Net Neutrality can be used as a stick to get more competition in the last mile.
What needs to happen is the Federal government needs to tally up how much tax payer money has gone to the telecoms, add interest, and then tell the telecoms that they need to pay back X billion dollars, once they have done that, they will own outright their own network. The money paid back to the government goes into a fund available to other ISP's that want to lay their own fiber.
Local municipalities would build, if they haven't already, a pipe in the right of ways in front of every house, going to every house. This pipe is what competing ISP’s would use to lay cable in, instead of having to dig separate trenches themselves. The local government would charge a minimal maintenance fee to any ISP who wants to lay cable in the pipe. The telecoms would also pay the same fee, even if they are not using the pipe, which would be for access to the right of way in front of, and through people’s property. This way the construction and maintenance of the pipe is guaranteed without any higher taxes.
Multiple competing sewerage providers is a ridiculous idea. How are they going to compete? Commercials that say "Use us, because our sewage is cleaner? Maybe?" People don't care how clean their sewage is, they just want to flush the toilet and get back to work. A scarier scenario would be a commercial like "We'll take your sewage for pennies on the dollar, which is all you care about, and then don't worry what we do with it wink wink." Innovations in this market means finding ways to get rid of sewage while spending as little as possible - NOT providing excellent but somewhat pricey service like the government has an interest in providing.
As for the train stuff, apparently you aren't aware of the ongoing discussion about the issue. It's widely accepted that passenger rail never made a profit in its entire history, and in fact can never make a profit. Throughout all of its golden years of universal use, it probably never paid back the cost of laying rail. The government needed to subsidize these expenses because the infrastructure is important to the common good and a free market wouldn't work here.
Oh they would be able to afford it, just after they raised the prices for the goods and services that are PRODUCED in those rural areas.
City dwellers tend to forget, or like to ignore, that they share a symbiotic relationship with the rural hicks. Without the food and energy resources produced "in the sticks" city life would be impossible.
Tough to run a 40 Billion dollar trading company with no electricity. Tough to raise your family in a beautiful suburb when there's no electricity and nothing to eat. Oh you may have a power plant somewhere close to you, but go find out where the fuel for it comes from. You may have some farms somewhere close to your city but go find out what their production is and then divide that into your population.
You'll quickly discover that you'll be starving in the dark without those hicks in the sticks. On the other side of the coin those hicks in the sticks would be doing without life saving medical treatments and equipment, complicated machinery, and sophisticated technology.
Like I said, it's symbiotic but don't think that they couldn't afford it if they had to. They could, they'd just raise the cost of the food you're eating, the power you consume, etc, until they could.