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AU National Broadband Network Signs $11 Billion Deal With Telstra
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government has signed an $11 billion deal with the country's largest telco, Telstra, to acquire the telco's physical infrastructure and migrate customers to the National Broadband Network. The NBN is a 100Mbps open access fiber network that will be rolled out to 94% of the Australian population, with wireless and satellite to cover the remainder. The deal marks a large step forward for the new network, as without a deal to bring Telstra's customers onboard, the NBN's viability was in question."
Everyone knows wallabies love to eat fiber
If this was a country other than Australia I'd think it was awesome. Now this just seems as a way to further invade the internet lives of their citizens. I sure hope people can still buy private internet, but I doubt they'll be able to.
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National Broadband is a great idea! Like the US highway and interstate system.
My only concerns are privacy and censorship. It's not like they were protected before by having private telecoms, but what happens when the government runs the entire network?
That's a problem.
The solution, as I see it. Is end-to-end encryption of all data and requests so that the ISP is nothing more than a hose and does not have any way of analyzing packet traffic. Sure, programs could optionally tag their packets as high priority for video or whatever, but the standard packet would just be encrypted priority normal.
Maybe now the Australian people won't get fucked by Telstra any longer. Seriously, that's got to be one of THE worst ISPs I've seen people use.
I've had more stable video conference calls on a 56k dialup.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
1. Build nationwide telecommunications infrastructure with public funds. 2. Spin it off into a private company, giving this company a monopoly on landline and most other communications. 3. Buy it back for 11 Billion. 4. Profit! (for the Telstra shareholders)
NBN is a private company funded by the government for now. Once it's up and running, the government will cut and run like with everything else. Trust me, this has very little to do with censorship.
For anyone truly concerned, they never tested any of their ISP-level filtering shit on the fibre networks, because they know it'll fuck up under that load. If anything, the NBN will make any further censorship proposals go away... for now.
Disagree != mod troll.
Yeah, now they will be fucked by their Government instead. Who do you think has the bigger dick?
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
Half the fucking point of the NBN was to get away from Telstra.
that's a fair question that cannot be answered here. not that it matters?
Come on, Australia has a population of 21MM people! If it joined the US, it would make it our 3rd largest state population-wise and that largest state area-wise! That, and if any of their government censorship antics (or nationalized broadband) are successfully implemented, don't think that the US and Western Europe won't seriously considering following suit.
Australia is currently spearheading innovation in Western censorship and control. Think of it like MSDN for governments.
making surveillance and blacklists easier?
Yeah, now they will be fucked by their Government instead. Who do you think has the bigger dick?
This is going to turn out one of two ways.
Best Case: the NBN operates somewhat like AmtTrak in the US, forever receiving subsidies from the national government while getting government-granted monopolies on some kinds of operation.
Worst Case: the Australian government decides that NBN is a really good start on nationalizing all Internet access in their country.
Either way, the people that think this operation will be spun off privately and profitably one day are fools.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
the Australian government want to buy a car aompany?
This will save the government billions of dollars in trench digging and pole construction. This is a great sign that the NBN won't be scrapped by any upcoming parties.
On the other hand since the NBN is essentially going to either make Telstra's service a niche product or drive the company into bankruptcy, you'd think they'd just nationalize their assets anyways. But at least this way the shareholders, most of which are common Australian families, will get something out of it.
Sorry but in the US we only nationalize Too Big To Fail Banks. We bail them out with taxpayers' money then we give them back to the same corporate sharks that bankrupt them for free (actually, for a fee but paid again with taxpayers' money...).
This is the USA and we don't care about broadband for our people, like those weird places Korea and Japan. The only concern we have about broadband is to sniff them for people's personal information without a subpoena based on our rights as a police state granted by the PATRIOT act.
Get out with your communist ideas! Move to Venezuela where they nationalize Banks that steal cash from people, and TVs that lie and ask people to kill the president.
Here we let our TVs broadcast Tea party rallies where meth-head KKK white people get together with AK47s and shout aloud they want to hang the nigro president on a tall tree, while the white police officers smile...
So, you can be a commie in Kangaroo-land if you want. Here in the USA:
If we see the Gulf of Mexxon we say:
Spill, baby, Spill.
and If we see a Mexican baby in Arizona we say:
Kill, that baby, Kill.
As RATM says: Freedom? Yeah... Freedom??? Yeah... Right...
In the US, we have the right to remain silent, anything we say can and will be used against us...
This raises a good question. How much more seriously will copyright violations be prosecuted when it's taking place on government provided Internet lines?
The Telstra-NBN deal illustrates how the telecom industry should be restructured.
In the US, recent policy has moved in exactly the opposite direction, towards more vertical integration, so the telephone companies, who own wires built with monopoly money, don't have to let competing ISPs use them at all. They only have to let competitive phone companies (CLECs) use them under certain circumstances, which are shrinking; this basically is limited to old copper wire in urban areas and town centers.
A "LoopCo" would be a company that owns the outside wire and leases it equally to all comers, building fiber for all who want to rent it, even cable. One fiber plant is a lot easier to afford than two or three. The original NBN plan would have built a new fiber plant to compete with Telstra; as customers moved off of Telstra's old copper network, Telstra would have lost money. Telstra blinked: They're selling their existing plant to NBN, so that they will be the biggest wholesale customer, not a competitor. Telstra wins: They get to use the new network, and get paid A$11B for their old wire. The country wins: They get NBN's new fiber, and don't have to fight Telstra all the way, or pay twice.
The Bells in the US do not see it this way. Nor does the FCC, which is squarely in their pocket. Expect the US to fall farther and farther behind, as the farce called "National Broadband Plan" leads to more of the same, just with higher taxes to subsidize CenturyTel, TDS, and other rural subsidy whores who can use the subsidy money to put local wireless ISPs, who are not eligible for subsidies (only one subsidy recipient in a given place - it's literally a monopoly fund) out of business.
Provision of last-mile services are not commercially viable, virtually every network of this type has been built with government funds.. If such a network comes under private ownership it will always be a monopoly because it isn't commercially viable to build any competing infrastructure.
Such infrastructure should always have remained controlled by a non profit wholesale provider, and let third parties brand and offer services to end users.
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Sure... hop onto the nice, fast, cozy, government-provided internet.
And in exchange, accept ubiquitous monitoring and censorship.
Sorry, but the Australian government has gone far too Orwellian for me. If I had a choice of being on a government-sponsored internet, I would insist that it be just like phone lines: no censorship, and no monitoring without a warrant.
If the government is a bigger dick it is YOUR FAULT if the corporation is you can only choose between dicks that screw you and they call may suck. At least with the government you can screw them back a little bit.... Plus government is non-profit with corruption overhead while the corporation requires as much overhead as the market can handle (profit) -- and for things that are needed, its a forced market where it can be made to carry even more overhead (profit.)
If you can't make government run lean enough beat a monopoly marketplace then your people are incompetent.
Like most major infrastructure projects in Australia, by the time this is completed (or even available in certain areas while others are still unconnected) it will be obsolete. There are providers offering much higher speeds in new residential estates already.
Seriously, wtf? Just ignore them and let them die a slow and painful death. Create a government funded company that *just* does infrastructure and only sells bandwidth to ISPs. The end user can only get a plan from one of these ISPs. Keep the infrastructure entirely separated from the end user and we can avoid a mess like selling Telstra again. Oh yeah, last step, don't get fucking greedy and sell this new company either.
Seems like every day there's a story about AT&T, Verizon, "cable" and "digital switchovers". It's just one country, right?
I just read another article about this, NBN deal , which indicates:
* Telstra gets to be removed from universal service obligation
* and there will be yet another company setup to look after unprofitable telco services to rural and regional Australian - called USO Co - with only 50 million to do with with (at least to begin with)
As to filtering - I still think it is a part of a master plan to create a backbone which is filtered before it ever reaches ISPs. They won't/aren't concerned with filtering overhead and never will be. They only want to be able to control the flow of free information into Australia.
Seriously, wtf? Just ignore them and let them die a slow and painful death. Create a government funded company that *just* does infrastructure and only sells bandwidth to ISPs.
Um, this is exactly what the NBN is. They are dealing with Telstra so that they can reuse the existing network rather than having to build another identical network over the top of it. If they didn't it would have cost a lot more than 11 billion. Telstra only signed the deal because the governement were going to block them from all future mobile spectrum auctions if they didn't. And mobile is the only profitable game left.
"The NBN is a 100Mbps open access fiber network that will be rolled out to 94% of the Australian population"
Currently, the plan is only 90% coverage with fibre, although the recent report by KPMS suggested they increase that to 92%. I believe the 94% is the current (claimed) Telstra ADSL coverage.
Having worked in the industry for a while now, I can tell you that Telstra's copper network is in pretty poor shape. For the last 3 years or so, there has been a standing order of "temporary repairs" in place - no permanent fixes to problems, just run a cable across the ground, or jumper individual services onto other pairs to get it up and running. There's a HUGE problem in the copper network for "gel affected" joints - basically, the waterproof boxes used to seal joins of cable together aren't...waterproof. Water gets in, gets sucked up into the cable, and eventually the whole range dies. This is such a problem that there's a specific "clear code" - used by techs to notify head office of the problem/solution to a fault - of "network - fault in network - gel affected - temporarily repaired - job submitted for permanent fix".
The other problem I see is that individual lead-in's (cable running from the street to the house) are almost always direct buried 2-pair cable - there's no conduit running from the street to the house, just a sheathed cable (see http://www.phoneworks.net.au/General/phone_line.php for what I'm talking about) - digging down and replacing a lead-in isn't a huge job, but who is going to pay for it? The subscriber? Telstra? If Telstra were to do it, the only way to do it right would be to do it in bulk - its not worth the contractor's time to do it otherwise.
The National Broadband Network (NBN) is a Layer-2 wholesale network; your IP carriage (or whatever else is run over the fibre) is provided by your retailer, who buy access to the layer 2 wholesale network from NBN Co., the government-owned company that is building and administering the network.
I would think that litigation for copyright violations etc would then be more likely to fall on the retailer, who has a direct relationship with the end user; as the wholesaler, NBN Co. does not.
They are acquiring access. That is, renting access to the "fit-for-use" pits and ducts from Telstra. I hope that this is only a mistake in the reporting, but perhaps there is a buy option at the end of the lease. http://www.commsday.com/commsday/?p=1134
How much did the Government sell Telstra for in the first place? ;-)
If the majority don't like the government they can vote it out.
When the majority of Telstra shareholders including one that had more than a 50% stake voted to stop the Telstra CEO from getting a five million dollar bonus for nearly running it into the ground the board ignored them.
That infrastructure already belonged to the people of Australia, since we initially paid for it (when the Government initially built it).
Then it was given away as part of Telstra when the company was partly privatised.
Now we have to pay for it again so we can replace it.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
Basically the reason Stephen Conroy is the Net Minister is because he knows how to get the telcos rolling with the NBN. I don't think they expected him to be a complete nutjob regarding the other stuff.
21 MilliMetres?
I think you mean 22 Million people.
Just to clarify, Australia is 7,617,930 km2 whilst the continental United states is 8,080,464.25 km2. We are almost as big as 48 of your states put together.
And we are getting better Internet infrastructure (how are those local monopolies working out, our regulation is great) not to mention health care, education and so forth.
No point in having area a population statistics when talking about services.
Where does it say this?
Nowhere?
Perhaps you made it up to justify your poorly thought out rant.
The broadband will not be nationalised, The government is building the infrastructure and this will be leased to all private telco's. It's not like this was the NBN's stated goal from the word go, nor has it changed. Australia has not had a government owned telco in over 15 years. this is exactly like state owned powerlines, anyone can lease them.
And you're damned right, when the NBN is a success, European governments will follow suit, however the US will still be beholden to private corporations who want tax money to maintain the status quo. Let us know how that works out for you.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
bend over, and pass the vas-o-line. 11 Billion dollars for an infrastructure that the Govt used to own. It should make Telstra shares worthwhile. Bah! I dont know if I should laugh or cry. The details were that any TOWN that had over 1000 people would get fibre to the home, the rest get, Wireless or satellite, Telstra owns the biggest 3G network, Optus owns(?) the satellites, I'm either going to miss out or pay double. And Rural users will get ??? This is just soooo wrong, large number of people don't give a crap about fast internet, yet they are going to pay for the option anyway.
Telstra - the company who created one of Australia's "poverty traps"
& lead ISP's into dependence on high-cost Internet services, that's
been -adversely- affeecting AU's Broadband up-take to this day.
Over-priced Telstra still offeris "cheap" (~$30 & ~$50) Internet plans,
with a 2 GB data quota, and charges a $150/GB "penalty usage fee"
for "excess" usage on -slow- ADSL plans - according to Whirlpool:
. http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-1-2/telstra-bigpond-adsl.htm
You wouldn't let Electric companies charge 1,000% more for the
your using a 3rd KWH of electrical energy; why oh why has AU's
sequence of past governments -ever- let Telstra charge so much
per GB of data usage, just because it's labeled "excess" by the
provider.
Telstra's $150 / GB fees is (symbollically) the "re-colonisation" of
of Australia, this time by a local monarch (ie: de facto monopoly).
Compare Telstra's fees to some -other- Aussie ISPs' plan prices:
While Telstra provides a mere 2 GB for ~ $50 (ADSL):
1. AU's costly ISP, Internode, provides 50 GB / mon for ~$50; &
2. More economical TPG provides 130 GB / mon for tha same $50.
(The latter ISPs' data can - or is - sent at ADSL-2+ speeds, resp.)
------------
Sadly, many naive, first-time Internet users start their home Internet
usage with Telstra (or a nearby "mon & pop" company offering plans
similar in price to Telstra's), ie, before they discover more cost-effec-
tive plans from TPG-class ISP's.
Many really don't understand all the technical jargon, having no idea
how much data they'll use each month, and there's always been a
costly Telstra-originated "poverty trap" Internet plan to "fall into."
Telstra has been taking in much more $$$ than is fair in usage fees,
since dial-up days.
Australians have been - & continue to be stung - by "poverty-trap"
"penalty usage fees" for far too long.
I have no doubts that Telstra has taken-in many times the cost of
their network.
We hope that will finally get World-best cost-effectiveness for their
monthly fees... AND - hopefully -
the $150 / GB "excess" fee will soon be a thing of AU's I'net past.
In the UK, BT actually encouraged people to share their broadband accounts,
eg, so BT wouldn't have to add as much infrastructure each year.
(It's a bit like power generators encouraging folks to generate power locally,
eg, with their own wind or PV gear & buying their power during peak-load-
ing periods.)
Very sensible!
Perhaps, someday, WiMAX boxes will get as cheap as today's home routers,
so you'll be able to share a fast NBN account with some neighbors.
If not WiMAX, then something similar - maybe even better - may come out, ;-)
that will help you enjoy a few "fast enough" access roads to the Internet
"super highway" as we used to call it when it first arrived.
-1 Disagree
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
Come on along and be impressed, the alibi of broadband.
Australia has to have the best, the alibi of broadband.
It will connect to everyone, in every home or nearly.
It's going to be a heap of fun, it's going to cost us dearly.
When the brand new broadband comes to town, it won't be that much quicker.
A special filter slows it down, to catch the porn.
Must ask Kevin, one thing we don't understand.
With the net so full of crap, who needs broadband?
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
Provision of last-mile services are not commercially viable, virtually every network of this type has been built with government funds.. If such a network comes under private ownership it will always be a monopoly because it isn't commercially viable to build any competing infrastructure. Such infrastructure should always have remained controlled by a non profit wholesale provider, and let third parties brand and offer services to end users.
I think it's true that this project isn't commercially viable. For the "non profit wholesale provider", the question is how much of the building costs they will be able to recoup through the wholesale charges. Closing down the competing Telstra network will presumably allow higher charges than would otherwise have been the case. My experience with other government enterprises, e.g., electricity, is not entirely positive, since they tend to operate inefficiently and simply pass on the costs via large annual price hikes. Without competition (except for mobile networks), will that happen on the fibre network too?
Just have a flat levy on residential land rates (like I think Queensland does for funding it's ambulance service).
Remember economies of scale are king in this business. The costs of running a nation-wide network with 97+% of the residential market & 100% of the Govt market aren't really that much greater than the costs of running a a nation-wide network with 20% of the same market, well relately speaking. The only decision required is working out the simplest/cheapest revenue method for such a govt utility. A flat rate levy on residential land rates fits the bill perfectly. The only requirement for retail ISP services would be the business market, which would nominally placate all the private ISPs crying fail at the govt using its comparative advantage to make them all redundent overnight in regards the residential market.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. What the Government and Telstra have signed is a "Heads of Agreement", which is not a binding contract; it's more like a broad set of terms both sides agree on.
The finer details still need to be discussed and the resulting contract approved by Telstra's shareholders before we can really rest easily. Until then, either side (incl. the next Government, should it change) can pull out.
It's definitely good news – not least for the current Government, coming fortuitously a scant day after a by-election hiding in Sydney –, but some commentators have already suggested Telstra holds a bit more of the bargaining power going forward as a result.
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
If the pipe between Australia and the rest of the world is still shit, what exactly is improved by laying fiber all over the place? Quicker access to the web site of a local plumber?
Yes, inefficiency is the problem with government organisations... If it's not their money, then the people running the show don't care about wasting it. That said, when organisations like this have been privatised the company taking over quickly makes huge profits by cutting costs, but often they also massively slash service to do so.
In theory, the non profit wholesale provider should recover their costs, not making a profit but not making a loss either.
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