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Australia's National Broadband Network To Go Ahead

Posted by timothy on from the beware-coriolis-effect dept.

angry tapir writes "After weeks of a hung parliament following the Australian federal election, the incumbent Labor Party has garnered enough support among independent MPs to form a minority government. Broadband was central to clinching the independents' support. Labor's victory means the $43 billion National Broadband Network will push ahead. The policy has generally been popular among ISPs and telcos — though some rebel operators preferred a policy that emphasized wireless technologies, similar to the proposals put forward by Labor's opponents. The primarily fiber-based NBN is set to offer Australians 1Gbps broadband."

16 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point... by Deathnerd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Of having broadband if you can't watch some good ol' small breasted porn?

  2. Big enough to give you everything you want by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Anyone who lives in Australia and supports this doesn't get to complain when the government begins to censor their "right" that they demanded the government give them.

    1. Re:Big enough to give you everything you want by Nursie · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Why?

      Because in any other area that the government provides a service and does it badly it's perfectly right to complain and/or try to get it fixed.

      Please leave your stupid paranoia of government services in your head with the other crazy ideas. some things make sense for a government to provide, or even wouldn't happen without it. But i forgot, that's socialism in your mind isn't it? And anything that is tainted with socialism is necessarily bad...

      Moron.

    2. Re:Big enough to give you everything you want by mirix · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, it's so much better to be held at the mercy of a corporation that has no accountability to you, vs. the government that has at least some accountability.

      --
      Sent from my PDP-11
    3. Re:Big enough to give you everything you want by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And here's a tip for you: The majority of Australians *want* the Internet to be filtered, ...

      What? Where do you get this shit from? I demand facts and figures. And from proper reputable source please, not the Australian Christian Lobby group.

    4. Re:Big enough to give you everything you want by scdeimos · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The majority of Australians *want* the Internet to be filtered, and the government is accountable to *them* not *you*.

      I call BS. I haven't met one person who actually said they want internet censorship in Australia.

      The government couldn't even give NetAlert away when they tried - nobody wanted it, it was "cracked" by a kid inside of a week, and the few religious zealots who did get it now find themselves unsupported.

      Unfortunately the not-quite-majority of Australians who voted Labor at the last election fell for the "look at the silly monkey" trick (the high-speed National Broadband Network) and failed to notice the venomous snake (internet censorship) in the other hand.

  3. Australian... with questions here by JohnnyKlunk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    OK, so this seems like a good idea - but what can we do with it? Having that kind of speed is great, but only if you have infrastructure that can serve you data that fast. We're a long way from anywhere and have only a limited amount of fibre connections to other countries (where I imagine most data will come from), this is reflected in the silly high prices we pay for data already.

    So whilst it's great that we will have these kinds of speeds, how are we going to get data services fast enough to take advantage of them?

    1. Re:Australian... with questions here by muphin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      stop thinking globally and think locally.
      when we get the NBN up, major IT contenders such as google, microsoft, facebook, youtube will have local caches within australia, jobs will be created from expansions of such companies, more data centres... let alone medical applications, video conferencing, IPTV streaming, extremely cheap phone calls, ability then to setup local call centres ...
      Education expansion, schools no longer have to be where the most people are when it can be done vide a video link.
      More bandwidth = more data processing so more research can be completed, super computers creates, technology advances made....
      so many possibilities.

      check out http://www.zdnet.com.au/election-rant-1-wireless-greed-339305187.htm for more info is the possibilities

      --
      It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
    2. Re:Australian... with questions here by DarkEmpath · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So whilst it's great that we will have these kinds of speeds, how are we going to get data services fast enough to take advantage of them?

      If you build it he will come.

      At the moment, everything is overseas because it's not practical to have them here. As soon as we have the infrastructure in place, not only does it become more practical to mirror a lot of content and as well as provide additional services here, but it provides an underlying platform for new services to be created/invented.

      You have to start somewhere :-)

  4. Re:What filter? by zuperduperman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yep. They did come out against the filter fairly definitively in the end, however I still would not put it past them to have a "conscience vote" on it when it comes to the crunch - in which case even if less than 1/3 of them supported it it would still fly through the senate. Which is to say, it still entirely possible that this will happen.

    My biggest concern about the NBN is that it will make it extremely simple for a future government to implement such a policy, possibly without putting it through parliament. Heck, they would barely even need to tell anyone - just build it into the infrastructure of the NBN and nobody will notice until it gets turned on. The only reason there has been any debate about this at all is that the government had to get the ISPs on board who kicked up a fuss and leaked information about it all over the place.

  5. Re:What filter? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    There will be no mandatory net filter in Australia

    Sure sure. The NBN is a way of giving the gumbiment a monopoly on Internet access in the country. You might get to choose your ISP but all your data are belong to the gumbiment sponsored fiber. This means they can poke in an more easily insert filtering/spying at any point they want.

    This just puts one of the big incumbent players in a better monopoly position than they already are and gives the government more control than they're prepared to admit that it really does.

    And finally, access to some network is a luxury item. Why should my hard earned tax dollars subsidize it when the hospital system in this country is a shambles. Public transport is a joke, and the government is too cheap to build a two way road; they build one that changes direction in the middle of the day. There's far more important things to spend money on and $43B could real good in the country rather than letting a bunch of yokels get a subsidized luxury item.

  6. Sweet! 43 Billion! by AbRASiON · · Score: 1, Insightful

    That's fantastic, a country with a serious water crises in at least 3 states, with a housing price epidemic and using sweet fuck all sustainable power - but hey we can get really fast internet! Even though our international links aren't even that good and a heap of city dwelling people can get from 8 to 24mb/s now,.......

    1. Re:Sweet! 43 Billion! by mjwx · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's fantastic, a country with a serious water crises in at least 3 states,

      Cant do jack against mother nature. With the ENSO event last year this has lessened somewhat. Perhaps if people stopped wasting so much water on lawns and washing their hotted up HSV we wouldn't have such a crisis.

      with a housing price epidemic

      Limited land, bad land releases and a few companies have a stranglehold on constructions. Do you suggest the government give land away or fix prices for private corporations (because that will go down well on SlashLibertarian). Point in short, problem is procedural and throwing cash at it wont help.

      using sweet fuck all sustainable power

      Every time someone utters the word "Nuclear" the NIMBYS are up in arms taking torches and pitchforks to parliament house on sixty minutes. The same NIMBYs who complain about housing prices, broadband costs and water crisies but cant stop washing their cars every second day and watering their lawns in the middle of the day (40+ C is not unusual in Australia folks).

      but hey we can get really fast internet!

      Which will spur economic and scientific growth and get us out of this communications dark age we are currently living in. CLUE: we are competitive with Russia for broadband, that puts us at #42 in the world. Economically we are a first world nations about #12-15 from the top.

      You criticise the government for not fixing problems it can do little about by criticising the government when it does do something to fix a problem it can do something about. Jesus H Christ, Australia doesn't need any more people like you.

      Lets break down the numbers, out of that 43 billion, 16 billion is being contributed by private entities. So that's 27 billion. Divide that by 11 million households and thats less then A$2500 per household. Amortise that over a 20 year lifespan (20 year minimum, 40 more likely) and its $125 per year, per household. A bloody bargain at twice the price. OTOH, lets look at the Sydney harbour bridge. That cost 60 Million to build in the 20's, we didn't pay it off for 60 years... as long as we dont count the economic benefits of the North Sydney CBD created directly as a result of the Sydney Harbour Bridge (oh and theres a bit of tourism $$$ for that iconic structure).

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
    2. Re:Sweet! 43 Billion! by kn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Are you suggesting that the high price of speedy internet in Australia comes at "no cost to the nation"?

      On top of providing first class internet access for Australians, it will bring the ongoing cost of accessing broadband down significantly. Already, the mere talk of an NBN has broken Telstra's anticompetitive back. Sol was arguably forced out of Telstra as a direct result of the NBN announcement. Until this announcement, Telstra was holding all Australian's back at 8mbps maximums.

      You also clearly have no idea as to the cost of networking infrastructure for business in Australia. Have you ever wondered why a 24/1 connection can be had for under $100/mo, yet a business can expect to pay thousands for 2/2 symmetrical? Perhaps you didn't even know. This is because of the current monopoly practices of the telecommunications giants. Businesses need upstream as much as they do downstream, whereas your average punter has little need for upsteam.

      The NBN will make Australia a more attractive home for big business than it presently is. A large company can expect to pay tens of thousands of dollars a month (or more) for acceptable interconnects between their offices. Australia has competitive tax rates, and there was talk recently about making them even more attractive. The addition of NBN may serve as an additional sweetener to bring business to Australia.

      On a sidenote, I'm always surprised to hear people talking about governments wasting money. I would be pretty unimpressed to find out that the government was taking my taxes and hording the money for god only knows what. We pay taxes precisely so that the government can implement major infrastructure like this. Sure, I'm all for saving up a surplus for a rainy day, but over the past 15 years there's been room for more public spending in my opinion.

  7. Re:Question for Aussies by snookums · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I have a legitimate question for any Aussies on /. Here in the US, the title "Liberal" refers to spineless douchebags who act like conservatives with their own money, property, etc., but who love to micromanage other people's money, property, and selves. Are Aussie Liberals the same as US Liberals?

    Actually, looking in from the outside, it seems to me that in the USA the term "liberal" is a meaningless epithet applied by the conservative media to anyone that they don't like.

    In Australia the term "Liberal" means "a member of the Liberal Party of Australia", or a person who regularly votes for the same.

    --
    Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
  8. Re:Australia is where its happening by kramulous · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It is not really that dangerous ... for a couple of reasons
    1. The mining industry is responsible for 80% of Australia's energy consumption (this is largely subsidised by taxpayers). 40% of that is just crushing rocks.
    2. The mining industry hasn't always been our biggest. Primary industry was except for the last 13 years we've been in drought. The drought has ended and we are in for a bumper crop, once again. One of our biggest competitors, Russia, is in major drought.
    3. Our services industry is actually huge (a big reason for the NBN).
    4. Our education industry is huge (was number 2 bread winner for at least 30 years straight)
    5. The mining industry has actually agreed to the tax.

    --
    .