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Australia's National Broadband Network To Go Ahead

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."

7 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. 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

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    It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
  3. 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.

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    Sent from my PDP-11
  4. 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 :-)

  5. 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).

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    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  6. 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.

  7. 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.

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