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Australia's National Broadband Network Officially Open For Business
sydneyhype writes "The Australian National Broadband Network is open for business. The 14,000 residents on the first roll-out will be able to order an NBN service (current ISP contract permitting). Internode, Exetel, and iiNet have released their commercial pricing. iiNet has undercut Internode with prices starting at $49.95 per month for 12Mbps down and 1Mbps up with 20gb on-peak and 20gb off-peak."
This is a $40 billion+ project to rip out the 100-year old existing copper POTS network and replace it with a new, independently operated layer 2 FTTH network (upon which dozens of competing ISPs will be able to offer layer 3 services to the end user). Nationwide - from the large cities to small towns in the middle of nowhere (every town with >1000 people will get fibre, smaller hamlets will get some form of 4G or WiMax fixed wireless). There will then be dozens of ISPs operating layer 3 services on this network to the end user.
That is much more significant than a new ISP.
The list of small towns which are being FTTH'd is pretty impressive though. There are places on there with populations as low as 800.
That said, the NBN outback and deep rural strategy isn't focused on exchanges and ADSL technology - it's focussed on wireless for rural and satellite for really remote places. They've a pretty good track record so far with sensible deployment decisions, and a point-to-point wireless technology in uncrowded spectrum would probably work out.
I so want the NBN service now. At the next election, there is likely to be a change of government and the current opposition claim that they will cut back the scope of the NBN project (like only provide wifi and/or fibre to the neighbourhood instead of providing fibre to the home).
I want the NBN to do my town before the next election (we are on the list, but it could take years for them to get to us).
I am anarch of all I survey.
20 gigs? For that price? You gotta be kidding me - I get 20 gigs easily in a week just from work (yeah, when you can mount a .iso from your computer to install in vmware and the speed is about equal to actually first upload the image to storage server you get lazy...) and those speeds - it is now 2011, not 2000 when 12/1 Mbps was hot.
Here 100/10, 19,90 euros / month. No caps. Gasoline however costs a crapton and half a year it is freezing and dark but at least connectivity is good and cheap.
The basic plan isn't very compelling, but for $65/month you get 200GB (100/100) and 25mbit/5mbit. That's definitely better than ADSL, for only $15 more.
Meanwhile in Europe im getting 25mbit/5mbit for $15, no caps.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
In Germany we're getting 100Mbit down 6mbit up and truly unlimited bandwidth on fibre for 20 Euro a month. That's a normal residential connection with Kabel Deutschland.
The NBN is an improvement but Australia is still a rip-off for internet connections.
Pre-canned Evolution Links for all those Slashdot holy wars.
Australia's minimum wage is AU$15.51
The PowerPC includes for this purpose two instructions called SYNC and EIEIO.
Internet costs more in Australia due to distance from the rest of the English-speaking world (i.e. where 95% of internet hosts we want to access are located), huge area and small population. We will never be able to compete with Europe on price. Also you're picking the entry-level 12/1 40 GB plan for home users (which includes a home phone service with untimed national calls BTW, not just internet) to compare with ... and it only costs only a few euro more than what you pay (59 AUD = ~42 EUR). That ain't bad, considering what prices and speeds are like now. Besides, if it ain't fast enough, up to 100/40 Mbit is available to everyone, and gigabit for business plans.
The relevant comparison is between what Australians can get now (generally ADSL2+ on which for most people get 10 Mbit unless they live close to the exchange), and what we can get on the NBN (same cost - much faster). Not between what you can get in Australia vs. what you can get in densely populated Europe. It's a pointless comparison - EVERYTHING costs more here (but wages are very high too - it all balances out in the end).
It's also likely unlimited plans will be offered by some ISPs on this network too. You have to remember - all you are seeing now is the first batch of pricing released from the first batch of ISPs. Once more get on board and the rollout gathers pace, prices will decline, just as they have been for the ADSL2+ offerings over the last decade. ISPs like TPG already offer unlimited ADSL2+ for $29/month, so I foresee them offering a similar thing on NBN eventually too. It's still early days.