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How Australia Bungled Its $36 Billion High-Speed Internet Rollout (nytimes.com)
Not very pleased with your internet speeds? Think about the people Down Under. Australia's "bungled" National Broadband Network (NBN) has been used as a "cautionary tale" for other countries to take note of. Despite the massive amount of money being pumped into the NBN, the New York Times reports, the internet speeds still lagged behind the US, most of western Europe, Japan and South Korea -- even Kenya. The article highlights that Australia was the first country where a national plan to cover every house or business was considered and this ambitious plan was hampered by changes in government and a slow rollout (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source), partly because of negotiations with Telstra about the fibre installation. From the report: Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: its internet speed. Eight years after the country began an unprecedented broadband modernization effort that will cost at least 49 billion Australian dollars, or $36 billion, its average internet speed lags that of the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the most recent ranking of internet speeds by Akamai, a networking company, Australia came in at an embarrassing No. 51, trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya. For many here, slow broadband connections are a source of frustration and an inspiration for gallows humor. One parody video ponders what would happen if an American with a passion for Instagram and streaming "Scandal" were to switch places with an Australian resigned to taking bathroom breaks as her shows buffer. The article shares this anecdote: "Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have downloaded Hand of Fate, an action video game made by a studio in Brisbane, Defiant Development. But when Defiant worked with an audio designer in Melbourne, more than 1,000 miles away, Mr. Jaffit knew it would be quicker to send a hard drive by road than to upload the files, which could take several days."
How dare someone else have a monopoly on internet service!
Sneakernet technology can enable extremely high throughput, with the introduction of only a minor* increase in latency over existing broadband offerings.
*We assure you, the order of magnitude will not exceed 5.
Worse speeds than the U.S.A.?
What a nightmare.
This ensures companies are always providing reasonable prices and a fast connection, as is evidenced by our high ranking compared to the Australian experiment.
You're trolling, right? We're the nation that invented the internet and yet our ranking is shit, in large part because in most places people don't have a choice of high-speed internet providers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
the New York Times reports, the internet speeds still lagged behind the US, most of western Europe, Japan and South Korea
The explanation is straightforward. Bits are not symmetric. They have a rough side and a smooth side. When the cables are installed upside down, as in Australia, the bits must be inverted top-to-bottom as well or they experience a higher level of friction in the tubes, and this slows down the entire internet. A device called an "inverter" has been designed specifically to address this issue.
And here I thought this was a tech site...
Wait. That doesn't makes sense. I thought that when you take the profit motive out, workers become more motivated because they aren't trying to cheat anyone. Is someone alleging the government doesn't handle things very well?
I pay $540 per year for my internet connection. That's pure internet cost. I don't have cable or landline. I've not included my mobile though at least some of that is arguably internet too. They are trying to do it with a one time payment of about $1500 per person? That seems like they've low-balled it, especially when you consider that their landmass is almost equal to the contiguous US. So with less than a tenth of the population density, their costs per connection should be higher than ours.
The private market will always surpass the nationalized or state run model for all services.
Never say "always". Market solutions work well when there is competition and transparency, but when those are lacking, governments can often do better than a private monopoly or duopoly. There are many examples of this: America's privately run healthcare system is worse in both cost and outcome compared to any other developed country. Many cities in America have municipal power, water, and even Internet, and these tend to be at least as good as privately run monopolies in neighboring cities.
Whenever possible, rather than directly providing services, the government should focus on making markets more competitive and transparent. We have government owned roads and ports, but the government doesn't own the cars, trucks, and ships. Likewise for Internet, the government should provide wide conduits so any bonded company can pull fiber. Since trenching is by far the biggest cost, this will allow more companies to enter markets at greatly reduced cost.
We (the USA) may have a "private market", but it's not "free" in most places when it comes to utilities. There is little difference between a tightly-regulated monopolist and a government-owned provider. The corporation gets its charter from government and is subject to rate controls... it's really just a quasi-independent extension of government that leverages other people's money for capital improvements rather than taxes, fees, and municipal bonds.
In the places where there is actual competition (we recently got both FIOS and Comcast), there is indeed a speed and cost race afoot. It's a wonderful example of the free market in effect. But most places aren't like that.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Next time somebody tells me we should legalize all drugs, I'll tell them to read this comment as a cautionary tale.
Mr. Jaffit knew it would be quicker to send a hard drive by road than to upload the files, which could take several days
Or as Andrew Tanenbaum said back in 1989, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway."
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
As a wise man once said - "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truckfull of USB flash drives traveling on the highway".
We send stuff online even if its something which could be sent as a batch rather than needing any interactivity.
Resource limitations like this make it more clear where we really need bandwidth and where an alternate would work.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Don't worry Australia! Ajit Pai is working dutifully as the new head of the FCC to cripple American broadband performance. Our performance will soon drag down enough to make you Aussies feel better.
Verizon's FIOS project. My city got strung with fiber and was one of the lucky ones. However when they saw the cost all bets were off.
What ranking do you refer to? South Korea which is definitely the leader in broadband per capita, has a country 39,000 square miles to cover. United States, on the other hand, has nearly 100 times that area. South Korea has 18 million broadband subscribers for about 37% coverage which I realize is not quite an accurate percentage given families etc.. that share internet connection. United States has 28%...except that's for a population 6 times larger. United States has infrastructure in place that is decades older than anything South Korea uses. Having to use/make way for existing infrastructure absolutely does make things take longer to improve. And doing it over an extremely geographically dispersed population makes it that much harder. That also makes it harder for companies to compete, though local franchises also make that less competitive. Since broadband was a truly consumer thing in my region of the U.S. I've had the option of DSL and Cable internet. Satellite came a bit later but still an option. DSL and Cable internet definitely compete here and despite Cable now getting ready to deploy 1Gbps connections here you can still get a VERY fast connection for less than $30 a month. Not every house has that available to them in the U.S. yet, but given the differences between the peanut sized South Korean and the elephant sized U.S., I don't think we're as far behind as you say.
I'll take reliable over "speed". If it's reliable, one generally learns to work around the slow areas, such as reducing YouTube resolution if it's not a video that needs it. If it's unreliable, then you often get stuck with nothing, and have to go out and get a life while it's jammed up.
I live in a relatively populated area and we still have crappy telecom choices. We even upgraded to a "faster" plan, and it still jams up on weekends. They simply spread bandwidth too thin, and blame it on wind, sun-spots, Meryl Streep, etc.; everything except their over-selling. Same song and dance for 7 years.
Table-ized A.I.
448/96 kbps is the highest I can get here, just some ten kilometers from a large city.
A friend of mine in Australia has explicitly said that I am the only person in his social circle to whom he CAN'T complain about Australian internet speeds.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
The US also has a bigger GDP to easily afford a better internet. Like every other shortage it is caused by politics, and of course, economics
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Same exact thing I say when they talk about this with the US:
Korea: 519 persons per sqkm
Japan: 348 persons per sqkm
Europe: 127 persons per sqkm
USA: 35 persons per sqkm
Australia: 3 persons per sqkm
It seems to be hard for tech-enthusiasts to grasp that a widely-distributed population makes providing infrastructure INTRINSICALLY harder.
-Styopa
... trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya.
It may be a bit misleading to only look at average speeds. In a country like Kenya, far less people have internet access and those that do are typically in the urban areas where it is easier to provide high speed access. The further access is extended, the slower average speeds are likely to become, as the hard to reach places with satellite connections etc. bring down the average.
Having money that could potentially be used on something isn't analogous to just magically being able to do it. Yes politics play some in it. People who are served by shitting old telephone wire are required by law to be able to keep that shitty old telephone wire. It takes more than just money. It would take a massive construction effort that, if done all at once, would completely cripple travel across the united states. We have improved internet access and speed significantly over the last decade. Not saying it can't be better, but it will be. Imagine if South Korea suddenly had to switch from fiber to some random new standard. They would be in a similar issue as the US having to replace all its copper/coax. Whether done by tax dollars or private investment, it's going to take a ton of money and time to get the entire United States up to the standards of our more regional hot spots.
While it's true that you can lack competition for purely private reasons, the most common reason for lack of competition is government regulations. When a permit is required to connect households to your service, the people who issue the permits are the ones who control whether you have one choice, two choices, or n choices....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
As if corporate run IT projects are any more successful.
Your argument fails to explain why places like Seattle, WA have shit internet access. Pretty decent population density there.
put a clause in the contract that if metrics X-Y-Z aren't met the money has to be paid back. Next make it a law that all gov't contracts contain such clauses. Third, enforce the bloody law.
If there are no consequences for taking the money and running they'll take the money and run. Every. Single. Time.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Every shortage we ever suffered has been traced back to some form of obstruction/corruption. In the case of internet, it is the contracts that protect monopolies, and existing providers suing to prevent competition, for instance, municipal fiber. Far more money is spent putting up barriers than building up infrastructure. That is definitely the case in Australia, and the U.S. The entire problem arose from the backroom deals made to protect established players.
To tell the truth, I prefer copper more than fiber. The phone company can keep service running during a power outage. And you don't need a lot of fancy expensive tools to put terminals on the cable.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
If you choose to ignore what 3.5 million square miles to cover actually means sure. It means not everyone is going to get it at the same time. You, however, have made an assertion with no supporting facts. Comcast having a stupid 10 year exclusive franchise doesn't help. 10 year right to suck agreement is what it is.
While it's true that you can lack competition for purely private reasons, the most common reason for lack of competition is government regulations. When a permit is required to connect households to your service, the people who issue the permits are the ones who control whether you have one choice, two choices, or n choices....
Actually, it's more like.... local government gives tax breaks to company A. Company A moves in, and the high cost of entry to the market (infrastructure, bribes, ["election campaign contributions"], etc.) dissuade company B from moving in.
Meanwhile, in the next city over, they want to install municipal broadband, but company B has bribed enough state legislators ["campaign contributions"] to pass a state law banning municipal utilities.
And I keep wondering why USA doesn't score higher on the corruption index.
A couple of points here. I live in Australia and I got to watch this entire fiasco unroll before me. 1. The conservative party got elected before the main rollout of the NBN could get underway. They had one mission: Kill the NBN anyway they could. They did this because they didn't want the Labor party to have a political victory with a major project, and because it aligned with the interests of the largest cable tv network and news corporations in the nation. Cable TV in Australia is a monopoly owned by Fox. They dominate Satellite, and fixed line pay TV. 2. The NBN Fibre rollout was delayed by asbestos inside the pits which had to be cleaned/repaired before they could proceed. This delayed the rollout by probably 6-12 months as the clearance work had to occur. There was also a political deal made where rural/country areas would be rolled out first. This combined with the fact that the backhaul services had to be built first led to an impression that the network was facing major delays and was taking a long time to be built, when it was actually on time and on budget. 3. Where it was actually deployed the Fibre to the Home NBN works perfectly and I've never heard anyone in those areas complain about having a fibre link. The same is not true of the Fibre to the Node and HFC connections. 4. Australia is not as sparsely populated as people would have you believe. 90+% of Australians live in larg coastal cities like most major countries and Australia's major cities have population densities equal to or higher than Auckland in New Zealand which has Fibre to the Home available. Density/population were never an issue with a metropolitan rollout of the NBN. 5, The conservative vision for the NBN was always a complete clusterfuck. Policy made without proper planning or consulting of industry. Done at the urging of people with a vested interest in keeping the internet speeds in Australia as low as the electorate would allow. The largest ISP in Australia has been quite happily milking ADSL 1.5mbit services for the last 20 years and only implemented ADSL2+ because competitor ISPs began taking marketshare. They refused to do any upgrades or builds involving fibre, unless they were guaranteed a monopoly and the ability to charge massive prices for it.
It's bigger than I thought. I thought it would be like Belgium.
But to put it in context, there's a single cattle ranch in Australia (Anna Creek) that's a quarter of that.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Basically a pathological liar (and Conservative Govt) became our illustrious leader
and said we would save heaps of money if we used FTTN (mixed technology (copper + fibre) that needed Telstra) instead of FTTP (full fibre and less Telstra).
Short term thinking over longer term infrastructure. And a good dose of playing politics.
This was in the time before Netflix hit the Australian market so immediate need for bandwidth was much less.
Although future projections were available.
Also Australia has really low population densities especially outside the capitals.
Having fast internet could have opened up opportunities in smaller regional centres and they need them.
It would be a classic market failure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_failure (public good).
https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/356195/australia_doesn_t_want_100mbps_internet_says_turnbull/
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2525860
All this stuff was know before the election, but the Liberals(Conservative party in Aust) lied (i.e. cheaper; faster) and
most voter don't think deeply or long term.
That particular Australian election was more about xenophobia anyway.
Stop the boats. http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-age-letters/head-20150915-gjn4cs.html
The equivalent of a big wall.
No; we have home grown conservatives!
But yes, you are correct.
my internet is completely fine....
http://www.speedtest.net/result/6285519780
ah sorry - you might be listening to the winging that everyone else is doing - expecting the government to pay for the rollout of infrastructure when it should be the telecommunications companies do it...
in my investment property in point cook, victoria - I PAID to have fibre connected to my home - I think it was $800 AUD to get connected, through a infrastructure provider called opticomm..
yes most australian's are expecting the government to pay for everything and get everything cheaply...
hell.... they call it NBN - like its a type of networking infrastructure when its the name of the bloody project - its fibre optic you muppets
To tell the truth, I prefer copper more than fiber. The phone company can keep service running during a power outage.
They don't care. They don't have to. They're the phone company. We dropped our $50/mo land line when AT&T informed us that a repair would be six weeks out.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fiber will continue to work in a rainstorm.. the issue Aussies have is the distance from their house to the exchange directly impacts the adsl quality.... add wet copper in the ground and the problem is exacerbated.
In most places the copper is in the ground not on a pole... to change every house to fiber to the node is to dig a lot of trenches.
The NBN plan is to move the exchange closer to the houses, and run fiber between the exchanges...
Shorter runs == faster "adsl"... and less "wet" effect
And I keep wondering why USA doesn't score higher on the corruption index.
If you seriously wonder that, then you should get a passport and go see the world. While there are a a few countries that do better, most are far worse. When was the last time that you, as an American, had to pay a bribe to get a government clerk to do his job? For many people in other countries, that is a daily occurrence. In America, if you offer a cop a bribe at a traffic stop, he is more likely to throw you in jail than to let you off.
It is not just random chance that some countries are rich and others are poor. Poor countries are poor because they are corrupt. No one wants to work beyond subsistence, because if you build a profitable business that could potentially provide jobs and prosperity, you will be targeted by a corrupt government and they will steal your wealth.
Didn't you read the article? The private sector, aka Telstra, reneged on the deal and shifted all of its agreed costs onto the taxpayer, then Australia elected a Libertarian government, who couldn't let a government project succeed, and thus they did everything they could to sabotage it.
That's nowhere near always the case.
Australias example isnt that government led projects always fail, its that projects led by incompetent people fail. The Australian network was a well thought out, costed project, running FTTH. The next government got it, renegotiated the contracts to give themselves a worse deal, leased very nearly useless copper off the incumbent networks and rolled out barely working FTTN for around the same price.
At the same time New Zealand copied Australias original plan with some minor tweaks and is rolling out FTTH to around 85% of the population, is on schedule and on budget (to the point that the network scope has been expanded). We will, in a few years, have reasonably priced gigabit fibre available to over 80% of the population. The New Zealand plan is running absolutely fine under government leadership, the Australian plan failed because the government changed and the new government sabotaged the whole thing rather than give the previous government a win.
The real lesson is that governments should defer to their engineers and not play political games with billion dollar projects.
The original NBN plan for fiber to the home (with the best available wireless and satellite technology for areas not easily reachable by fiber) would have delivered very fast speeds to a large chunk of the population.
Then we had a federal election and the Murdoch press ran a huge anti-NBN FUD campaign aimed at crippling the NBN in order to protect Foxtel (the main pay TV provider in Australia). There is a change of government and the new government (no doubt with Rupert lobbying away in the background) crippled the NBN by moving to a model that ditched the fiber to the home and replaced it with a mix of much crappier technologies including HFC cable and fiber to the node.
I strongly suspect that if the current government had kept the original NBN plans (or maybe made some small tweaks of the sort suggested by people in the industry) more people would have access to the network than is currently the case and less money would have been spent on it than has been spent to date.
Next time somebody tells me we should legalize all drugs, I'll tell them to read this comment as a cautionary tale.
Actually, I believe he's late for his morning dosage.
Someone actually expected a government to roll-out a technology initiative within budget, within time-frame and achieving all goals? So naive.... so very naive.
Notice all the things they don't say: Australia doesn't have half the country on E3 lines and half on dial-up, which most other countries do; nor is there a lack of competition and budget broadband plans; although a change of government caused slight fragmentation, there are no compatibility issues Let's look at the big bonus, since the government owns the network, net neutrality can't be destroyed by a greedy tel-co.
One tel-co even rolled-out mobile wi-fi with the national network: It works that well.
Yes, you got Australia there, they have have to wait two hours before actually watching a movie: Maybe they should go to the cinema instead; we all know that offers on-demand viewing. A big part of the problem doesn't involve the network: I can stream sit-com shows (std-def video) from the USA and barely notice the occasional flicker.
The Labor government (Center left or Democrats for US folks) sought to roll out a completely new fibre to the premises network that would reach 80% of Australians with satellite comms for the rest. The idea was very popular. With an election coming up the Conservative party (read Republicans) realized that they couldn't compete in terms of nation building projects so they decided to white-ant the other guys plan instead.
They started claiming that it was too expensive, too wasteful, etc. etc. and that they could deliver a cheaper, better network in half the time. They couldn't of course but the pr campaign was enough to dissuade the public that possibly the conservatives were right, and as a result, along with as it turned out, other complete lies, they were elected to power.
Naturally, they've followed up on their promise and instead of delivering a state of the art fibre to the premises network to the majority of Australians, they've delivered a hodgepodge of different technologies, many of them relying on the decades (if not centuries) old legacy copper system that was on its last legs anyway.
Complete fiasco. Chance to lead the world pissed away for political advantage. Bloody politicians.
That would be why the American health system is so much better that the UK, Canada or Australia, right?
they used an American for profit approach by accident, sabotaging their network deployment. everyone knows copper needs replaced entirely with fiber;
really I would try whoever deployed copper and hang them. it angers me so much like a murder or rape of an innocent had taken place.
a law should be passed world wide too: internet can only be deployed over fiber, not copper.
https://www.obamasweapon.com/
Yes just think about us poor unfortunates 'Down Under' with our gigabit fibre to the home ....
Australia may have bungled its fibre rollout, but NZ's seems to be sailing ahead ....
TLDR!!!
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
Comcast having a stupid 10 year exclusive franchise doesn't help.
Where does Comcast still have a ten year exclusive franchise, and why haven't you reported the problem to the federal government that has prohibited exclusive franchises for about 20 years now?
I couldn't find what you were referring to. The problem with telstra was that the previous administration wanted to forcibly buy out telstras copper network, in order to ensure that the NBN had a monopoly. That copper network is still worth heaps of money, and the negotiations were around that cost. At the end of the day, it was an ambitious project, with poor management, and beneath the surface, I suspect there were ulterior motives.
Contrary to what the Fraudbanders will scream, there was never a business case for the fibre project. It would have cost much more than the $42 billion (over $5,000/household) budgeted and delivered something that most Australians did not actually want. It was always obvious that multiple technologies should be used -- which ones is debatable on a case by case issue.
But the big issue was than when they did trials in Tasmania most people could not be bothered to switch. Because their ADSL was good enough. It only takes 1mbs to run Netflix (on my dodgy line) so what good does 100 mbs actually provide?
So then the NBN had to pay Telstra to cut the copper so that people would be forced to move to the NBN. That cost a fortune. And is a sore point with me as they threaten to cut my perfectly adequate ADSL and force me onto ... Satellite! And no, I do not live miles from nowhere.
But the real threat to the NBN is the growing capacity of mobile technology. There are now plans at $30/month for 30 gig, and and that is more than enough for many people that do not have teenage kids. Mobile prices are falling, there was recently a big spectrum increase, and more towers are being built.
The NBN was sabotaged by Murdochistan.
I have never seen so much disinformation and lies published by News Corp as I did around the NBN and that is a pretty high bar to set.
Outright lies, not stretching the truth, just outright blatant lies presented as truth and expert opinion.
They had to negotiate with Telstra twice, because the conservative government elected part way through implementation decided to change direction to deliver the network faster and cheaper. However neither has been the case, as was widely predicted. Instead the changes and delays have only benefited the conservative aligned News Corp (Majority ownership of largest Cable TV network) and Telstra (Largest telco and holds a monopoly on most existing phone lines).
The problem with telstra was that the previous administration wanted to forcibly buy out telstras copper network, in order to ensure that the NBN had a monopoly. That copper network is still worth heaps of money, and the negotiations were around that cost.
The terms were changed when the government changed and decided to use existing infrastructure rather than drop new fibre and wireless everywhere.
As part of the change, Telstra no longer needed to fix problems with their pits & ducts, and NBNco became owners (and rectifiers) of the copper access network (CAN) so they could use it in place of fibre. The monetary amount to Telstra was pretty much the same, though Telstra now scores a lot of those remediation contracts for pits & ducts plus the CAN remediation, on top of its original payments.
The change in direction by the change of government is what is causing so many issues.
This is where you can say it was the libtards fault because that they locked the country into ongoing expensive infrastructure costs.
Assuming a fully loaded 384 port NBN node is to be upgraded from FTTN to FTTP, with 4 fibres already allocated to the FTTN DSLAM for connectivity back to the Fibre Access Node, 8 fibres are remaining to potentially deliver fibre services all the way to the customer’s premises.
However, the 8 fibres will only be capable of delivering GPON services (the FTTP technology that the NBN currently uses) to a maximum of 256 premises (each fibre can be split into 32 premises, 8 × 32 = 256).
Without causing massive disruption to all customers connected to the current node, it may not be possible to transition to FTTP on high-capacity nodes other than by rolling out the network from scratch again.
This means that even if nbn decides to upgrade the network, they will likely continue using copper-based technologies for the years ahead to avoid large capital costs again. Even if you consider that continuing with copper will cost 1Billion in electricity costs *alone* to run the crapper copper network over the next ten years.
Of course let us all forget that copper is unreliable in flood (because the capacitance of wet ground means it need more current to move data) and in fire in a country that is flood and bushfire prone. The stupid hurts me so much.
This video explains why political correctness got Australian voters the network they deserved.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And I keep wondering why USA doesn't score higher on the corruption index.
Organisations like Transparency International are themselves not transparent and get to define corruption differently every time they do a 'survey'. They more or less function to assuage concerns of western populations which believe in it that even if things are bad "at least we are not like those third world hell-holes out there". Its based on perception rather than on hard facts. The impact is also never considered.Again a 100 government clerks demanding 10 dollars bribe to do their job would do less damage than 1 instance or bribery which would enable them to increase the amount of pesticide or arsenic in food or water. The desire to prove moral superiority drives seems to Transparency international.
If you seriously wonder that, then you should get a passport and go see the world. While there are a a few countries that do better, most are far worse.
Yes but most are poor and developing countries. If you want to compare how you are doing against your peers, compare yourself to the developed wealthy countries Western Europe, North America, and parts of Asia Pac (Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, NZ etc).
I've seen most parts of the world, and one of the great mysteries is how much America squanders its wealth.
The private market will always surpass the nationalized or state run model for all services.
Never say "always". Market solutions work well when there is competition and transparency, but when those are lacking, governments can often do better than a private monopoly or duopoly. There are many examples of this: America's privately run healthcare system is worse in both cost and outcome compared to any other developed country. Many cities in America have municipal power, water, and even Internet, and these tend to be at least as good as privately run monopolies in neighboring cities.
Whenever possible, rather than directly providing services, the government should focus on making markets more competitive and transparent. We have government owned roads and ports, but the government doesn't own the cars, trucks, and ships. Likewise for Internet, the government should provide wide conduits so any bonded company can pull fiber. Since trenching is by far the biggest cost, this will allow more companies to enter markets at greatly reduced cost.
There are significant cases where market based solutions don't work. Public utilities, heath care and education are some of the biggest examples.
You cant expect the "market" to automagically fix teclo monopolies because it costs millions and millions to lay your own cables. The barriers to entry were not governmental in origin. This is why the NBN under Labor was the closest thing you could get to a market based solution of a public utility. The idea was that the government owned the actual infrastructure but none of the retail. Any retailer could rent the infrastructure at the same price regardless of if they were a huge multinational telecom corporation or 2 guys in a shed.
However the established monopolists could not let this pass, so they sicced their pet LNP onto the NBN to destroy it and they've been largely successful at it.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The phone company can keep service running during a power outage
They can but they won't. During a recent national disaster that affected nearly the entire East Coast, the average phone service went dead after 6 hours. The UPS on my fiber ONT is rated for 12 hours and I can extend that to however long I want by adding more or larger UPS.
I also have the benefit that my fiber is a passive self-healing ring. If the issue was a line cut, there is a good change my phone will keep working. With regular phone, a cut means it's dead, zero backup.
They're great if you like death panels.
--
roman_mir
The real problem is that Australia is a large country with a small population by comparison to countries like the US. This makes the cost per head very high as you want every single person to enjoy broadband here. Australia is, like many other countries putting up satelittes as a way to reduce having expensive fibre going out very long distances to serve very few people, however you can't expect people living in no where's land to have recievers for these. So NBN now becomes about having numberous solutions that weren't fully thought through from day one. I wouldn't call it bad management per se, its coped its fare share of bad publicity because a healthy some of people weren't hooked up for stupid little reasons, like a plug wasn't pushed in and it took them a week to get a technican out and fix it, as was the case with me. Crap like this happens.
The NBN when first conceived and actually started to roll-out was basically a great network. Fiber to the home.
Then the politicians got involved.
The end result is that for a lot of Aussies. OK a LOT OF AUSSIES. the max speed they will get is less than 25mbs. For a lot of people this is actually a downgrade in service. There is no option to stay with the old service btw.
And to top it off. The build out is not putting enough fiber in the street to eventually run fiber to the home. So it the whole damn thing needs to be redone again. And it needs to start being redone before the NBN rollout is complete. Because that's how long the broken NBN is taking to rollout.
Troll Yep, once again we have company shills trying to hide the truth.
Market solutions work well when there is competition and transparency, but when those are lacking, governments can often do better than a private monopoly or duopoly
Ontario has 3 main mobile providers with very relatively expensive plans, but neighbouring provinces have far lower rates from those same providers. Those lower rates exist in other provinces because of legacy crown-corps providing reasonable competition. In Ontario every new entrant gets delayed, litigated, and restricted access so that even if they can operate they cannot provide comparable products.
We have a Fibre network that work... ;-)