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."

Comments

Lemme guess

[Anonymous Coward]

"The same way as every fucking IT project in govt"

Re:Lemme guess

[micahraleigh]

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?

Re:Lemme guess

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

As if corporate run IT projects are any more successful.

Re:Lemme guess

[Anonymous Coward]

No; we have home grown conservatives!
But yes, you are correct.

Re:Lemme guess

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Lemme guess

[sd4f]

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.

Re:Lemme guess

[jezwel]

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.

Re:Lemme guess

[tailgunner_050]

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.

Sabotaged by Telstra

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare someone else have a monopoly on internet service!

Re:Sabotaged by Telstra

[skirmish666]

Speaking of monopolies!

Non paywalled link is a Murdoch paper. Coincidence that just as they look like they're about to be sold off, they speak out about the economically short-sighted move a lot of people think he lobbied for in the hope that internet broadcasters wouldn't run him and his overpriced cable out of town on the horse he rode in on? I think not xD

Re:Sabotaged by Telstra

[Centurix]

Totally right. The second they let Telstra into the deal I knew the infrastructure was going to be fucked. They bitched and whined that they were being left out of the NBN and a lot of people were happy it was working that way. Then the NBN Co caved and let them in the door and the project immediately went south. Combined with Malcolm Turnbull's fiddling with the tech it just got worse and worse. Now it turns out that the problems are worse than just infrastructure, they oversold connections where the technology couldn't perform and have to re-imburse new customers for shit service. They should've stuck with FTTP like they planned.

Not the only thing that got bungled!

[Anonymous Coward]

"You're telling me, that a supermodel hit on you?" said George, shaking his head in disbelief,"How do you do that?"

"I didn't say she was a supermodel," said Jerry, he was holding a rolled up newspaper"But the option was certainly available to her."

"You're telling me that you were hit on by a woman who is so beautiful, she can choose whether or not she wants to be a supermodel or not!" cried out George,"Great, just great - why I can't have such luck is beyond me."

"Just listen," cried Jerry,"Is that so much to ask that you listen?"

"Oh, I can listen pal - I'm the king of the listeners. If they held a competition for best listener I wouldn't even enter - because I'm so assured of victory, it would ruin it for everyone else."

"You can sure talk for a listener."

"Haha, wiseguy."

The buzzer went of, Jerry walked over to it and held down the button,"Yeah?"

"It's me," came Elaine's voice.

"Come on up," he buzzed her in and opened the door.

"So anyway," he continued,"She walks up to me on the street and says to me 'Could you do me a favor and hold this paper for just a second, I'd be really grateful."

"Hang on," interrupted George,"How did she say 'really grateful'?"

"It was kind of a deep throaty 'promise of things to come' 'really grateful'"

"You're sure, she didn't have the flu?"

"No she didn't have the flu, now listen."

"I'm listening!"

"So I say 'no problem' and she walks inside the building, and I'm waiting, thinking about the great sex I could possibly be having......."

"Now see, I never do that, thinking about get's you all hyped up and you're bound to be disappointed in the end."

"What are you talking about? Fantasy doesn't build you up."

"It build's you up!"

"Just shut up and listen!" Jerry cried out.

"I'm listening!"

"So I'm waiting like five minutes......"

"Five minutes?"

"Five minutes, how long would you wait?"

"Well it depends on the person, but a woman as beautiful as that......at least till Christmas."

"Christmas?"

"Hey, for sex with a beautiful woman I think she at least deserves until Christmas."

"You're pathetic."

"Finish your story," said George,"I do have a date tonight you know."

"You love telling people that don't you?"

"You wanna tell the story or not?"

"Okay then, so I'm getting impatient and I look through the glass, and I see her hugging this guy!"

"What? she asked you to hold her paper, told you she'd be grateful and now she's hugging another guy?"

"Exactly, she's a temptress!" exclaimed Jerry,"I think she does it for thrills, leaves guy's hanging around outside in the cold for hours on end....."

"Five minutes."

"Okay, five minutes - hours on end, what's the difference?"

"I said that to my first girlfriend, believe me, it makes a difference."

"But can you believe it? She's in there hugging another guy."

"So what did you do?"

"I left."

"And the paper?"

Jerry smiled and held up the paper in his hand, "She'll have to buy a new paper for holding me up, my time is money!"

"What, a nickel a minute?"

"You're a real understanding guy you know that?"

Elaine stepped into the apartment, she slammed the door shut and stared at George and Jerry fiercely.

"Wow, aren't you a little Xena Warrior Princess here?" joked Jerry.

"You know, that Lucy Lawless is really attractive, I would like to go out with her," mused George.

"Are you kidding, you couldn't get Lucy Lawless," said Jerry.

"Why couldn't I get Lucy Lawless?"

"She's way too tall for you."

"You think?"

"I know."

Elaine shook her head and cried out,"Shut up, I have something to say here!"

"Tell George," said Jerry with a smile,"He's a great listener."

George smiled,"At least I don't steal papers from supermodels."

"Supposed

Re:Not the only thing that got bungled!

[muphin]

TLDR!!!

USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

The private market will always surpass the nationalized or state run model for all services. In the US we have a group of private companies that compete on price and speed and customers can switch at will to get the best value for the dollar. This ensures companies are always providing reasonable prices and a fast connection, as is evidenced by our high ranking compared to the Australian experiment. I hope all the numnuts screaming for a socialized network model take note of this.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[MightyYar]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the /. groupthink, promulgated by people who expect superfast connections be provided to them for free. The reality however is much, much different.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[aicrules]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[fustakrakich]

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

Re:USA is highly ranked

[aicrules]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[CrimsonAvenger]

Market solutions work well when there is competition and transparency, but when those are lacking

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....

Re:USA is highly ranked

[AF_Cheddar_Head]

Your argument fails to explain why places like Seattle, WA have shit internet access. Pretty decent population density there.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[fustakrakich]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[aicrules]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

Market solutions work well when there is competition and transparency, but when those are lacking

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Hognoxious]

has a country 39,000 square miles to cover.

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re: USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:USA is highly ranked

[ShanghaiBill]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be why the American health system is so much better that the UK, Canada or Australia, right?

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Obfuscant]

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?

Re:USA is highly ranked

[golden_hands]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Gussington]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[mjwx]

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.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

They're great if you like death panels.
--
roman_mir

Re:USA is highly ranked

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll Yep, once again we have company shills trying to hide the truth.

Re:USA is highly ranked

[rhazz]

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.

it doesnt lag behind

[Anonymous Coward]

its exactly what the govt and its rich buddies intended , a nice scam on tax payers and they then just before htis a year or so back go and screw all the people on civil rights

jsut go get a harley and get 2 buds to ride with ya and see what i mean

they gone right nazi in there own way if you step back and look at all the western nations each is doing hte nazi way just a lil differant , my bet is one day ten so that they can roll it all into one and you citizen will have not fought against it and thus NO CHOICE but to bend over to the rich

i got banned at cbc.ca for showing how the canadian govts drug policy is retarded , htey are legalizing pot and at same time making it so hard to get your pain meds you've been on for years and not having any problem that you prolly end up going to the cartels for your heroin , that locally jerks are cutting with fentanyl and killing people.

i showed a cartel farmer whom said 10 years back only weed was grown , not and ill quote him "the canadian and American govts are reducing people ability to get pain meds so we are making now more heroin" .....and boy are they , this 2014 video came with the stats on estimates heroin - 200 tons
afghanistan m akes about 600-800 tons so get the hint, they are legalizing pot up here and handing hem heroin....

ok ill get a gun and buy enough that i can also sell so it wont cost me and any dealer that cuts with crap like fentanyl know im going to kill you when i find out....its the only solution to rid myself of the problem

all this rights taking and scams buy the rich ....it all starts with lil twitches of rights on internet , then other stuff and as long as they string things out everyone of you bends over.

and all we have to say or ask is :

WHEN THE FUCK WAS THE LAST TIME A GOVT GAVE US CIVIL RIGHTS?
ya know when ? BACK when the berlin wall still existed now them cunts dont need to be nice.
WELL neither do i

Re: it doesnt lag behind

[Anonymous Coward]

u ingrish gewdly. wtf did u say?

Re:it doesnt lag behind

[Anonymous Coward]

Next time somebody tells me we should legalize all drugs, I'll tell them to read this comment as a cautionary tale.

Re:it doesnt lag behind

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Sneakernet

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Sneakernet

[Anonymous Coward]

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a van full of hard drives going down the road.

Re:Sneakernet

[grahamsz]

When you get to faster connections that does get a bit skewed. I had a weird situation where I needed to burn an ISO a few weeks ago and it actually took several times longer to burn the DVD than to download the ISO from the net.

I can move files onto google drive faster than I can copy them to a USB2 external hard drive. The station-wagon-bandwidth thing doesn't really hold true if you have to move the files to external storage first and then move them off again later.

Re:Sneakernet

[sconeu]

I can move files onto google drive faster than I can copy them to a USB2 external hard drive

Depends on the size of the files, and your bandwidth from your PC to Google Drive. Until recently, I had an 18Mbps/5Mbps connection. The math says it would take a minimum of 2000 seconds, or just over 1/2 hour for me to upload a 1GB file to Google. A USB2 connection may not be as fast as the theoretical 480Mbps limit, but it has to be faster than 5Mbps.

Re:Sneakernet

[sconeu]

And to be fair to you, this was actually a common situation in the early days of LANs. Often local hard drives were so slow that even with 10Base2/10BaseT, it was faster for clients to access data on the fileserver than it was for them to access locally.

Again, it all comes down to speed of local storage, speed of network, and how latency sensitive you are.

Re:Sneakernet

[Centurix]

My pigeons wear sneakers, we have a bigger range, but the latency doesn't get much better and our packet loss does increase during shooting season...

Re:Sneakernet

[grahamsz]

I can get about 300Mbit/s to google drive with a 13ms ping time which is faster than the WD external drive sitting on my desk.

Re:Sneakernet

[grahamsz]

Yeah i vaguely remember that too.

Most SSDs can keep up with gigabit fiber internet, but i bet it'd be hypothetically possible to max out some of my SATA hard drives

Re:Sneakernet

[sconeu]

As I said, it depends on your bandwidth.

You've got a 300Mbps upstream connection? Great. Most people don't have that.

Re:Sneakernet

[grahamsz]

In theory it tops out at 950Mbit/s up, but it's incredibly hard to find any single service that can handle those speeds.

that's turrible

[Anonymous Coward]

Worse speeds than the U.S.A.?

What a nightmare.

the reason is simple.

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Yes, we have crap internet

[Anonymous Coward]

but not many muslims or darkies, so that''s a win.

$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[RhettLivingston]

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.

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[sg_oneill]

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.

Most of the population are in relatively compact (compared to the US) cities. Those outside the suburbs in the 'outback' get satelite.

Its not a valid excuse.

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

$1500 per person is about $3000 per line, and that sounds about right for FTTH deployments. Compared to more densely populated countries, it's a bit on the high side, actually. The money is only meant to cover the installation cost. Subscriptions pay for the operating costs (and profit).

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, most of Australia's population is concentrated into 5 or 6 large cities. Interconnecting those cities via decent bandwidth should be no big deal either, the fibre is probably already there.

Getting it to the sparsely populated places is costly. But the original telco's did it for POTS, and so did who ever installed the power grid, it got there in the end, at great cost largely subsidized by the densely populated areas. Next up, everyone in the cities will whine about how you guys in the country get the same service for the same price, and that the subsidizing inflates their prices !

Side note: anyone complaining about slow internet in the US needs to GTFOff ADSL or move out of hicksville. I live 40 miles south of a large metrapolis in a small town and the speed, latency and reliability I get on cable is very good. If you want to live in the sticks dont expect 1gbps blazing fast fibre internet eh?

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[Guspaz]

The NBN costs are for the physical deployment: people would still pay monthly fees for the service. There is lots of blame to go around: for example, politicians sabotaged things by deciding to save money by throwing out the all-fiber GPON plan and instead to use DSL for the last mile.

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[skirmish666]

They didn't even save money if you look at even the relatively short term picture though. 76 months, which is a little under 6.5 years is the figure I read where the FTTH network would have recouped the cost of the additional investment, after that it would have been more profitable than FTTN.

I keep hearing how the coalition are supposed to have good business know-how, but they went with the plan that after 6.5 years will cost more to run and runs at a fraction of the speed: 40% faster on average than DSL based on New Zealand's experience with the same technology, making Australian business that rely on high speed information services less competitive. I just don't see the logic or how this benefits Australia given the alternative that they adamantly rejected.

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[complete loony]

Everyone loves to blame NBN problems on the copper. While I agree that building fiber to the node is stupid, that's not the biggest problem with the NBN. The pricing model of the NBN means that only huge ISP's can compete on price, by massively oversubscribing. To compete you need a very large number of customers in each geographic area, so you can reduce your CVC charge per person. CVC? Well there are 3 costs associated with leasing a line from the NBN. First is the customer end, with difference price tiers per connection speed. Perfectly understandable. Second is a per-port cost in a central location for the cable into the ISP equipment, about $200 a month per Gbps ethernet port. Again, nothing wrong with that, seems perfectly reasonable. The third cost is the Connectivity Virtual Circuit (CVC), and it's outright extortionate. $14.50 per month (or thereabouts) for each Mbps the ISP wants to light up. So if you want to use a 100Mbps connection 24/7, it will cost your ISP $1450 a month to provide it.

We're supposed to be building a great big fiber network to cover the country, with enough capacity to meet our needs for the next 100 years. So, WTF are we treating *bandwidth* as a scarce, expensive resource?

My other gripe with telecommunications in Australia is about the way telstra gouge everyone who wants to communicate with their customers. But that's another story...

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[AHuxley]

Thats for a normal, average city. Isolated ares get a satellite service.

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

It was never about saving money but making a point of differentiation from Labour at the 2013 election, which, like the last election, was a very close race.

Also, it was sabotage, but presumably as a matter of collusion between the Liberals and the higher-ups at Telstra and Foxtel, as well as Rupert Murdoch himself. Fun fact: Telstra and News Corp. (i.e. Murdoch) each own 50% of Foxtel, who hold a virtual monopoly on satellite and cable TV in Australia. Interestingly, throughout the 2013 election period News Corp. was highly critical of Labour while tending to champion the Liberal Party's policies--most likely a significant factor in them winning the election. https://www.crikey.com.au/2013...

In 2014 it was announced that rather than decommissioning Telstra's technically unsuitable copper network and HFC network (that Foxtel relies upon), the assets would be transferred to NBN Co for indefinite maintenance. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/201...

It comes to no great surprise that the former opposition communications minister during the 2013 election, now-Prime Minister--Mr. Turnbull himself--has been in communication with Telstra, through all of this and appears to have intentions to privatise NBN Co and possibly sell it off to Telstra for no apparent economic benefit. https://www.crikey.com.au/2016... http://www.nbnco.com.au/corpor...

Former ABC technology journalist Nick Ross, one of the few journalists who bothered to cover the NBN situation in any great depth, came out last year claiming he was "gagged" by his superiors for reporting critically of the obviously flawed Liberal NBN. https://delimiter.com.au/2016/...

Stephen Ellis, former NBN advisor under Turnbull's NBN, last year transitioned to a senior advisor role at Telstra with a spokesperson stating "We have engaged Mr Ellis as a consultant on a specific project to advise Telstra on longer term policy reform options. We will not be commenting further". http://www.theage.com.au/victo...

The Liberal NBN policy has been a knowing scam since day one. "Business as usual", indeed.

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a town of 23,000 people with fiber in the middle of nowhere. Just to the west of me in Vermont. Near the boarder they got decent internet connection speeds. Where I am in a bigger town (city for NH) I got fiber too! But it's not better down speed than cable (10,25,and 50Mbps, and maybe I could get 100, I forget now). I have 25/25. Which is MUCH better up than cable and the latency is MUCH better than cable or ADSL. My ADSL option is 3Mbps cause I'm on the outskirts of town or bonded ADSL for 6Mbps. I could get a 2nd line, but only 3Mbps (can't do two bonded lines for whatever reason). Installation was 3,000 for fiber. My friend was quoted 17,000 and he was closer to the junction box (but the poles hadn't been licensed). I was almost a mile away fro the nearest junction box. He was 1/10 of that. But all the poles between me and the junction box were already licensed. Biggest cost? Licensing!

Re:$36 billion doesn't sound like enough...

[Guspaz]

So, basically, Clarke and Dawe's take was an accurate summary? :)

Everything old is new again

[sconeu]

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."

Re:Everything old is new again

[crtreece]

The bandwidth is awesome, but the latency is horrible.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Anonymous Coward]

Still fast enough to run the DOS Capture the Flag game.

Re:Everything old is new again

[Anonymous Coward]

Have a look at Amazon AWS snowmobile http://aws.amazon.com/snowmobile/ . 100 PB in a container on a semi trailer.

Wise Man and Flash

[ghoul]

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.

Re:Wise Man and Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

RIP, Steve Jobs

Re:Wise Man and Flash

[CastrTroy]

But think about the latency. Sure you can get a lot of data across the country if you fill a train full of harddrives, but you can't use a solution like this to stream Netflix, or upload a video to Youtube.

Re:Wise Man and Flash

[sconeu]

The wise man was Andy Tanenbaum.
It was a station wagon, not a truck.
It was tapes, not flash drives. Flash drives hadn't been invented in 1989.

Re:Wise Man and Flash

[ghoul]

But the point is not every application cares about latency. If you are sending a music video off to the editing house to get edited and sent back in a month you dont care about latency.
If you are streaming a netflix video you do care.
But most of the time we dont think about what application cares about latency and what doesnt.
Only bottlenecks like this make us think about it.

Re:Wise Man and Flash

[ghoul]

Thanks for the correction. I remembered reading it somewhere but just couldn't recollect. On second thoughts it should have been obvious it was from the "Guru" of networking.

Re:Wise Man and Flash

[Guspaz]

It's not like the addage needs to change: station wagons and data tapes still exist, now with capacities measured in terabytes.

Lemme guess

[Anonymous Coward]

REPUBLICANS have invaded Austria!

Ajit Pai to the rescue!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Ajit Pai to the rescue!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait to see how horrible the internet will be with net neutrality killed. Bet we never even see a single negative result.

Sort of like

[kilodelta]

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.

Don't envy USA

[Tablizer]

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.

Meanwhile, in Germany

[Calydor]

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.

Re:Meanwhile, in Germany

[scdeimos]

There are still plenty of people in Australia on 512/64kbps ADSL(1) and 56kbps POTS connections. NBN was only meant to cover 95% of the population, that being those in the six major metropolitan centres covering less than 1% of the landmass.

Dayboro, itself only about 30km away from the Brisbane CBD, only has ADSL1 connectivity in its exchange. Drive 5km northwest of that and you have no ADSL, no POTS, no CDMA coverage and no sewerage. Another 2km and you also have to provide your own power and water.

Re:Meanwhile, in Germany

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I can get 500Mbps/500Mbps unlimited in Germany (80EUR/month), in a small town 30km from the nearest city.

Re:Meanwhile, in Germany

[dwywit]

I think that kind of situation arose because once the govt announced "NBN!!!" years ago, Telstra decided to halt or severely curtail any expenditure on ADSL{2+}. Our exchange in the sunshine coast hinterland has a 6-month waiting list for ADSL because all the ports are occupied - you've got to wait until someone else cancels before you can get in, and they're NOT going to upgrade to a higher capacity DSLAM when the NBN is scheduled to arrive here in August. Also, you'd be lucky if the backup batteries last more than 20 minutes in a power outage.

OTOH, fixed wireless NBN isn't going to work for a lot of people here - it's semi-rural and we like our trees. I'm surrounded by trees so it's likely I'll be offered satellite instead. I'm going to ask if I can keep my ADSL2+ - the speed should get better with less contention and crosstalk on the line.

Re:Meanwhile, in Germany

[jezwel]

NBN was only meant to cover 95% of the population

Originally 93% with fixed line FTTP, 4% fixed wireless, 3% satellite.
By installing fibre to the home future upgrades for higher bandwidth would be much cheaper, with the intention that profits would eventually push fibre even further into that wireless space.

All gone now, the copper based network soaks up an extra $bill or so a year, plus upgrades means expensive civil works to reduce the length of copper.

Same thing

[argStyopa]

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.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and when I point out that at least until 2011 when I moved in my home in Queens and my boss's home in Manhattan, the fastest available options were Verizon DSL at around 3Mbps and Time Warner at around 5Mbps (when it felt like it - i.e. not many people were using it in my area), at an unreasonably high price for the latter, I get "ah, Manhattan and Queens are is too crowded, hard to get Fiber everywhere"...
So which is it? Too sparse or too crowded?
We are not talking about having internet all over Australia, so you have to recalculate and come up with a value for persons per sqkm IN INHABITED AREAS. Moron.

The same with the US, towns and cities have shitty internet compared to the rest of the world, and their population density is not low.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The mistake was trying to provide access to every home and business.
If they'd said "every home and business in towns with a population greater than 30,000 people," it would have been a lot easier.

Density varies within Europe - UK has 267 people per sqkm, Iceland has only 3.0, but has only 1/75th as much land as Australia.

Re:Same thing

[ljw1004]

Same exact thing I say when they talk about this with the US:... 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.

I don't think it's useful to talk about the AVERAGE population density. In Australia the population is almost entirely concentrated in small dense coastal cities. If you served those dense cities well, you'd hit such a high proportion of the Australian population, that average internet speeds would increase dramatically.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Yabut, the reason the population is concentrated in those coastal cities is better services.

Long term, that's not really a good thing. Politically it wasn't a good thing either as successive generations of gerrymandering electoral boundaries mean the rural areas have a big influence on who governs. So most of the cost lies in covering those poorly served areas.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be hard for lack-of-bandwidth apologists to avoid cherry picking their data;

Finland: 18 persons per sqkm

Although it looks like they may not have met their 2015 goal, they are making an actual effort, instead of downgrading the definition of "broadband" in order to make a paper report show improvement when in fact there hasn't been any.

1) http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/population-density-people-per-sq-km-wb-data.html
2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Finland

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

That is why NYC with its 4,959 persons per sqkm crushes Korea right? Oh no it doesn't and your reasoning is total bullshit that doesn't match up with the way things work in the real world in any way? Strange...

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Go bring up a map of Australias population density.
Australia has almost exactly 50% of its entire population living in only 3 cities.
They can cover half! the population by rolling fibre to 3 rather small cities.

The vast size of Australia means very little, around 90% of the population is urban, the remaining percentage was never going to be covered by fixed line internet, satellite and fixed wireless was for them.
They already have fibre running between these cities, so linking up the widely spaced urban areas is also not a large factor.
The fact that they are rolling VDSL out at huge cost to people in the middle of Sydney indicates massive problems with their plan unrelated to geographical size.

Australia is a huge empty area with a few small islands of livable land around the coast, only around 10% of the continent is actually considered livable and far less than that is lived in. Around 65% live in the 8 capital cities which is only around 40,000km2 of land.

Stop using the empty desert as an excuse for being unable to provide passable internet to an almost entirely urban population.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Evidently you have read exactly nothing about the rollout.

That is essentially exactly what they said. The plan was to cover 90% with fixed line internet, which is the percentage of the population that is urban.
The remaining 10% was to be covered with fixed wireless and two satellites.

The rollout has failed because of political infighting and swapping from profitable and reliable fibre to a mainly copper VDSL network at huge cost, and massive hits to performance, profitability, running cost and reliability.

It is a political failure and poor choice of technology, nothing at all to do with the big empty desert they were never planning on running fibre to.

For the record, 65% or so of the population lives in 40,000km2, half the population is in three cities, size has nothing to do with the failure.

Re:Same thing

[Shinobi]

Oh, look, that bullshit again. First of all, the european population obviously fails to include the european part of Russia. Second, many US people will exaggerate just how large all US states are and how small european nations are. As an example, only two US states are larger than Sweden, Texas and Alaska. So, let's compare Sweden with the nearest US states area wise.

Sweden, 450 295 km2, population density of 24.5 people/km2
California, 423 970 km2, population density of 92.6 people/km2
Both have heavily urbanized areas where a majority of the population lives, then a smattering of people spread all over the place.

Yet we've not had the problems of extending broadband of many different forms all over the country, including in the very sparesly populated far north, despite mountains, rivers, wetlands, large amounts of snow, low temperatures etc. The issue in the US as a whole is not the population density, it's the lack of political will on people and politicians both, and excessive greed from corporations. A significant portion of the lack of political will among the people can be attributed to "wah wah capitalism wah wah invisible hand of market wah wah".

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Same case in Australia.

The livable land area in Australia is only around 770,000km2, the rest is empty and almost entirely uninhabited.
With a population of 24 million that works out to a population density of over 31 people/km2.

And the vast majority of that livable area is still rural, 90% of the population is entirely rural, around 65% living in the 40,000km2 in and around the 8 capital cities for a population density around 390 people/km2.

The huge size only matters if you plan to run fibre to each and every house, pick a sensible proportion (in Australias case it was 90%, same as the proportion that is urban) and the job is suddenly quite doable.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

That should read "90% of the population is entirely urban".

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

You are using the wrong statistics. The correct statistic to use is the ratio of people to PAVED ROADS. And not surprisingly you will find that most countries, including Australia, are very similar. You can find the measure of paved roads for each country on the CIA web site.

Re:Same thing

[dwywit]

And it's not harder to deploy, just more expensive. The fiber backbones are there already IIRC. Exchange-to-exchange has been fiber for a long time now. It's the "last mile" rollout that's expensive - in some case it's last (many) miles. Still, POTS copper pairs were rolled out decades ago - it's not impossible, just expensive.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Poppycock. Most of the population in AU is concentrated in a few tiny areas:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3320021/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/ng-interactive/2014/dec/22/the-most-detailed-map-of-australian-population-density-ever

As a Canadian, we're in the same situation. In the US, 40% of the "population lived in counties directly on the shoreline"

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/population.html

No one is expecting a rancher in Montana to get a fibre connection, but there's no reason my (sub)urban areas can't be.

Re:Same thing

[DRJlaw]

Yabut, the reason the population is concentrated in those coastal cities is better services.

The large central desert has nothing to do with it whatsoever. Gotcha.

Re:Same thing

[finiteUniverse]

This is very true, however, the issue in Australia is political. The NBN rollout schedule has been determined almost entirely on a political basis. In Australia the balance of power is largely held by the rural areas and these are the areas that have been prioritized in the rollout.

Re:Same thing

[sr180]

Over 80% of the Australian Population lives within a 50km long strip of the East Coast.

The distance here isnt the issue. All of the spare areas are to be covered by Satellite and or Fixed wireless. At the moment, they are currently busting their balls to turn Cable internet into the worlds only L2 provisioned wholesale service, and trying to wrangle a dilapidated copper access network that is life expired into VDSL. Copper maintenance is over 10 times what they budgeted for. And the budget for maintenance and power was 10 times what it costs to run a fibre network.

Re:Same thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The livable land area in Australia is only around 770,000km2, the rest is empty and almost entirely uninhabited.

Not even by abo's?

Average speeds could be misleading

[jbrown.za]

... 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.

This is really simple

[rsilvergun]

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.

What killed the NBN.

[DMJC]

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.

Re:What killed the NBN.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny isn't it, whenever comments on the NBN failure come up they are almost all one of two completely incorrect possibilities:
* Australias low population density guaranteed the failure, as if the 90% of the continent that is empty was all getting fibre as well and its somehow an excuse for using rotten copper in the middle of Sydney.
* Proof that government should stay out of infrastructure and private industry will fix it all, ignoring that a private monopoly is largely the reason the rollout was desperately needed to begin with.

Anyway, as a Kiwi, sorry bro, you have my sympathy. And thanks, we copied your original plan before the coalition ruined it and it works a treat.

Re:What killed the NBN.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Slashdot seems to have eaten your formatting. Fixed that for you. Because what you typed is something that more people should read.

Re:What killed the NBN.

[Eichmil]

This is mostly on the mark. It's not just stupidity. Now PM Turnbull was tasked by Then PM Abbott to kill ex-PM's Rudd's legacy by sabotaging it. He produced a substandard dog's breakfast, exactly as ordered, and spent all the available funds to do so, to prevent a rescue. Job done.

Did it Fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Did it Fail?

[Malc]

I think the hybrid FTTN is actually quite a good compromise for a fast rollout. I've had 76 mbs down/20 up with this for a few years, and I have no complaints. They didn't have to dig up the street to deliver it. I'm sure at some point they will, but for now his pretty good.

Re: Did it Fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

They didn't dig up the streets to put in the fibre, they used horizontal drilling and did as little digging, other than new pits, as possible. I was lucky enough to get fibre to my house and it has been pretty good. Although I don't like the fact that its limited to 100/40Mbps and is using pppoe due to the extra overhead.

Re: Did it Fail?

[old_kennyp]

And I concurr!
I live in the middle of Sydney Suburbia and am 4.5Km from the exchange. I have always had Shit internet on ADSL2+ (3.4M down and 500K up. I have complained for years as has everyone else in the street and Telstra Replaced the last mile of Copper a few years ago.
Despite all that and the fact that every suburb around me, and the Exchange is NBN Enabled, i still cannot get it now and are not slated to do so fro another few years yet.

If Fibre to the node was rolled out originally, I could have had a Much better service in place years ago rather than still now not being able to watch any form of streaming video

The original plan I liken to was to delay the rollout until everyone could get a Lamborghini at first connection. rather than quickly rolliing every one out a new Subaru WRX, then upgrading to the Lambo when each suburb had other infrastructure work to be done and roll in Fibre to the house then.

Re: Did it Fail?

[Anonymous Coward]

The rollout of fibre is inevitable. It's also not going to suddenly become notably cheaper or easier, so it is ridiculous to spend time and money installing FTTN rather than just getting to the point. As a stop-gap, FTTN isn't even future-proofing for that long.

Re: Did it Fail?

[jezwel]

You could have had 100/40 for that same price on fibre. With a little lower latency too.
If you wanted to pay for a faster connection (250/100, 500/200, 1000/400) that would be available at the flick of a software switch and a modem reboot.

Now, you're limited to 76/20 - pretty good for the present sure, but to get anything better is going to cost more - a lot more - to get fibre closer to your premises, so they can run g.FAST for up to 1Gb.

So where are the touted savings?
It's not in time, that's now pretty much the same for both projects, thanks to the delays in starting the copper based plan.
It's not in cost - the cost of the changed NBN has risen to $49+B - that's a little over $4000 per connection
It's not capability, as both copper and HFC based networks do not offer multiple connections at the one premise, and both need a lot of extra $$$ to upgrade to anything faster than 100Mb.
It's not in the asset, as the copper based NBN could not find a private investor willing to buy into the company to help pay for the rollout - the government had to step in.

There are literally zero redeeming points for the copper based NBN to proceed.

Couple more points:

1. The reduced cost of operating a fibre link would have paid back the extra install costs to lay the fibre in around 6-7 years. Those initial fibre connections are on the brink of paying back the extra CAPEX to rollout that fibre.
2. I'm on FTTB with 100/40 speeds, so I'm on the best that the copper can provide. FTTB is a fine interim solution as the copper is protected from the elements, and usually well within design limitations for getting high speed (even gigabit) connections. All outside copper however should have been replaced.

Re: Did it Fail?

[Malc]

Maybe I misunderstand you, but you seem to be suggesting that a complete fibre deployment to millions of homes won't take that much longer or much more cost than delivering fibre to just tens of thousands of cabinets and re-using the existing copper infrastructure to the homes. That makes no sense unless there are some massive mitigating factors such as seriously poor or even no copper infrastructure that would need replacement/installation; is that the case in Australia?

I was living briefly in Melbourne about 8 years ago when this whole thing was announced. My in-laws are still suffering poor internet services. Meanwhile back in London I've had fibre to the cabinet for four years, and the speeds will keep me satisfied for a few more years. I'll probably get annoyed by low speeds before the average person too. This sounds like the software equivalent of Agile vs. Waterfall, and to be honest I'd prefer to get some value delivered sooner rather than waiting forever for the holy grail, or if you prefer: I've been happy with my internet for years, but my Aussie in-laws are still suffering shit over-priced 'service.'

Re: Did it Fail?

[enrique556]

You probably don't realise that you're very lucky. I myself can get full 100mbit, but that's rare. Most NBN FTTN connections are only good for less than 48mbit/s, and less than 25mbits is very common.

My point is that if you're able to get over 50mbit/s (I think the average is 48mbit/s), you aren't getting a realistic impression of what the NBN is really like for the average punter. Try to imagine being stuck at ~20mbit/s and look forward to being stuck on that for the next 10 or 20 years. That's why people are angry.

The libs said they'd employ a "tech agnostic" approach to building the NBN, but we're not seeing FTTP being used where it's needed.

I live in Australia and.....

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:I live in Australia and.....

[DMJC]

Point Cook is a new housing estate. Most suburbs will not offer fibre for $800 or $8000. No Business number, no Fibre. I work in telecommunications in Australia. An experience where you can pay $800 and get fibre to the home is well outside the norms for internet infrastructure here. Go to Essendon and try to get the same deal. Or Maribyrnong, or South Yarra. You'll get laughed out of the building.

Re:I live in Australia and.....

[Anonymous Coward]

did I say everyone has that opportunity to pay for fibre (i.e to get connected the last mile)?
no...

I pointed out I paid for it myself to get connected...
everyone else expects some free ride....
its telecommunications infrastructure.... let the telecoms pay for it.... its not the governments job...
and wouldn't call it a new estate...
our property is going on 8 years there......

I could have signed up to Telstra fibre when I moved in..... but who is that stupid....

Re:I live in Australia and.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, the old "I've got mine so fuck everyone else!" and "Surely the local corrupt monopoly that prefers to squeeze everyone dry instead of upgrading the infrastructure will fix it!" responses. Well aren't you a stereotypical LNP cunt.

Blame Rupert Murdoch

[jonwil]

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.

Sending Hard Drives Via Post

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because it's oh so hard to transfer an audio file. Please. Stop being a tight-arse and pony up for a decent connection or work out of a location that has access to good connections.

$1k a month for a 100mbps business-grade connection is good, even by US standards. Is that guy seriously arguing that he's going to be able to do much in his software business by saving a few grand a year on his internet bill?

10 years ago I worked at a large game developer in Australia that had studios in three cities. All were linked together back then with a gigabit connection. We transferred hundreds of gigabytes of data between the studios each day through our normal work and videoconferences and many gigabytes in nightly builds of games to the US-based publishers over the public internet.

Fast internet is readily available in Australia's cities, you just need to pay for it.

The NBN was a good idea, and a valid attempt to fix a major fuckup by both political parties in deregulating the telco industry back in the 1990s whereby they kept the government-owned monopoly provider, Telstra, as a vertically integrated company rather than breaking it up into infrastructure and retailing companies like what happened with the electricity industry. (Labor under Keating was going to privatise it and started the ball rolling by turning it from the government commission Telecom into the corporatised Telstra, then the Liberals under Howard went through with the IPO)

However, the NBN was poorly conceived in the first place with the plan literally thrown together on the back of a napkin on a flight between two cities before being announced. It was massively behind schedule and massively over budget before the Liberals got into government. The plan was to increase prices each year as well, despite the fact that telecommunications costs have been falling year on year in Australia since de-regulation in the 1990s.

The Liberals have got it back on track by appointing seasoned telco businesspeople to the board and have adapted it to use the two cable TV networks which cover a large proportion of the population (the original plan was to buy them and tear them down) and use VDSL where the cable networks don't go. Regional areas of less than 1000 households get fixed wireless and remote areas get satellite. A dedicated satellite was recently launched, so those connections should be improving as they transition to using that satellite rather than 3rd-party providers. Once the network has been rolled out, the plan is to go back and upgrade the VDSL areas to fibre - the point is to speed up the rollout to get the cash flowing.

In areas were people have access to fibre (like me), the majority of connections are at 12mbps (speeds are 12/1, 25/5, 50/20, 100/40) because Netflix and YouTube are perfectly serviceable at that speed and there's not much of a noticeable difference between the higher speeds for most. I have a 25/5 connection only because my wife and I do video calls with our children and one of them occasionally does some remote work when he visits us.

Mobile phone networks are now faster than most people's NBN connections, too. The price of mobile data, albeit expensive compared to landline data, continues to fall and is set to fall even more now that the low-cost telco TPG is rolling out a new 4G network. (It's also rolling out its own competing fibre network to apartment buildings)

Really?

[mario6915]

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.

Re:Really?

[jezwel]

Fibre rollouts are occuring everywhere, so it was expected that the costs would be well within budget (which included contingency). IIRC the rollout was expanded from 90 to 93% as they were finding savings.
Other rollouts have significantly reduced rollout costs, but time....time was the problem.
Politically the underserved regions needed to be amongst the front runners, plus some issues found with asbestos that the incumbent telco had to remediate, well that threw things out a fair bit.
The project sought and was granted in cabinet an extra 2 years to rollout, and expected to be within 1 year at worst of that date.
Achieving all goals? That's debatable. There's division about the pricing model which is still causing issues today, and will for years to come. Budget and timeframe looked like they were actually doable however.

The things they don't say

[Anonymous Coward]

... most recent ranking of internet speeds ...

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.

... taking bathroom breaks as her shows buffer.

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.

Political expediency killed the NBN

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Political expediency killed the NBN

[Anonymous Coward]

It also would have cost about 10 times as much as they were claiming, it was never anything but a complete crock

it sounds like someone in Australia was 4 profit

[strstr]

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/

Poor old 'Down Under'

[taniwha]

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 ....

Re:Poor old 'Down Under'

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this. It may have taken a while to sort out the plan for all the houses down my right-of-way driveway, but I am now enjoying unlimited gigabit fibre for $NZ140 (about $97 USD)

Fibre to the node never had a business case

[aberglas]

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.

Re:Fibre to the node never had a business case

[Anonymous Coward]

Fibre is being rolled out in other countries for half what the Australian government seems to think it costs. New Zealand rolling out fibre based on the original NBN plan, it is on time and budget and the ISPs are pushing to cut off our existing copper/FTTN network as soon as possible due to the lower reliability and higher running costs.

More than half the customers on the New Zealand equivalent have signed up for plans of 100mbps or higher, with a significant percentage on the profitable gigabit plans, and the average linespeed for the entire chorus network is around 40mbps, which somewhat contradicts the idea that no one wants that sort of speed.

The average monthly household data use in NZ is now around 150 gig per month, and increasing rapidly. My own for a household of 3 people is near a terabyte per month. If you think mobile is going to keep up long term you are going to be disappointed.

You appear to barely use the internet and think the entire country should follow your use patterns, what are you even doing on a tech site if you honestly think ADSL is still a suitable technology to let your country compete with the rest of the world.

Re:Fibre to the node never had a business case

[Anonymous Coward]

so much so that the State government made a deal with Telstra (which has now spread further) to actually shut down the copper network in NBN areas to force people onto the Fibre to the Home (I live in one such area, and work in another)

Sabotaged

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Naked political hatchet job

[Anonymous Coward]

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 National Fraudband Network

[MrKaos]

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.

Re:The National Fraudband Network

[upuv]

I completely agree with you.

The current model of mix mode delivery is complete BS. Because it allows the installations to have such truncated capacity out to the nodes that it is impossible to upgrade in the future.

I sit here and think, Aus has missed a huge opportunity to get a head a solve a lot of upcoming social problems. Now we have to pay to fix this mess for at least 30 years.

Re:The National Fraudband Network

[Brian Feldman]

Why so few ONUs? I worked for an ISP in a third world country for a while, and we used Zhone equipment, which I would never recommend. Even so, it supported up to 64 ONU per fiber.

Re:The National Fraudband Network

[MrKaos]

Why so few ONUs?

I don't know. I can only guess that for the few years they were planning one type of deployment (FTTP) with the vision that they were designing a network to last. When the entire board was replaced to suit the whims of their new political masters the people re-designing the network just didn't give a fuck anymore, their vision for a future proofed network based on fibre everywhere was over.

There was a chance to break Telstra's monopoly over telecommunications and instead the political fuckwits ended up pouring billions into Telstras shareholders pockets for the fibre and rotting copper that was already sitting in the ground, so it could be a case of legacy infrastructure. Now Telstra get to shrug and say to their customers 'Don't blame us, it's the crap NBN network' and yes, a lot of Australians are *that* stupid.

Now instead of having two independent networks, we have one large failing, increasingly obsolete shit network. Very frustrating.

I'm Aussie and the NBN is a downgrade.

[upuv]

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.

Forget Australia, come to New Zealand

[bad_fx]

We have a Fibre network that work... ;-)

Re: Forget Australia, come to New Zealand

[Anonymous Coward]

At outrageously exorbitant prices! Some people are back on dial-up modem connexion.

Re:Forget Australia, come to New Zealand

[SlayerOfKings]

To expand on what bad_fx said, NZ's equivalent, the UFB (Ultra Fast Broadband) project is the polar opposite of the Australian disaster. Originally the plan was for 75% of the country to have Fibre To The Home, which has now been extended and will be around 84-85%. The fiber companies don't provide ISP services, and wholesale to any ISP, so consumers have a great variety of choice. A variety of plans are available, but currently the two main ones are an entry level 100/20 plan, and a 1000/500 plan. Prices vary between providers but are around USD$60-70 for the 100Mbps plans and USD$90-100 for the 1Gbps plans. In addition to the FTTH rollout, the government has also extensively funded a rollout of other technologies (Copper/Cellular) into rural areas in what's known as RBI (Rural Broadband Initiative). I am often critical of our government, but they did all this in a fairly non partisan multi party way. It's such a shame the Aussie politicians turned their NBN into a political beast.