Raising Doubts About Australia's Broadband Upgrade Plan 98
RcK writes "In addition to the rising controversy of the possible Australian version of the Great Firewall Of China already mentioned several times of late here on Slashdot; the viability of the proposed AU$5Billion internet infrastructure upgrade promised by the Federal Government during their 2007 election campaign is under fire. The MD of arguably Australia's leading internet company, iinet, has branded the proposal a waste of taxpayers money. Steve Ballmer, during his current Australian visit, has also weighed in on the topic and diplomatically indicated that Australia should get on with the job. Much of the current criticism appears to surround the likelihood of people in remote areas being left out of the proposed plan. Ironically, where I lived previously (remote town in central Aus — nearest town over 400km away) everyone had, at the absolute least, subsidized satellite internet, and most had ADSL. In my case a flawless 512k connection for ~4years. However, I now live 5 minutes from the center of a capital city and due to archaic telephone infrastructure cannot get ADSL, and even line noise is too great for dialup!"
Today's front page at
Whirlpool Broadband News also features several articles relating to the saga.
Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Southern Crosstikas (Score:2, Insightful)
One thing that I cannot understand about Australian, particularly in Brisbane is the attitude of 'Australia: love it or leave' combined with the surreptitious nationalism. Our easy going nature is simply apathy that we will not admit to. When constructive criticism is made, it is often met with derision by the general populace because it is not the Australian way. For all the multiculturalism in this country, tt concerns me the bigotry, racism and provincial mindset that so many have on this island.
Sadly enough, it makes me want to hand in my pass at the door. We are the 51st state of the US (foreign policy, economic policy, etc) , and have learnt it's lessons and bettered them. (ie we are more litigious per capita then the US). A country that chooses to play second fiddle instead of stand on our own two feet.
I guess we shouldn't knock bacteria, after all it's the only culture that some people have in this country.
Nonsense. (Score:2, Insightful)
You seem to be claiming that Australians are somehow different from other humans. I am not Australian by birth, but I've been living there for a few years, and I've observed that the geek quotient of the population seems to be quite high. What makes an Australian any more likely to get sucked in by a scam than, say, an American?
The simple fact is that we (finally) have a change of government, replacing the morons who had had their heads up their asses for so long they had obviously started to enjoy the view in there. The trouble is, the new government doesn't really want to actually _do_ anything, their preference being to push pieces of paper around and bleat platitudes.
Re:Competition is a problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Most of us are still on ASDL 1. Anything to upgrade the country's internet!
Telstra ...have abused their monopoly on telecommunications infrastructure in an attempt to keep competition at a minimum
I am sick of the deals Telstra offer (poor speed, not much usage, and steep prices) telling us that they are "great deals". I'm not well read about the rest of the world, but I'm on a cap of 5Gb, which gets used up very quickly, and my parents seem to believe that that is "impossible".
While people of the younger generations are quite smart (@ Laser iCE: Have you seen the blacklist in schools now-a-days? We can access wikipedia,the Board of studies, and that's about it, my schools own website is even blocked. 'Tis no wonder we spend all our time finding an unblocked proxy server) it's the older generations that have the money that would support the upgrade, meaning it probably won't happen until my generation can afford it :(
Re:Nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not saying that Australia is alone in any of these aspects
The trouble is, I see a lot of kids who say they know a lot about technology, they're interested in gadgets and high tech gear, but when it comes down to actually being able to google for something, or to trouble shoot software when an unexpected error occurs, or even something as simple as going through the options in a program to see what you can change/customize -- these sort of things are beyond the average Australian. Don't be naive and believe that the rest of the country who loves only sports and hot women, are like your friends who enjoy IT and are IT savvy. I don't want to burst your bubble, but a lot of Australians are very shallow, and generally very "sheepish".
Don't get me wrong, I want to see this country thrive and strive with it's IT industry just as much as you do, but it only takes 5 minutes to step into any Government workplace to realise that most of them have no clue beyond checking emails in Outlook and reading news sites in Internet Explorer.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Steve balmer if you RTFA says highspeed internet is a good thing, he says that the future of computing is online. And he says 21mbps wireless is fucking awesome. All of these things /. agrees with. Try not to trash the guy when he's not throwing chairs thats just flaming.
Re:Nonsense. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just as soon as they form a taskforce to investigate which pieces of paper to push and which platitudes to bleat. I voted Labor last year and I'm still waiting for them to do much beyond repealing Work Choices. Fucking do something!
Re:Southern Crosstikas (Score:2, Insightful)
The real problem is that Australians believe this, because we want it to be true, yet it's actually entirely false. Even though we are dedicated to the ideal of shedding our "embarrassing" Aussieness in favour of "sophisticated" and "important" Americana, we're still just a bunch of kids playing dress-up in their mum and dad's clothes. As much as we love to believe we're really American, we're not. We're nowhere even near that goal. But what's really sad is that we can't even see that's a GOOD thing. It's the curse of the eternal inferiority complex.
Re:Southern Crosstikas (Score:1, Insightful)
You are full of shit. Most people in Australia I know and hang-out with have quite negative view of America and would hate to be thought of as being American. Perhaps you meant to say "some Australians".
Just because you are embarrassed to be an Aussie, don't assume the rest of are thanks.
Re:Good job... (Score:2, Insightful)
Telstra demands $700 to connect the house to the phone line, and neither the landlord nor the tenants will cough up the money. Hence I'm stuck with a wireless HSDPA (3G) plan from Three, which is $20 a month for a 2 GB download+upload cap. One day, my girlfriend left LimeWire open on her laptop when she left for work in the morning; that month we had a $360 bill. I thank $deity every day for unlimited Internet at uni and ImageShack's Torrent Drive [imageshack.us].
The Internet situation in Australia truly is atrocious. I have no doubt that the OP had a better experience out in the outback. It seems that all the plans the government has been proposing put the sheep farmer's interests first. I guess they need to track their flock via GPS or something.