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.
I think it comes down to... (Score:5, Interesting)
Couple this with the fact that IT has always been the sort of subject that kids used to figure out ways to get around their schools proxy (so they can waste time on bebo at school instead of actually hanging out with their friends), rather than learning how a computer works.
This is also the reason why Australians get sucked into those stupid Nigerian scams so easy -- because a lot of us don't use common sense. Not saying that Australia is alone in any of these aspects, it just seems to be that because our Government has no idea how the series of tubes works, the rest of the country hasn't really taken any interest. Discussion about things like the proposed internet filter are great for the general public, because it gives them a chance to understand how intricate the internet and networking in general is...
Or they roll your eyes at you and put their iPod headphones back in -- they won't have to worry about security with Web 2.0.
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Telstra: No problems here and better agree with us (Score:4, Interesting)
Telstra and Freedom of speech Last week I was involved in an interesting but disheartening incident - one that further highlights the problems we are facing with Telstra in Australia.
Tomorrow I will be chairing Day One of the Broadband World conference, organised by terrapin. This event included a panel session entitled 'Can open access regulation truly work in Australia without retail separation?' in which Telstra had agreed to participate.
At the last moment, however, Telstra asked the conference organisers to withdraw two people from the panel, saying they wouldn't participate otherwise. It was also very interesting to see that they even came up with the names of the people they would like as replacements. more [buddeblog.com.au]
Burnt Mod Points Akimbo (Score:2, Interesting)
I remember watching the National Press Club Address about five years ago from the then-current parliamentary technology adviser who lamented that Australians have the highest acceptance of technological devices in the world, yet most people have no idea, or intention, to use them beyond their rudimentary functions.
For example, the majority have a multimedia phone, and the majority of those people use call and text at most. 60% of households (circa 2003 figures) have a computer connected to the internet in the same room as the main TV (average of two TVs per household), yet what is it used for but Facebook?
To further complicate matters, University students entering IT, Electronics and related fields are down because of the perception that "everything" already works, so why shouldn't they just be using the technology available? What is the point of working to improve it?
I'm pleased I'll graduate soon in a technological environment where people with my skillset are thinning, yet I fear a future as foretold in Idiocracy: people just don't look beyond the nose in front of their face any more.
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Re:Good job... (Score:4, Interesting)
What I can't figure out is why he can't get dialup. Even on noisy hotel lines, I can still get 19-24 kbit/s connections. And on clean home lines, the U.S. Congress passed a bill in 1996 to upgrade everyone to digital phones. That way even rural residents can get at least 50k connections via their digital modems. I'm surprised Australia didn't have a similar analog-to-digital phone upgrade.
The quickest-and-fastest way to provide broadband to rural communities is to simply install DSLAMS on existing phone connections. No need to dig everything up, or install new wires. When my phone company did this, I instantly went from 50k to 6000k connections. Now a rural farmhouse in the middle of nowhere might not be able to go that fast, but they should still be able to achieve ~500k connections using DSL.
Dark side of the Node (Score:2, Interesting)
I live in a new suburb in Melbourne and the infrastructure installed in the new suburb by Telstra (the local monopoly) is Fibre to the Node. Which is great. Except they go an put rubbish equipment at the nodes. So across the suburb about 40% of people can get ADSL1 and the rest get nothing (except a basic phone line).
I spent 4 months sending applications to the local ISP until eventually one of my neighbours sells up and disconnects from the node and luckily I get his spot.
This is not as uncommon.
Re:Good job... (Score:2, Interesting)
The previous Australian government subsidized ADSL DSLAMS for rural communities and subsidized wireless and satellite for people beyond DSL range.
Some farms do have unbelievably bad land lines. I have seen some that can't sustain 9600 but these are line faults. I have seen others that are not much better where it is an infrastructure issue - the phone company refuses to lay more copper, fix ongoing problems or is using obsolete pair gain systems. Affordable digital line plans got withdrawn by Telstra, perhaps so they could push people onto more expensive cell phone plans.
Your farms might be closer to your towns than here. Someone on a farm 20km from town is not going to get DSL, would be lucky to get a digital land line, possibly doesn't have cell coverage for 3G but could get subsidised 2 way satellite.
When people buy a house in a flight path and complain about the noise I get a bit skeptical. I live in a rural town of 4000 and sync at 8M and could get 20M if I wanted to pay for it. I own a vacant house which thanks to drought and global credit crisis is worth less by the minute. If the original poster wants to upgrade to an area with broadband access there are options.