Obama Looks Down Under For Broadband Plan 387
oranghutan writes "The Obama administration is looking to the southern hemisphere for tips on how to improve the broadband situation in the US. The key telco adviser to the president, Sarah Crawford, has met with Australian telco analysts recently to find out how the Aussies are rolling out their $40 billion+ national broadband network. It is also rumored that the Obama administration is looking to the Dutch and New Zealand situations for inspiration too. The article quotes an Aussie analyst as saying: 'There needs to be a multiplier effect in the investment you make in telecoms — it should not just be limited to high-speed Internet. That is pretty new and in the US it is nearly communism, that sort of thinking. They are not used to that level of sharing and going away from free-market politics to a situation whereby you are looking at the national interest. In all my 30 years in the industry, this is the first time America is interested in listening to people like myself from outside.'"
We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadband (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh good lord.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Interesting)
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Why can't we be a leader and make our own plan?
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what we've been doing, and it sucks.
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Most of the problems I see presented on this issue stem from the fact that competition is artificially limited through regulation.
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Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Insightful)
Are you going to be able to pay $small_ISP $20k to rip up the street and pull you a run of fibre? But once you do, your neighbour can get it for $1k, so the rest of the street will naturally follow suit, rather than going to a different ISP and also having to put down the initial $20k.
Having a bunch of different ISPs serving different houses on the same block really isnt feasible.
I think, ideally, the last mile would be municipally owned, and they then lease the lines to $small_ISP of your choice, at a flat rate. That's the only way I can see a bunch of ISPs working out.
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Why would companies choose to go into areas that are heavily saturated? This would only be feasible if they have some dramatic innovation to offer, which would benefit the people living on that street.
If I choose to pay for the fiber, then I make the deal to get profits from additional customers gained on that line of fiber, if not, good for my neighbor! And I've just voluntarily subsidized my entire street.
Why is it not 'feasible' to have different ISPs on the same block? And why would they operate th
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This is one of the textbook cases of how natural monopoly/duopoly arise. The cost of entering the market is high - digging up the street, buying pole space, connecting houses, etc. If there's already a market actor present, the expected return on the investment of entering that market is small. From the perspective of an investor, his money is invested bette
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Informative)
>>>This is one of the textbook cases of how natural monopoly/duopoly arise.
Except in the case of cable television, which is most areas the monopoly did not arise naturally. It was *mandated* by the local government when they granted Comcast (or Cox or Time-warner) an exclusive license in the neighborhoods or counties.
The government should revoke that exclusive license, and let other companies to move-in. Imagine if the metal pipe under your street not only had Comcast, but also Cox, Time-Warner Cable, Charter, Apple TV, and so on. You could just pick the one you liked, the same way you can choose a Ford, Honda, GM, Toyota, Kia, or Dodge car.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
They simply need to take over the pipe like any utility, and then rent the pipe to broadband providers. That would ease the issues with getting things like fiber layed out, while opening up the market to competition. I think one of the biggest hurdles is getting permits and licensing to actually lay the pipes themselves. Too expensive, time consuming, and too political.
Internet has become just like any other utility. It should be treated that way.
Unless anyone has forgotten, it was the deregulation of cable that caused an explosion in pricing. It's also allowed these markets to become limited to one or possibly two providers if your lucky. Now these exclusive agreements is preventing anyone else from entering the market. If the government takes over the pipes and then just rents those to providers at a fair price, it would remove that hurdle and open up competition.
There is no competition now and painful pricing is the obvious result.
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That's a terrible idea. How the hell could you ever drive on the street? And what happens when TWC "accidentally" nicks Verizon's fiber?
Do you simply not live in the real world? There are physical limits here. There can only realistically be one provider ripping up the streets; at the moment that's a private company. It should be the government who then leases it out.
Something similar happens with DSL. Verizon owns the copper to my house (and happily provides crappy DSL service over it) but are legally requ
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>>>Are you going to be able to pay $small_ISP $20k to rip up the street and pull you a run of fibre?
I call bullshit. Verizon has been rolling-out FiOS without any need to rip-up streets. They simply run the wire through the same government-owned pipe that Comcast uses. You could have Time-Warner, Cox, Charter, and other internet companies sharing the same metal pipe, each with their own cables running in parallel.
And before you say "that's not efficient" - well neither is having ~20 different
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
Without "government intrusion" there would be no telecommunications market. Do you think that private companies are going to bury millions of miles of fiber and then just let their competitors use their cables? And how do you think these telecoms are going to get access to dig up all these endless miles of public property? Taxpayers pay = you answer to our elected officials.
So wrong it doesn't deserve a full answer
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nail, meet hammer. To elaborate, there is still NO indication that Australia's fabled broadband network is ever going to eventuate. There's been a couple of years of blow-hard yapping about it, but the government has yet to come up with a single concrete proposition as to how it is going to go about it.
Don't get me wrong, I was one of those who helped this government get elected (and I'm all for the roll-out of a dec
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Because running cables is a significant effort and expense. There are two barriers to running cables - economic and geographic.
Economically, it doesn't make sense for any one company to run wires unless they know they have enough customers to pay for it, which means many of the original cable wires probably would not have been run if it weren't for government sponsorship.
Geographically, in order to reach households, you need a continuous connection from your transmission point to the individual homes of ea
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Informative)
There is no 'natural' monopoly or duopoly. These situations are only created through Government intrusion into the market.
Based on actual history, you speak quite a bit of truth. However, it's not *only* created through government intrusion.
When a company is so successful that it can "get it" and "do it" for less... when a company offers something over an infrastructure that is so expensive and offering a product/service on a huge, national scale is the bar that has been set... That company will be so incredibly entrenched that it will never be rooted out by a startup. Ever.
It's the reason 100% free market capitalism can't work on it's own. It needs a little help from the big G, sometimes.
I totally agree the government effed up in the past and basically made AT&T a monopoly. They also continue to eff up in many ways, but without *some* government regulation, you'd STILL be stuck with AT&T anyway. In fact, their actual goal was to be *the* only telecommunications provider back in the early 1900s as they gobbled up the little companies in buyouts. AT&T would have been able to do it too, even without the government's help. I have no reason to believe AT&T or any other company in that position would feel any differently about the Internet.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Insightful)
Multiple competing sewerage providers is a ridiculous idea. How are they going to compete? Commercials that say "Use us, because our sewage is cleaner? Maybe?" People don't care how clean their sewage is, they just want to flush the toilet and get back to work. A scarier scenario would be a commercial like "We'll take your sewage for pennies on the dollar, which is all you care about, and then don't worry what we do with it wink wink." Innovations in this market means finding ways to get rid of sewage while spending as little as possible - NOT providing excellent but somewhat pricey service like the government has an interest in providing.
As for the train stuff, apparently you aren't aware of the ongoing discussion about the issue. It's widely accepted that passenger rail never made a profit in its entire history, and in fact can never make a profit. Throughout all of its golden years of universal use, it probably never paid back the cost of laying rail. The government needed to subsidize these expenses because the infrastructure is important to the common good and a free market wouldn't work here.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Interesting)
Ha! In Australia its the regulation that makes the market competitive. The American's who ran our version of pre-breakup AT&T (Telstra) got very frustrated at not being able to kick their competitors off their network (a former government asset), and left.
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You are right that the government is attempting to 'fix' the problems that the government created. The problem in Australia is cronyism, politically and economically. Unfortunately, the government that privatised Telstra, with the rallying cry "Free Trade Market", also sold the company to the (mostly) same people that paid for its inception and subsidies.
I can understand that Telstra had been disassociated from a government department for quite a few years before privatisation. That led to Telstra being mor
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
It only sucks because the government didn't force companies to upgrade their networks when they took money from the government to.......upgrade their networks.
All the government had to do was actually enforce the measures they enacted and we wouldn't be having this conversation. So yes, while the companies are definitely in the wrong for essentially embezzling the money, the politicians who gave them the money and then let them just pocket it are even more in the wrong.
**Apologies for any typo's - Firefox doesn't want to run on my system without crashing every 5 seconds since I overclocked it (everything else runs 100% fine, and no system crashes - so the problem is with Firefox) and good ol' Shiternet Explorer doesn't have spellcheck.**
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How much speed are you actually gaining? You're not saving much time if something goes wrong every hour or so.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Funny)
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No, it doesn't suck. We have a 45mbit symmetrical plan, have had it since 1996 - ain't nobody suing the fuck out of the Telcos and cable companies to force their ass to roll it out, uncapped.
TELECOMMUNICATIONS ACT OF 1996.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>the government takes from us while providing almost NOTHING in the way of services
False.
Study-after-study has shown that rural citizens (i.e. the red-colored zones) get MORE money, per capita, than people in the cities/urban areas. This is because the rural citizens have their electricity subsidized and their phone connections subsidized by government or corporations via the Universal Service Fund. And soon their internet will be subsidized too. If rural citizens paid the *true* cost of these long-distance runs of electric/phone they would not be able to afford it.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Informative)
Oh they would be able to afford it, just after they raised the prices for the goods and services that are PRODUCED in those rural areas.
City dwellers tend to forget, or like to ignore, that they share a symbiotic relationship with the rural hicks. Without the food and energy resources produced "in the sticks" city life would be impossible.
Tough to run a 40 Billion dollar trading company with no electricity. Tough to raise your family in a beautiful suburb when there's no electricity and nothing to eat. Oh you may have a power plant somewhere close to you, but go find out where the fuel for it comes from. You may have some farms somewhere close to your city but go find out what their production is and then divide that into your population.
You'll quickly discover that you'll be starving in the dark without those hicks in the sticks. On the other side of the coin those hicks in the sticks would be doing without life saving medical treatments and equipment, complicated machinery, and sophisticated technology.
Like I said, it's symbiotic but don't think that they couldn't afford it if they had to. They could, they'd just raise the cost of the food you're eating, the power you consume, etc, until they could.
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How would you even know you were a leader if you didn't look at the other plans first? If you ignore the lessons other nations have learned on what works and what doesn't then you won't lead anything.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
I find it always depressing, when my government tries to come up with its own plan and doesn't bother to have a look how other nations did it.
That is either ignorance, arrogance or misplaced pride.
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Indeed. I had 100Mbps fiber in northern rural Japan, in 2006. That's fiber from the pole through my wall and into my apartment, by the way, and I never experienced throttling or arbitrary caps. Total cost? Around US$70 per month.
Then I come back to the USA, move into a neighborhood right next to a university in a city of a million people, and the best I can get without some crazy business plan is 1.5M/128K ADSL, for about $40 per month. And the connecti
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Because Japan doesn't have the landmass... they have fewer lines to lay and less overhead.
I question if looking to Australia is still a bad idea because they generally have most of their population along the shores, right? Our problem is that we have such a landmass with people spread out. Obama always likes to think of "everybody" when he does something and thinks that my parents who live 50 miles from the nearest major city need ultra fast broadband.
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
How is more landmass an excuse for why a rural area has better connectivity than the middle of a city of a million people?
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
"Because Japan doesn't have the landmass... they have fewer lines to lay and less overhead."
If we lit up all of our dark fiber we'd surpass most nations. the telcos and cable companies aren't doing it, though, preferring to overcharge and under-deliver.
They should be sued for $200 BILLION for fraud and contractual violations.
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The US's population density is actually pretty average. Maybe not compared to Africa or Russia but we're far from atypical in population density. It's not how spread out we are that's the problem.
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Do you suppose the Japanese pay something additional in taxes to get those high speeds?
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So why have they saddled them with massive amounts of debt that they can never hope to pay off? Why does the suicide rate continue to rise? These things to don't seem like fair trade-offs.
Yes, good thing that the US doesn't have a huge amount of debt! We'll show them!
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What is with it is called profit taking. Some might think of it as organized crime, but it isn't very well organized and in the US it isn't criminal either.
Doing thing the US way in the US is taken as being the best way regardless of evidence to the contrary. In particular doing things the US way means not even looking at outside ways of doing things other than as a way to rule out how not to do something no matter how well it is done elsewhere; if it is done elsewhere a particular way then that way is ru
$70? (Score:2)
Mine was $50 in a small city, and right when I left they did introduce bandwidth capping -- they asked us to please refrain from uploading more than 500 gigabytes per month, with no download cap. Japan makes the US internet situation look paltry.
For the record (for those claiming the landmass has anything to do with it), the way Japan regulated was that it encouraged/forced ISPs to work together to cooperatively build and share lines all the way up to the DSL station. From there, each company was responsibl
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Seriously why not Japan, or most European countries?
The .jp or .eu plans might make suitable models for the East coast, but looking to Australia makes pretty good sense for the rest of the USA. Even though the population of the USA is about tenfold that of Australia, Australia presents many of the same hurdles for ubiquitous broadband coverage as does the USA. Both have vast areas to cover across a range of climatic conditions and timezones. Both have an overall low population density, with several concentrations of very high population density in and aro
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Actually, "very high population" density in a few coastal cities isn't quite right either. Australian cities and the more modern cities in the USA are sprawled and oriented around suburban life in a way that the older European and Japanese cities (that really do have a very high population density) aren't. .
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:4, Funny)
Most of those countries don't speak Americanese, dammit! At least the Aussies have something vaguely close...
Re:We're looking to AUSTRALIA for advice on broadb (Score:5, Insightful)
I exaggerate, but there are surely better places to look.
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I was looking at the sunny land of Somalia for a economic recovery plan, but I suppose Zimbabwe will work too.
Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)
yes, our broadband sucks. But it won't suck after the NBN has been built. Hence why they're talking to people about the NBN.
Try reading the summary. (I realise RTFA is too much to ask)
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Ha! I'll believe that when I'm connected to it.
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Ha! I'll believe that when I'm connected to it.
Sounds about right... the Australian government is notorious for under delivering. Expect this roll-out to complete in a decade, by which time the average consumer will have 10 gigabits wired directly into their brain.
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
And what government DOESN'T?
Re:Bad Idea (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Bad Idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I won't try to defend our Communications Minister, but there are some very smart technical people involved with this project. It will be a huge success for Australia.
Almost everyone who works in communications in Australia agrees this is a great idea, as I do. Some are skeptical about the dollars, but this infrastructure will be in place for many many decades and will be profitable in the long run. A cheer went up in my IT department when this was announced, literally people standing up at their desks saying how awesome this will be for Aus. You should have seen the celebrations when it was announced that Telstra would be split into wholesale and retail.
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My Dad and I pretty much broke down in tears of joy. Good times, good times. The beers did flow.
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great truck loads of money will be wasted on studies,consultants and legal battles with telstra. your cheering is very premature.
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Gah. The NBN. 43 Billion is about $5000 per home. It's just too expensive.
Why didn't they stick with the original idea? Fiber connecting the cities, then rent out bandwidth to local providers, who could do the last few miles using whatever technology the customers wanted. Some people want wireless (and yes, there are issues). Some people want fiber. Some people just want a cheap connection, because they only use the internet for email and banking. It would have been a little more expensive for the people wh
Re:Bad Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it isn't just about the home and personal use. It's about businesses and utilities such as hospitals, schools, fire, police, etc.
Business contributes a significant chunk of our tax take - corporate tax take increase is what is responsible for all our tax cuts over the last 10 years, after all - and more efficient utilities reduces spending.
The difference is that business doesn't vote, people do - so while the backbone will be there for business, the fringe cases of getting it to the homes will get the votes.
And before you object to public money being spent on private enterprise, that's because it's infrastructure. The government builds roads and rail and ports because very few single businesses can afford to pay for it themselves (BHP & Rio being exceptions). This is what governments are supposed to do, a fact too many have forgotten.
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So we're all going to have super faster Internet, where's the overseas capacity coming from?
From the five extremely under-utilised existing international links, I would expect.
Awesome (Score:5, Funny)
This is good news. We all hate Americans so it seems good to hear that while we're screwing ourselves we're screwing you too.
Are you kidding?! (Score:5, Informative)
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IMHO, New Zealand is pretty good with broadband coverage. NZ currently have ADSL coverage to over 70% of the population and UMTS (3G broadband) coverage to 97% of the population with two different carriers providing that service. We might not have the best speeds et al but a much higher proportion of the population can actually get broadband compared to the US.
The US current approach is odd -- they're rolling out fibre to the home in some areas, despite the fact a large proportion of the US population is st
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Well they can't do worse than Qwest. They took 6 months of talking about permits and digging up roads to fix my internet for the 8th technician to conclude that a cable was unplugged. Meanwhile I was with the local cable company who couldn't deliver a ping to their own switches 400ms.
So now I'm still with Qwest I ditched the cable company and I get 200ms pings to their local switches and my bandwidth wavers between .5mb and 2mb (I pay for '6').
Comcast at work is pretty good but it took us 5 months of be
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Private market — despite occasional flaws — is the best there can be. And when there is a problem, it is usually traced to the government's filthy little fingers. In this case, it is the "genius" decision to grant telecoms a mono- or, at best, duopoly over a market...
No kidding... (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not only that, but also the belief (sincere or not) that equality ought to trump quality... Government-provided schools, clinics, roads, subways, postal service, inevitably suck, but they suck equally for all
An empirical counterpoint (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's an empirical counterpoint:
Denmark has the second most equal distribution of income[1]. It's also the country where people are the most happy about their lives[2].
What does this prove? Well, I'm probably guilty of cherry-picking evidence, and correlation isn't necessarily causation, but I think it suggests that equality doesn't ruin our lives (yes, I'm probably also biased, being a Dane).
That certainly matches my personal experience. Free medical care, free education, well-stocked public libraries, a postal service I was happy to use (and still am, I just use it much less), the state even gives you money while you're studying and you can life off of it if you're a bit frugal. Sure, you get to pay a lot of taxes, but I'm happy to do that, seeing how I'm getting my money's worth for it.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality [wikipedia.org] (sort by "CIA Gini").
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisfaction_with_Life_Index [wikipedia.org]
(note that [2] doesn't say that life satisfaction correlates with income equality, nor that it doesn't. Make of that what you want.)
As an Australian living in Australia.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Obama is asking Telstra / Australia or the Australian government ANYTHING about broadband than my American friends, I am very very very sorry for you, quite sincerely - this can not end well at all.
Telstra is one of the most vile companies in existence, Microsoft may get mocked a lot here but that's only because the evils of Telstra are not known internationally. (We're talking about a company that first introduced Bigpond cable with a 100mbyte per MONTH limit, no - I'm not joking)
As for the broadband network, it's a load of cobblers, we won't see it for a decade at least, it's one of those dopey empty promises which mean absoloutely nothing (no, I'm not a liberal, not even close)
Re:As an Australian living in Australia.... (Score:5, Informative)
(no, I'm not a liberal, not even close)
To anyone who doesn't know, the two major political parties in Australia are the Labor party (left-center) and the ironically named Liberal party (right conservative). The term "liberal" in Australia is therefore rather ambigious a lot of the time.
The new broadband network is being proposed by our current Labor government.
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For me, Liberty is more of a right wing concept. So if the Australian Liberal Party were a right wing party it would make sense for them to use that name.
I don't understand why Liberal refers to left wing politics in the US. That makes little sense to me.
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For me, Liberty is more of a right wing concept.
Which is very odd. Do you say that, just because of how you want to define right-wing, rather than what right-wing actually means?
So if the Australian Liberal Party were a right wing party it would make sense for them to use that name.
Again, very odd, because liberalism is not strictly a synonym of "liberty" - although liberalism includes the ideas of freedom and rights, it connotes more about progressivism and reform.
I don't understand why Liberal refers to left wing politics in the US. That makes little sense to me.
Of course it makes little sense, when you have so little understanding of the terms. Liberal does not refer to left-wing politics, either, and outside of a few random anarchists and socialists th
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two major political parties in Australia are the Labor party (left-center) and the ironically named Liberal party (right conservative).
I'd say that labor would be center-right and Liberals would be center-right-right.
Considering that current PM got in by saying 'we will do exactly the same thing as the liberals, but with more kittens!' means we had a choice between a party with conservative economic policy, tough (but fair) border protection, tuff on crime tuff on the cause of slogans - OR - a party with conservative economic policy, tough (but fair) border protection, tuff on crime tuff on the cause of slogans, but we are heaps differe
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Re:As an Australian living in Australia.... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're kidding yourself, absoloutely and utterly kidding yourself, your faith in government is incredible.
I'm only 31 and I've worked in the state govt for 4 years now, I know how things work - most people should, do you not read the paper or follow the news?
3 to 5 years, maybe - if you're in a specific targeted 'beta' area (probably new housing estates)
Good luck.
Don't follow us (Score:5, Informative)
Goodness, the $40B broadband plan will be a disaster.
Lets see.
About 10 Million possible connection points (Business + Households) with say 25% takeup (after they will still be competing with ADSL/Cable which is already > 10 Mbits/sec to most)
Thats $16k per connection. Lets assume cost of capital (6%) + maintainence(4%) is 10%/annum.
So it will cost $1600/annum or $133/month before we add any data costs.
So USA, don't follow our example.
Our dear leader K.Rudd is intent on sending us as broke as you.
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The NBN will form the backbone of Australian communications for many many decades to come. The return on investment will take many years, but this is a long term project that will eventually be extremely profitable as well as hugely benificial to all Australians.
I work in the
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Huge benefits for schools/libraries/research institutions like what? Do people go to libraries to use the net? Would they after they've had super-expensive broadband sho
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What the hell?
All of that nonsense relies on the absurd assumption that the NBN will be some side by side competitor with the existing ADSL network.
FTTN refers to running fibre lines to the very nodes where the ADSL network currently has copper, do you really believe we're going to keep maintaining the copper wires sitting next to the fibre?
Re:Don't follow us (Score:5, Informative)
That obviously isn't true because at that price no one (who had an option) would take it up. Whatever it costs to build access to it will have to be priced according to what the market will bear. Obviously that means someone (presumably the taxpayer) taking a hosing but that's where infrastructure usually comes from.
Australia is probably a worst case scenario for internet access. We have a low population density, our population centres are vast distances apart, our absolute population is pretty low and we don't have a lot of neighbour countries
With that in mind I don't think our access is all that bad. I can get 100gigs of ADSL2+ for $50 a month which isn't too bad.
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Wait, are you assuming it'll need to pay itself off in a year? That's not how long term projects work. I'd suggest it's probably going to be targeted for 20 - 30 year return period, so you'd be looking at a far different cost base.
The reason the government is doing it is because they're the only ones that can take a 20 - 30 year timescale. It's called building infrastructure, and it's what governments are supposed to do with our taxes.
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No, ADSL in Australia is not > 10Mbit/sec to most people.
Whirlpool's latest survey showed that half the connections are running at less than 10Mbit/sec.
Yeah, but that's today. The national broadband system won't be rolled out for at least a decade, by which time that will have improved. A lot. Telstra is about to start rolling out DOCSIS 3.0 for their cable broadband, which starts at around 40 Mbps, and can go much higher.
Prediction (Score:2, Insightful)
Dozens of dittoheads will pan this without even considering that it's worth talking to people who built national broadband networks so that we don't repeat their mistakes.
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This is from the same guy who threw millions at stopping internet bullying with a mandatory nationwide blacklist of disgusting sites, then leaked the list of disgusting sites. Just the other day he released confidential figures revealing the confidential value of our
Look to South Africa (Score:4, Funny)
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You don't have to look outside the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
As a town in Minnesota [arstechnica.com] discovered, all you have to do is threaten to roll your own. Suddenly 50Mb/s for $50/month is available.
The problem isn't technology, population density or land area. The problem is that local government provide a monopoly (or oligopoly), so there is no incentive to truly cut margins and invest in infrastructure. Stop that, and companies will find a way to keep getting that check in the mail.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Gah, this is so simple! (Score:2)
The problem with Internet access in the USA is the local mono/duopolies. There is no reason whatsoever why Internet access should not be the fastest and cheapest found anywhere in the world in the dense population centers. Although many people will say: "but what about the rural areas" -- the reality is that most people live in densely populated areas.
So, what to do about the local mono/dupolies? The obvious place to start is to allow cities to build their own last-mile connections to houses and rent these
Look to the local talent (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you bash him... (Score:4, Insightful)
But honestly, Nowhere does it say "Obama has hired Austrailian Telco Analysts", or "Obama is modelling the effort after the Austrailian effort". Looking for inspiration means asking around and picking up ideas. Just like a software engineer who goes to Google to look for inspiration. The bad ones just copy and paste, but the average and above just look at the other results and try to mold a better solution. I would say this is allegorical. We'll see what happens.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Most bashing here is ideologically driven and the bashers don't need real points to argue when they've already decided what the one true path is and who isn't on it.
Call for desperate measures (Score:2)
A short history of Australian telco stuff (Score:3, Interesting)
So they rolled out their own. Not too private, not to public.
Just pay for the wire, make a profit to pay back cost and future needs.
Jobs for life, cheap local calls, $ for anything else, early with pure digital networking.
A big Bell, but you could make calls, send faxes, enjoy dial up and pay huge amounts for data services.
Then Australia sort of got a bit lost/crazy with its cash flow in the 1980's/90's.
We where going to be pulled into the 20C and had to sell it all, sort of.
So on top of this sold off, own it all Bell giant, all other isp's had to make a profit.
They also controlled the pipe/s out of Australia and ran an ISP.
So for a decade Australia was in telco hell, for profit and gov backed, brainwashed into thinking every packet was golden as we where so far away and unique due to population density.
Australia now has another pipe to the outside world, but still has the old cartel pricing, why change a good thing
Our federal gov has basically said they will roll out optical and out flank the existing Bell copper, exchanges, lawyers ect.
What is a greedy cash crazed Bell to do? Lobby, bribe, PR smear, grass roots astro turf?
Well that does not work as they are pure evil.
What can the US learn?
Roll your own optical and set a few 10's of telcos free on top.
Let the ISP's pay a basic access fee to keep the network working and then sell any mix of services they like.
From all you can eat, no tech support, to pick up on 3rd ring to a real person for $$$.
Connect your schools, hospitals, tv, radio, universities and enter the 21C with something useful. Understand what John D. Rockefeller was taking about when he said 'Competition is a sin." and nail your demands to a town hall doors.
Roll your own and take back your local community from the optical barons and then get your local data to an area where you can play the telcos off against each other.
well it's either Oz ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Broadband Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with Net Neutrality is the last mile. Thus instead of adding more regulation in the form of Net Neutrality, the government needs to address the issue of government granted monopolies on the last mile. Once that is addressed, Net Neutrality issues will fade away. But Net Neutrality can be used as a stick to get more competition in the last mile.
What needs to happen is the Federal government needs to tally up how much tax payer money has gone to the telecoms, add interest, and then tell the telecoms that they need to pay back X billion dollars, once they have done that, they will own outright their own network. The money paid back to the government goes into a fund available to other ISP's that want to lay their own fiber.
Local municipalities would build, if they haven't already, a pipe in the right of ways in front of every house, going to every house. This pipe is what competing ISP’s would use to lay cable in, instead of having to dig separate trenches themselves. The local government would charge a minimal maintenance fee to any ISP who wants to lay cable in the pipe. The telecoms would also pay the same fee, even if they are not using the pipe, which would be for access to the right of way in front of, and through people’s property. This way the construction and maintenance of the pipe is guaranteed without any higher taxes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope they don't follow Australia's censorship model.
Who's model do you think they should follow?
Tim S.
Re:Unfiltered, I hope. (Score:5, Interesting)
force the telco's to either invest the billions they were given or return the money.
If it was me, i'd roll out government owned last mile fiber or high quality copper in population densities greater then 100 people per square mile, and allow private enterprise to use this for a nominal fee and have them provide the backhaul and support services. in area's with lower population density auction off spectrum to ATLEAST 4 different providers in any area.
this way poviders aren't trapped into making huge investments they won't see a return on, and customers aren't trapped by monpoly providers. everyone wins without tax payers having to foot 100% of the bill or making the bill larger then it needs to be.
Re:Unfiltered, I hope. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not suprised (Score:5, Informative)
We have about 1/10th the overall US population density. OTH our urban population density would be quite similar.