AU National Broadband Network Signs $11 Billion Deal With Telstra 120
An anonymous reader writes "The Australian government has signed an $11 billion deal with the country's largest telco, Telstra, to acquire the telco's physical infrastructure and migrate customers to the National Broadband Network. The NBN is a 100Mbps open access fiber network that will be rolled out to 94% of the Australian population, with wireless and satellite to cover the remainder. The deal marks a large step forward for the new network, as without a deal to bring Telstra's customers onboard, the NBN's viability was in question."
This will not end well (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone knows wallabies love to eat fiber
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no no it's tourists they like to eat not fiber
No .. that's the dropbears. Or the crocs, or the sharks. The rest of the animal population are just venomous.
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It's the platypuses you really have to watch out for - the place is crawling with the venomous bastards
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Every network engineer's worst nightmare:
wallabies driving backhoes
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Yeah, but it looks as though they're not going fibre, but a USB option instead:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=Waubra+Victoria+3352,+Australia&sll=-37.571029,143.851835&sspn=0.013912,0.01929&ie=UTF8&cd=1&geocode=FUPuxf0dV8aPCA&split=0&hq=&hnear=Waubra+Victoria,+Australia&t=h&ll=-37.329014,143.611715&spn=0.006979,0.009645&z=17 [google.com]
Yeah... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The involvement of Telstra with this is far worse than the government. How bad are they?
Their Wikipedia page had to be locked because it kept being edited to read "They are a bunch of cunts"
The majority of their customers are the elderly and uninformed, layovers from when they had a monopoly. They never inform customers of rate cuts or better plans.
I found out recently my father was paying $270 a month plus call costs for his mobile - the same plan he had when he first got one of those suit case mobile phon
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The real reason for the Australian Government buy back. Well it seems the previous right wing political (Liberal as in Libertarian) heavily promoted the sale of the then government institution Telstra to foreign investors. These foreign investors would of course have been spitting chips at the idea that a new government wholesale (they provide the backbone) fibre network that would provide access 'at cost or very low markup' to retail isps which of course would cripple the now privatised telecom incumbent
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You must also remember that the privatised Telstra, sitting on a monopoly of copper access and making huge margins from all of it, had no interest in allowing Australians access to cheap, high speed internet access, because this may in turn lead to the widespread use and adoption of VOIP, which in turn would devalue their copper monopoly.
It makes solid business sense for Telstra to do everything they can to keep Australia on 56k modems.
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The government would be able to do that anyway...
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah, we're all really worried about that.
Oh wait, no we're not.
Are you worried that the government will find out where you drive to? After all, they built the roads. Are you worried that the government will track your eating habits? After all, they built the sewerage system.
This is a public infrastructure system allowing ANY business to compete on a level playing ground. Good for the people, good for business. Not only would I expect this to make 'net access cheaper, but I'd expect a lot more ISPs to sprin
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The National Broadband Network (NBN) is a Layer-2 wholesale network; your IP carriage (or whatever else is run over the fibre) is provided by your retailer, who buy access to the layer 2 wholesale network from NBN Co., the government-owned company that is building and administering the network.
I would think that litigation for copyright violations etc would then be more likely to fall on the retailer, who has a direct relationship with the end user; as the wholesaler, NBN Co. does not.
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Whats the use of an encrypted connection when you're being mass-MITMed by the very lines you're going through?
Security through obscurity is the first step. Once you've got that down pat, then encrypt it.
Someone's going to punch me in the face for saying that.
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Whats the use of an encrypted connection when you're being mass-MITMed by the very lines you're going through?
Avoiding MITM attacks is one of the primary design features of SSL / TLS. Unless the government has control of a root cert authority in your browser they can't MITM you without you getting at least a warning. Of course, I wouldn't put it past them to legislate that all browsers distributed in Austraila must ship an "Australian Government" root cert and then the game will be up ...
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I trust SSL/TLS against malicious users, not government level sniffing. I'd almost guarantee that the NSA have copies of most root certificates for the purpose of conducting MITM attacks.
This is why I have a VPN
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In this case, any network outside of Australia is considered "Trusted" for my purposes.
I pretty much just want to get around the whole Australian Governments "We are going to watch everything you do" policy. Specifically, their desire to log every website I visit.
Last thing I want is for the feds to bust my door down because I'm googleing a particular book by Vladimir Nabokov.
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Exactly.
When I'm plotting my suicide terrorist schemes to kill the president by blowing up new york using illegally downloaded music and child porn, I use something a little more secure.
(Ohai there NSA!)
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Thanks, I've been wondering what a "dirty bomb" was.
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My only concerns are privacy and censorship. It's not like they were protected before by having private telecoms, but what happens when the government runs the entire network?
That's a problem.
It does somewhat depend on which country you're in. Here in the US, for example, we do have some rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Granted, they're not always followed, but in theory at least (and in practice if you have enough money), you can get them enforced, or the violations can mean that the courts will di
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe now the Australian people won't get fucked by Telstra any longer. Seriously, that's got to be one of THE worst ISPs I've seen people use.
I've had more stable video conference calls on a 56k dialup.
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Yeah, now they will be fucked by their Government instead. Who do you think has the bigger dick?
This is going to turn out one of two ways.
Best Case: the NBN operates somewhat like AmtTrak in the US, forever receiving subsidies from the national government while getting government-granted monopolies on some kinds of operation.
Worst Case: the Australian government decides that NBN is a really good start on nationalizing all Internet access in their country.
Either way, the people that think this operation will be spun off privately and profitably one day are fools.
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Provision of last-mile services are not commercially viable, virtually every network of this type has been built with government funds.. If such a network comes under private ownership it will always be a monopoly because it isn't commercially viable to build any competing infrastructure.
Such infrastructure should always have remained controlled by a non profit wholesale provider, and let third parties brand and offer services to end users.
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Provision of last-mile services are not commercially viable, virtually every network of this type has been built with government funds.. If such a network comes under private ownership it will always be a monopoly because it isn't commercially viable to build any competing infrastructure. Such infrastructure should always have remained controlled by a non profit wholesale provider, and let third parties brand and offer services to end users.
I think it's true that this project isn't commercially viable. For the "non profit wholesale provider", the question is how much of the building costs they will be able to recoup through the wholesale charges. Closing down the competing Telstra network will presumably allow higher charges than would otherwise have been the case. My experience with other government enterprises, e.g., electricity, is not entirely positive, since they tend to operate inefficiently and simply pass on the costs via large annual
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Yes, inefficiency is the problem with government organisations... If it's not their money, then the people running the show don't care about wasting it. That said, when organisations like this have been privatised the company taking over quickly makes huge profits by cutting costs, but often they also massively slash service to do so.
In theory, the non profit wholesale provider should recover their costs, not making a profit but not making a loss either.
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When the majority of Telstra shareholders including one that had more than a 50% stake voted to stop the Telstra CEO from getting a five million dollar bonus for nearly running it into the ground the board ignored them.
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This pretty much sums it up. THey're a bunch of money grabbing cunts, but if you pay (the exorbitant amount) for a high grade service, you actually get a high grade service.
To some people (businesses) this is important.
Home use though? Telstra? You're fucking crazy :D
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Then you're doing it wrong. Do telstra over-charge? Yes. Are they a pack of cunts? Yes. Is their tech support garbage until you get through 18 levels of helpdesk gumbies to someone with a clue? Yes. However their backbone is solid.
Unless there is some fault which you haven't managed to get telstra to sort out, the problem is not likely Telstras.
I've dealt with Telstra and other ISPs in australia for the past 15 years in both a second ti
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"Then you're doing it wrong. Do telstra over-charge? Yes. Are they a pack of cunts? Yes. Is their tech support garbage until you get through 18 levels of helpdesk gumbies to someone with a clue? Yes. However their backbone is solid. "
Not by any means am I doing *ANYTHING* wrong. My business partner in Australia gets disconnected REGULARLY during our video-conference calls because Telstra's backbone SUCKS BALLS, and he's paying for business-class service.
We had to resort to using our cell phones to get busin
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4. Profit! (for the Telstra shareholders)
Well it would be about time for them
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Yeah, its a bit of a redundant exercise IMHO but its really the nature of the beast. The Liberal Govt sold off Telstra (and privatized it) and now we have Labor in Govt they've decided to rebuild a brand new infrastructure to replace it. One would think they would of just kept Telstra and simply fixed the problems but this is a fine example of how politics fails for the people by not considering the sake of practicality.
Now they want to transition the customers back? amidst of an economic crisis? this reall
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Labor could have done this right with clean new equipment, new telcos and worlds best practice.
Now we have the same old rust belt tech grafted on.
The same crushed ducts, digital loop carrier DLC protecting telco leaders getting rehabilitated with public funding.
The only effort put into national networking was to stifle, silence and suppress any talk of one.
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I blame consumers for not being informed for Telstra being dominant in ADSL. For many non-technical people "bigpond" and broadband are synonymous. Even if you try to explain alternatives they just ignore you and go with Telstra anyway. Telstra do have a huge war-chest when it comes to advertising which helps their dominance, but other ISPs have print & billboard ads. Even a small amount of digging would show up how much better the other ISPs' offerings are (more broadband for less cost).
NBNCo buying the
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Existing fibre is usually backhaul quality, any telco can run that out given approval.
A second set of trenches would ensure a clean install or blowing down existing ducts ect.
20Mbps in cities with copper is what 1200-1400 m of looped clean quality copper from the exchange?
http://www.internode.on.net/residential/broadband/adsl/extreme/performance/ [on.net]
Telstra's only interest seems to be a direct monopoly or a wholesale monopoly or an interconn
FUD. (Score:5, Interesting)
For anyone truly concerned, they never tested any of their ISP-level filtering shit on the fibre networks, because they know it'll fuck up under that load. If anything, the NBN will make any further censorship proposals go away... for now.
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Splitting telstra into retail / wholesale is a good idea.... but we just sold the thing for about $20b, and now we're buying back the wholesale half at the same time we're going to replace the infrastructure anyway?
And why on earth would the viability of the network be in question without telstra's customers? Surely a faster / better built fiber network would have a queue of customers beating down their door?
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Not without running the service at a loss. Telstra offers 'fast enough' service for most users over fully-written-down infrastructure and should totally spank a commercial greenfields national FTTP network on price. The government can't run the NBN non-commercially (at a loss), otherwise the expenditure has to come on-budget.
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Splitting telstra into retail / wholesale is a good idea.... but we just sold the thing for about $20b, and now we're buying back the wholesale half at the same time we're going to replace the infrastructure anyway?
It's true that the original Telstra sale was fucked (privatising a monopoly just turns it into a private monopoly). However this move makes economic sense - they're not so much buying Telstra's crappy old copper infrastructure, they're buying the pipes, cable conduits etc. that that infrastructu
This is Great (Score:5, Insightful)
This will save the government billions of dollars in trench digging and pole construction. This is a great sign that the NBN won't be scrapped by any upcoming parties.
On the other hand since the NBN is essentially going to either make Telstra's service a niche product or drive the company into bankruptcy, you'd think they'd just nationalize their assets anyways. But at least this way the shareholders, most of which are common Australian families, will get something out of it.
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The sad part about this, is it's just another case of the public getting screwed by the government. Guess what... Telstra used to be a national asset. We already HAD a "National Broadband Network" using the technology of the time. But then the government decided that wholly owned communications network wasn't something the Australia public needed, so they sold it off (and then lost the election). So now the public has to pay to get back what we already had...
And politicians wonder why they are universally h
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Wow, this has to be some of the best revisionism I've heard in a while.
Questions to keep in mind when reading the parent:
* Just how in debt was the Australian government when they sold off nationally owned utilities, debt which they inherited from the previous administration, who's in power currently?
* Just how pathetically overbearing was Telstra, given that it owned both a consumer branch, and the infrastructure, and could essentially charge whatever they liked?
* Who's benefited in the meantime thanks to
Beter 2 have no ISPs @ all 4 the residential markt (Score:2)
Just have a flat levy on residential land rates (like I think Queensland does for funding it's ambulance service).
Remember economies of scale are king in this business. The costs of running a nation-wide network with 97+% of the residential market & 100% of the Govt market aren't really that much greater than the costs of running a a nation-wide network with 20% of the same market, well relately speaking. The only decision required is working out the simplest/cheapest revenue method for such a govt util
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This is a great sign that the NBN won't be scrapped by any upcoming parties.
Coalition to halt NBN-Telstra deal [itwire.com] (if elected later this year).
FFS.
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the shareholders, most of which are common Australian families, will get something out of it
That's the only reason I can see for the high value of this agreement. There's still the problem of getting fibre from the exchange to the street (or whatever local level...). We should have never sold the physical tunnels to telstra in the first place. I don't know why we're paying them for anything else. By the time the NBN is "finished" there shouldn't be too much left of their existing equipment.
On a somewhat related note, I wonder how big a fish you'd have to be to get wholesale access...
This is not a done deal! (Score:2)
Unfortunately, this is not the case. What the Government and Telstra have signed is a "Heads of Agreement", which is not a binding contract; it's more like a broad set of terms both sides agree on.
The finer details still need to be discussed and the resulting contract approved by Telstra's shareholders before we can really rest easily. Until then, either side (incl. the next Government, should it change) can pull out.
It's defi
Nice if the US had such a thing (Score:3, Insightful)
The Telstra-NBN deal illustrates how the telecom industry should be restructured.
In the US, recent policy has moved in exactly the opposite direction, towards more vertical integration, so the telephone companies, who own wires built with monopoly money, don't have to let competing ISPs use them at all. They only have to let competitive phone companies (CLECs) use them under certain circumstances, which are shrinking; this basically is limited to old copper wire in urban areas and town centers.
A "LoopCo" would be a company that owns the outside wire and leases it equally to all comers, building fiber for all who want to rent it, even cable. One fiber plant is a lot easier to afford than two or three. The original NBN plan would have built a new fiber plant to compete with Telstra; as customers moved off of Telstra's old copper network, Telstra would have lost money. Telstra blinked: They're selling their existing plant to NBN, so that they will be the biggest wholesale customer, not a competitor. Telstra wins: They get to use the new network, and get paid A$11B for their old wire. The country wins: They get NBN's new fiber, and don't have to fight Telstra all the way, or pay twice.
The Bells in the US do not see it this way. Nor does the FCC, which is squarely in their pocket. Expect the US to fall farther and farther behind, as the farce called "National Broadband Plan" leads to more of the same, just with higher taxes to subsidize CenturyTel, TDS, and other rural subsidy whores who can use the subsidy money to put local wireless ISPs, who are not eligible for subsidies (only one subsidy recipient in a given place - it's literally a monopoly fund) out of business.
It's a tradeoff. (Score:2)
And in exchange, accept ubiquitous monitoring and censorship.
Sorry, but the Australian government has gone far too Orwellian for me. If I had a choice of being on a government-sponsored internet, I would insist that it be just like phone lines: no censorship, and no monitoring without a warrant.
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I'm still not sure if the government is actually serious about the filter.
They've been in for the better part of three years now and it's never even come close to coming up for a vote. They've certainly talked about it enough, but they've never even tried to pass it, despite the fact that they could probably actually get it across the line, especially if they actually played the "think of the children" card. They've tried to pass a whole bunch of other things which they didn't have a hope in hell of passing
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But it's not. The government is building the dark fiber which will be sold at wholesale prices to private ISP's. We don't have a public Telco any more.
What monitoring and censorship. Most Labor MP's don't want it and have openly said so. The Coalition will oppose it just because it's a Labor idea.
But it is. Exactly like phone
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I've read the NBN proposal. Have you?
News, and by "News" I mean biased and uninformed reporting is not a trustworthy source of information. Especially if it's a US news channel. I highly doubt you have any credible information that I don't already posses, but if you think you do front it up rather then making false statements.
The NBN is an infrastructure program, like building water pipes or power lines. The government leases these lines out to
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http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/big-brother-wants-all-your-bits-and-bytes-20100611-y3p3.html [theage.com.au]
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/blogs/the-geek/internet-freedom-in-2010-looks-like-1984/20100618-ykr9.html [theage.com.au]
http://www.zdnet.com.au/govt-wants-isps-to-record-browsing-history-339303785.htm?omnRef=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webspy.com.au%2Fblogs%2Findex.php%2Fgovernment-sanctioned-isp-filtering-and-moni [zdnet.com.au]
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The article is about the NBN, if you bothered to read anything on the NBN you'd know it was an existing project with a fixed mandate that was already underway. BIG CLUE they cant change it now. The NBN had nothing to do with the proposed filter that will never pass parliament.
None of your links mention the NBN, that is completely different from the proposed filter. Just doing a scra
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Increase your medication, that might help you understand the difference between something that exists (the NBN) and something that doesn't (the filter)
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This will be obsolete before it's completed. (Score:1)
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No copper network in any real world scenario is delivering >100 megabit connectivity, those new housing estates have fibre to the premises(which is exactly what the government is trying to give to everyone else.
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Also ignoring the fact that this is about getting fibre in the ground, for use by third party switching/routing hardware. Once the fibre is in the ground, ramping speed up is a simple case of fitting better gear end to end.
Bandwidth on fibre is virtually unlimited (for the foreseeable future), you just need to develop/install better routers. Its possible to get 10gig and 100gig over the same fibre with good enough equipment (which will be released in due course).
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One of the 3 proposed systems I know about is exactly like Versions FiOS system that is delivering up to 35 mb. The only reason they are saying 100 mb here is that they aren't planning for as many cable TV channels (which is another mistake). Also that is only 100 mb down, not both ways. None of the proposals are FTTP, they are just FTTN where the node is a passive splitter. The result is your sharing the link all the way back and the means you may have to upgrade everyone if you want to push the the sp
More Money for Telstra? Again? (Score:1)
It seems there are some devilish details... (Score:1)
* Telstra gets to be removed from universal service obligation
* and there will be yet another company setup to look after unprofitable telco services to rural and regional Australian - called USO Co - with only 50 million to do with with (at least to begin with)
As to filtering - I still think it is a part of a master plan to create a backbone which is filtered before it ever reaches ISPs. They won't/aren't concerned with filtering
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On rust belt adsl, 2+ its really just the laws of physics and quality limits, distance.
The universal service obligation comes with many neat options too, like road removal ect.
Recall how smaller Australian telcos had to beg and fight to lay small amounts of city optical?
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Which is how it always should have been. Privatizing the network meant that Telstra had to be saddled with all sorts of ridiculous legislation to stop it from becoming an abusive monopoly, and to ensure service to the bush. That's the primary reason why Telstra shares aren't worth spit, because Telstra can't be competitive, no matter how hard they try.
Universal service should always have been a government thing because it's a massive money sink which is supposed to be there for the good of society.
Correction to the article (Score:2, Informative)
"The NBN is a 100Mbps open access fiber network that will be rolled out to 94% of the Australian population"
Currently, the plan is only 90% coverage with fibre, although the recent report by KPMS suggested they increase that to 92%. I believe the 94% is the current (claimed) Telstra ADSL coverage.
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Except that in housing areas full of California millionaires only gets about 80% to 85% coverage in the US. The figures for the NBN in Australia are just wrong.
Not acquiring assets (Score:1)
$11bn?!?! (Score:2)
How much did the Government sell Telstra for in the first place? ;-)
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$11bn would be about 26% of the total value of all Telstra's stock or 29% of the value of its assets.
Paying Twice (Score:2)
That infrastructure already belonged to the people of Australia, since we initially paid for it (when the Government initially built it).
Then it was given away as part of Telstra when the company was partly privatised.
Now we have to pay for it again so we can replace it.
Australia's issues (Score:1)
The alibi of broadband (Score:1)
Come on along and be impressed, the alibi of broadband.
Australia has to have the best, the alibi of broadband.
It will connect to everyone, in every home or nearly.
It's going to be a heap of fun, it's going to cost us dearly.
When the brand new broadband comes to town, it won't be that much quicker.
A special filter slows it down, to catch the porn.
Must ask Kevin, one thing we don't understand.
With the net so full of crap, who needs broadband?
Wait, I'm confused. (Score:2)
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Come on, Australia has a population of 21MM people! If it joined the US, it would make it our 3rd largest state population-wise and that largest state area-wise! That, and if any of their government censorship antics (or nationalized broadband) are successfully implemented, don't think that the US and Western Europe won't seriously considering following suit.
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21 MilliMetres?
I think you mean 22 Million people.
Just to clarify, Australia is 7,617,930 km2 whilst the continental United states is 8,080,464.25 km2. We are almost as big as 48 of your states put together.
And we are getting better Internet infrastructure (how are those local monopolies working out, our regulation is great) not to mention
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Australia is currently spearheading innovation in Western censorship and control. Think of it like MSDN for governments.
Re:What's with all the USAian news? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems like every day there's a story about AT&T, Verizon, "cable" and "digital switchovers". It's just one country, right?
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They have a huge secret database of crushed ducts too.
Other telcos have asked for details but nobody gets to understand the state of the network in any depth.
This mindset is what we will be adding to a new network.
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So, organise ways to share ONE Internet service (Score:2)
In the UK, BT actually encouraged people to share their broadband accounts,
eg, so BT wouldn't have to add as much infrastructure each year.
(It's a bit like power generators encouraging folks to generate power locally,
eg, with their own wind or PV gear & buying their power during peak-load-
ing periods.)
Very sensible!
Perhaps, someday, WiMAX boxes will get as cheap as today's home routers,
so you'll be able to share a fast NBN account with some neighbors.
If not WiMAX, then something similar - maybe even bet