So this was spearheaded by Telstra, and Foxtel (joint established by News Corp and Telstra) who have enjoyed dominance, even near monopolies in some areas, of c

So this was spearheaded by Telstra, and Foxtel (joint established by News Corp and Telstra) who have enjoyed dominance, even near monopolies in some areas, of communications in this country for years. Rupert Murdoch's empire is also directly responsible for getting our National Broadband Network cancelled. We were building a fibre network, where 93% of homes and businesses would get fibre to the premises, (the last 7% were rural premises that would get fixed wireless or satellite connections). It was a gigabit-capable passive optical network, where any ISP could pay their wholesale fees and offer their services, with nobody locked out. Reliable, fast, and fair. It wasn't some distant, theoretical pipe dream. It was really happening. About a million homes already got it installed, beginning in 2009. It was working fantastically. They can all get 100Mbit up and 40 down right now, and business users can even order gigabit if they're willing to pay for it. Then, Murdoch's media empire installed a new conservative government. They handed them the election in their media, in exchange for destroying the NBN. They didn't want competition with their cable TV, and Telstra did't want competition for fixed line internet. And the party immediately called a halt to the fibre installation, replacing the fibre plan with basically the worst internet technology known to man - fibre to the node (i.e. glorified DSL). Now the rest of us are promised only 12Mbit (supposedly 25mbit in the future, and supposedly 50Mbit after that, but they have absolutely no plan for how they're going to achieve these higher speeds over the degraded copper). They also kicked a bunch of people off fixed line connections entirely. The argument at the time was 'it's cheaper, quicker to install, and nobody will ever need more than 25Mbit' (they actually said that). And since the maintenance, power, and upgrade costs are so much higher, it's actually far more expensive. And many people are going to be DOWNGRADED, their 24Mbit DSL replaced with slower FttN if the node isn't near them, or having the fibre on their HFC cable connected to phone lines in a horrible hybrid monstrosity, or their unlimited DSL ripped out entirely in favour of wireless with 30GB download limits. Enjoying 100Mbit cable now? Maybe they'll upgrade it. Or maybe you'll get to wave goodbye as the Liberal party dumps anything on you going all the way down to 25 or even 12mbit instead. The speeds are disastrous. I've talked to people getting 14, 10, and even less than 1 Mbit from this "Superfast broadband". And people are getting dropouts multiple times a day, which they deem "acceptable". It has severely screwed up the future of this country. It's severely limited the areas I can rent or buy a home in in the future if I'm going to stay long term. And our economy and businesses are absolutely screwed. Medicine, research, education, jobs... down the drain. And simply your ability to have a fast, reliable internet connection at home or at work. It makes me angry to think about it. It's so unjust to sell out our country so a few billionaires can increase their stock price some more that it makes me sick. They have nothing but their own corporate interests in mind. They will stomp on and destroy and hold back the internet and our ability to use it in any way they can. The sooner we all stop listening to these Fox ratbags the better.