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How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout

150 points by bootload 9y ago

Frogolocalypse 9y ago
So they promoted the guy who screwed up the project, Malcolm Turnbull, to be Prime Minister.
- i336_ 9y ago
  The lead singer in Midnight Oil sung "How do we sleep / While our beds are burning" in 1987... and in 2009 the same person (Peter Garret), in his position as Minister for Environment Protection (among other things), was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be the cause of 224 house fires. You basically have to have a humorectomy to be able to follow Australian politics. Otherwise you go crazy from too much cracking up. -- Some qualifying info to add some substance so this isn't just hyperbole and commentary: - IIRC, what was happening is that the installers weren't being paid enough, and they were nailing the insulation haphazardly without identifying where the 240V lines ran underneath the batts so they could dodge those areas with their staple guns. Said insulation batts had foil on them. So sparks flew where wood met aluminium and exposed/partially-shorted wiring. Even more tragically, four installers were also electrocuted (AFAIK/IIUC) by live foil on the batts during installation. - Mr Garret was actually really mature about the situation and took full responsibility, stated that he wasn't fully informed about various risks, and did raise issues about safety multiple times that were not listened to. So there's that. Some random sources/articles I found: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/peter-garrett-tells-royal-commission-he-was-responsible-for-batts-rollout/news-story/6045bce27f3fbd63ecd5fd5537bc93e4 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/peter-garre... http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-garrett-was-in-charge-of-home-insulation-program-mark-arbib-20140512-zr9zr.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garrett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garrett
  - flukus 9y ago
    > was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be the cause of 224 house fires. House fires went down statistically. The absolute number of fires was higher because more homes were getting insulation, but fires per insulated home went down. The real cause is business efficiency, hiring cheaper workers and not training them properly. You can't hold the government responsible for every grunt a private business hires. You don't hear the current lot taking direct responsibility for the recent shooting in our offshore detention facilities. Edit - in hindsight it's a perfect example of how "fake news" isn't a recent problem.
    - i336_ 9y ago
      >> was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be the cause of 224 house fires. > House fires went down statistically. The absolute number of fires was higher because more homes were getting insulation, but fires per insulated home went down. Oh. I didn't know that. So you mean this occurred after the installation...? > The real cause is business efficiency, hiring cheaper workers and not training them properly. You can't hold the government responsible for every grunt a private business hires. Absolutely, yeah. I was trying to get at that idea but didn't quite articulate it. (Thanks.) > You don't hear the current lot taking direct responsibility for the recent shooting in our offshore detention facilities. Indeed :/ (I have to admit I honestly just don't understand why the offshore detention system has to be the way that it is. But this is largely due to my ignorance of the various variables and difficulties of the situation.)
      - flukus 9y ago
        The fires occur after the installation, 50% occur within 10 days of installation, here is a very long and detailed analysis (with some CSIRO analysis as well): https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/04/24/the-csiro-gets-hip-to-debunking-media-hysteria/ https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/04/24/the-csiro-g...
        i336_ 9y ago
- mmerlin 9y ago
  How Malcolm butchered the NBN: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/04/nothing-malcolm-butchered-nbn/ https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/04/nothing-malcolm-but...
- flukus 9y ago
  His mission was to screw up the project, he succeeded and got promoted.
i336_ 9y ago
For people actually sad about the NBN: this mentions that people who want 1Gbps "will have an upgrade option" (I think they said it something like that). This was from Feb 12 this year. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthisshow/nbn/8276824 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthissho...
- Neeek 9y ago
  That doesn't really help the business side of things though. Collaborating across state requires just as meaty an upload pipe.
  - i336_ 9y ago
    Mmm, that's true. :/ If you have such requirements, I'm genuinely curious what they'd come back with (solution/$-wise) if you told them what you needed. (My current awareness of commercial internet is that you can currently get 500Mbps SLA'd fiber for $499 in urban Sydney. Yay? Not so much.)
- boyter 9y ago
  Unless you are on FTTN which will comprise more than 60% of the network and are only guaranteed up-to 12 mbit for the coexistence period and 25 mbit after. Unless you happen to be connected to a node less than 50m away (most will be over 400m) there is no chance your connection will support that option.
  - i336_ 9y ago
    -_- Wow :( This is insane. We're getting laser beams, and they're literally going to be worse than cable! I wonder if NBN Co would agree to do a FTTH setup if I covered the fiber and installation. Hmm. They might, but then I could be stuck with a $200+/mo Internet bill... Shakes head ...this is just infuriating, how completely this has been mis-sold and bungled.
    - boyter 9y ago
cylinder 9y ago
It'll be fine.
- sumedh 9y ago
  How?
- beedogs 9y ago
  Yeah, nah.
marak830 9y ago
I was born and raised in Australia, I left for Japan just as the NBN was beginning to roll out. It's an absolute disgrace how much it has been butchered. I have thoughts about returning occasionally, but going from 2 GB/s unlimited for Aus$ 40 ish a month, back to those speeds and prices is a major factor for me staying here. It is a massive quality of life difference to have amazing internet.
- daemin 9y ago
  I used to have decent ADSL2+ while living in Inner Suburb Sydney, I got close to 20mbit/s. Now I am living in Poland and have 250/20 unlimited for less than a third of the price. The whole NBN project just irritates me at how it has been mis-managed, by both of the political parties. Yes, Labor included since they could have sped things up by having Fibre to the basement for most apartment buildings in the cities, and then upgraded those lines once the other build out had been completed. Also for having the rollout happen along political lines (as has been alleged). Still most of the blame I assign to the Liberals, since it seems they want to make a shambles out of this for political reasons, and also so they can sell it to some other company in the near future.
  - ytta 9y ago
    Just a bit of curiousity - how exactly did you wind up in Poland? Working on a start up?
    - daemin 9y ago
      Working as a Video Games Developer. Also Polish by birth and wanted an easier way to travel around Europe.
- Smerity 9y ago
  As an Australian now living in San Francisco paying $55 per month for 100/100 (WebPass, which would be the same price but 500/500 or 1000/1000 if I moved to a newer building), I have the exact same feeling. When I journey back home and stay with my parents, it is impossible to get work done. Latency is the first killer - it'll never properly be solved if you're working with remote systems in the US or Europe - but then upload speeds slowly rip at your soul. Download speeds and quotas are no picnic either of course. That Australia didn't end up with a future proof fibre to the home system given the amount of money spent is an absolute disgrace. I get angry every time I have to discuss it. I wanted to move back to Australia sooner than later - and the FTTH NBN promised interesting start-up and other opportunities - but given it has been relegated to a copper backwater those plans are on indefinite hold :( I usually point people to the Australian government debate regarding copper wire over iron wire from 1910 as an anachronistic comparison. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/06/parliament-arguing-about-copper-wires-in-1910-makes-for-some-amazing-reading/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/06/parliament-arguing-about-...
znedw 9y ago
Currently I pay AUD$79 per month for the privilege of 1.4mbp/s down and 100kp/s up. My area is slated for the NBN, albiet HFC (using old coaxial) to commence building in 2019. Bloody bonza, mate.
- fliptables 9y ago
  I'd take HFC over FTTN. Last time I lived with DSL I enjoyed the same kind of speeds you're getting and three visits from Telstra minions came out to "sorry, nothing we can do". I'm in no hurry to play that phone-line lottery again.
- ajdlinux 9y ago
  ADSL? I would imagine you could go somewhat cheaper than $79 given it would be hard to exhaust a high-quota plan at those speeds...
- andymurd 9y ago
  I feel your pain as I pay about the same for 1.1mbps down. I can't get any faster speeds (I checked when I worked for Internode) and speed drops whenever it rains. I once tried to follow the Udacity course on Tensorflow, but could not download a 10GB that was needed for one of the exercises. Download kept failing and restarting and eventually I killed it after 8 days. Utterly shameful.
craigvn 9y ago
As an Australian, I think it can be summed up by two reasons. 1. All large scale infrastructure rollouts are difficult and subject to problems and blowouts. 2. It was made a political issue. New government decided to make major revamps for no reason other than it was different to the previous government so they could use it as an election issue.
- shakna 9y ago
  > All large scale infrastructure rollouts are difficult and subject to problems and blowouts. Some of the utter incompetence involved in the actual rollout was astounding. Telstra's crews had to reinstall the lines under the main road of my town 4 times. Twice it was installed on the wrong side of the road, and once it was unshielded. 6 months of traffic jams instead of 1 month.
- shard972 9y ago
  To say they changed it for no reason is omitting the state of the roll out at that time. The budget was already blowing out beyond 2x the cost, they were behind on their revised down goals, they missed wireless numbers by 90%. The only positive thing they could tout at the time was pass by numbers which ignores the hardest part of the roll out, connecting fiber to each and every house. You can argue that the last mile problem should have been tackled head on in the NBN and it was a mistake for the liberals to not, but to say that they did it for "no reason other than it was different to the previous government" is just simply wrong.
  - flukus 9y ago
    > The budget was already blowing out beyond 2x the cost According to partisan figures that were often repeated but never justified. I don't doubt it would have blown out, world class infrastructure would have been worth it at twice the cost. Instead we have the current NBN who's costs have blown out just as much to delivery 20th century infrastructure.
    - shard972 9y ago
      > According to partisan figures that were often repeated but never justified. I mean if you pretend that the $30~ billion paid to telstra had absolutely nothing to do with the NBN then yea you can avoid the 2x figure but I still have no idea how you can say the two things are completely unrelated. > Instead we have the current NBN who's costs have blown out just as much to delivery 20th century infrastructure. How? It's fiber for over 95% the connection with plans already been tested to allow people to complete the line to their house with fiber if your willing to pay for it. That's a lot better than what was available in 20th century. I don't see the big problem with having the government do the entire backbone and lines close to the houses and allow people to fund the final hop if they want to.
shusson 9y ago
> Average speeds have more than doubled since 2013, according to Akamai, but other countries are connecting their populations faster, meaning Australia’s lag with the rest of the world has grown. The article is very light on numbers. It would be nice to actually see solid metrics around speeds and costs across the whole of Australia.
d_t_w 9y ago
Country is a basket case politically, lowest calibre of politician I have ever encountered. A profound paucity of talent across the board and absolutely no end in sight to the endless stupidity. You can think of the shit infrastructure, crap attitude in general, and intellectually bankrupt waste that make up the political class as the many layers of tax on any high cognitive business in Australia. Coal is the future apparently. Don't even get me started on the racists.
- d_t_w 9y ago
  Do you want to hear a funny joke by the Australian Prime Minister? The "cartoon that united Australians" - Malcolm Turnbull, PM, 2017 (his comment, he's not the cartoonist) http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/53a5099c7991c37bb152ddf53f2bc429?width=1024 http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/53a5099c7991c37bb152ddf53... Funny one, isn't it.
  - beedogs 9y ago
    Thankfully, the unhinged racist who drew it just shuffled off this mortal coil. He had many more which were just as terrible as this.
    - flukus 9y ago
      The cartoon wasn't racist, it's your own bias that makes you think it is.
      - d_t_w 9y ago
        Your opinion is a fairly common one in Australia, or at least it is one commonly expressed.
      - dazc 9y ago
        An Aussie friend once told me about a friend of hers who killed a person while drink driving. She said "he (the victim) was only and Ab, but she (her friend) got done anyway" as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.
stirlo 9y ago
The biggest issue with the whole project wasn't the abandoning of FTTP and move to MTM but the locking in of 2010 prices for the foreseeable future via a ridiculous CVC charge that only existed to turn a profit. The founder of one of Australia's largest independent ISP's Internode (and later NBNco board member) Simon Hackett put it very well in 2011 where he showed locking in a arbitrary $20 charge per megabit hobbled the network.The whole profitability revolved around charging more for faster speeds/more data in the future. Every other technological advance gave users faster for cheaper whereas this network would only work if people paid more. Cut to the future and now you've got competition from 4G cellular data at the low end and private companies providing private fibre/wireless networks at the top end. The whole pyramid is coming crashing down so much that the government has had to introduce a new broadband tax ($7.10 per month) to subsidize it. And even the tax won't solve the problems because the CVC usage charge still exists and the business case still resolves around charging more in the future. In about 5 years when they realize what a stuff up it's been we can only help they write it all off and we can go back having affordable fast internet like the rest of the world. https://simonhackett.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/commsday-w-and-dc-hackett-2013.pdf https://simonhackett.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/commsday-w-... https://blog.internode.on.net/2011/07/21/nbn-retail-pricing-pressure-points/ https://blog.internode.on.net/2011/07/21/nbn-retail-pricing-...
- spangry 9y ago
  Yep Hackett called it right. He put his money where his mouth was too: he sold his ISP to iiNet/iiBorg (who were subsequently consumed by TPG) and got the fuck outta dodge. It's a pity; Internode was possibly the best ISP in the country.
  - voltagex_ 9y ago
    Internode's sort of okay still. TPG routes are slower though. I have unlimited FTTP NBN, static IPv4 and a v6 /56 for $110 a month.
    - spangry 9y ago
      Man, that's pretty nice. Looking at the TPG plan page I'm guessing that's at 100/40? What's bandwidth contention like? I know TPG cop a bit of flak on whirlpool, but for the 2 or so years I had ADSL with them I never had a problem... When you say v6 /56, does that mean you can have 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 addressable hosts? [I don't CIDR gud...]
runeks 9y ago
Do we have any examples of successful, nation-wide, high-speed Internet rollouts by governments (for countries roughly size-wise comparable to Australia)? It's an honest question, because I'm not familiar with any.
pserwylo 9y ago
The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack. However they didn't argue this. They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but one which was sub-par on almost every metric except cost. This just doesn't make any sense to me, especially because they tried to sell it to the public by suggesting that things like "Why invest so much in fibre when it may be surpassed by another technology in the near future". There was also a lot of clever wording around how their version would be "delivered cheaper, faster, etc than the alternative" - I have no doubt these words were chosen because it sounds like the data rates themselves would be faster, whereas they actually meant it the build could be completed faster.
- ccakes 9y ago
  FTTP or FTTN aside, aiming for 93% coverage in a country as sparsely populated as AU was a terrible idea to start with. I understand the need to support rural areas but the the majority of the initial budget was to cover non-metropolitan areas and while the govt has been messing this up, private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.
  - discodave 9y ago
    That's actually not the problem. Australia has a similar percentage of people in cities and large towns as somewhere like the US. The low population density of Australia makes backhaul and overseas transfer of data more expensive, and the last 2-5% of people might be very expensive to get. But the original goals of the NBN were well thought out and modeled properly.
  - spangry 9y ago
    This gets repeated a lot, but people seem to forget that a large part of the continent/island [?] is inhospitable desert. Our population distribution looks like this: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4afe2e7cc5078f81d6a9993b21724bb6 https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4afe2e7cc5078f81d6a999... About 60% of the population is clustered in 4 cities [0] and we're one of the most urbanised countries in the world [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#Cities [1] https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/ https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/ & http://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-australian-cities-have-changed-in-the-last-30-years-65870 http://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-austral...
mingabunga 9y ago
Related: Hosting in Aus is ridiculously expensive too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985137
andrewstuart 9y ago
If you posed the question "Who in the world would be the worst possible person to decide on how to construct a nationwide high speed computer network?", the you might come up with a list that included Tony Abbott. I genuinely believe that Tony Abbott really didn't even understand what purpose the Internet serves, apart from email and playing games - he saw it as some sort of frivolous discretionary spend - definitely not anywhere near as important as roads and mines and coal. It's an absolute tragedy for the nation that the original plan was changed by such ignorant luddites as Tony Abbott. They made such an incredibly huge fuss about the cost, but only a month or two back they handed a $23 billion corporate tax cut over to companies and it barely made the newspaper. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I have not an atom of respect for any of our politicians. Off topic, to me all part of the same story is my absolute quivering rage that we are literally giving away our natural resources for nothing or close to nothing whilst every litre of natural gas that can be sucked out of the ground is shipped to other countries. Meanwhile the politicians ride around in helicopters, leech the taxpayer blind with their kingly entitlements and are genuinely surprised when there is outrage about it. Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots.
- fit2rule 9y ago
  >Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots. Nothing can be done until Australians demand Constitution reform. This is the crux of the problems with Australian politics - its Constitution is absolutely atrocious.
  - benjoffe 9y ago
    Which parts of the constitution do you think are bad?
    - eng_monkey 9y ago
      E.g. it does not explicitly outline the right to freedom of expression. It is sort of implied within Government, but not necessarily.
spangry 9y ago
Hilariously, the conservative government currently in power made the following election campaign promises [0] [1] in 2013 (the election where they won government): - Every household and business to have access to broadband with a download data rate of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by late 2016. [We're currently trailing Kenya] - Key prices for a Coalition NBN will be capped nationally, ensuring Australians in metropolitan and regional areas alike can obtain services at fair prices. [For the low low price of $80 a month, on a 24 month contract, you can get 25Mbps/5Mbps from our two largest telcos: Telstra & Optus] [2] [3] - "...unshackle the competitive telecom market that Labor tried to stamp out, and reduce the cost of the NBN to prudent levels." [Because of the NBN wholesale cost structure and network inter-connect structure, our retail ISPs are rapidly consolidating. We're likely to have three left standing by the end. To be fair, the latter wasn't the current government's fault.] - They would complete the network roll-out at 2/3 the cost of the previous plan. [The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated in December 2016 that the total network cost will be $49 billion. However, the current government did make the entirely unsubstantiated and unquestioned claim that the $44B plan for FTTP was actually going to cost $90B.] [4] So, things seem to be going to plan so far. The worst part about all this is that everyone seemed to eat this shit right up at the time. Even Australia's tech so-called 'journalists' were all going on about how the Coalition had presented a 'credible alternative'. We deserve this, because we're stupid. [0] PDF of election document: https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download?token=8OjaNaNc https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download?token=8O... [1] HTML cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ih8ycWOkmRkJ:https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download%3Ftoken%3D8OjaNaNc+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ih8ycW... [2] https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/nbn/nbn-plans https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/nbn/nbn-plans [3] http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-broadband/plans?bt=FBB&tl=FTEL#Plans http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-broadband/plans?... [4] http://www.news.com.au/national/nbn-cost-blowout-to-impact-budget/news-story/2db99cc39d5f9b337e9c8cdba64671eb http://www.news.com.au/national/nbn-cost-blowout-to-impact-b...
cyphar 9y ago
Yeah, shit's fucked. To be fair though, it's not like Labor would've delivered on their promises either. Honestly the whole thing smells very strongly of a money-making racket on the part of Telstra (how much money did the CEOs profit from the privatisation only to sell their 100-year-old waterlogged copper back to the government?).
ajdlinux 9y ago
I'm lucky enough to live in an area where I can get ~70-80Mb/s down and ~30-50Mbps up VDSL2 for a (by Australian standards) reasonable price. My suburb, unfortunately, hasn't been NBN-ified - but we still have a VDSL network courtesy of TransACT, the broadband provider that was created when the ACT Government decided to start laying FTTC fibre around Canberra back in the 1990s. There's a lot of talk of locally-driven "municipal broadband" in the US, but very little in Australia. I expect that's mostly because local governments in Australia are far less powerful than in the United States (which, for the most part, I'm actually okay with) and wouldn't be able to raise taxes and spend them on broadband projects. The Australian Capital Territory, of course, is a special case - a local government with state-level powers, who already owned an electricity network when they decided to go into FTTN as well.
ordbajsare 9y ago
"Australia was the first country where a totally national plan to cover every house or business was considered," GOVERNMENT!! FUCK YEA!!
bootload 9y ago
The NBN is a tale of geography. If you live in the CBD mainland capital city you will get good coverage. Even that it's patchy. If you live more than 30km out access get mostly worse. If you live in the bush, the best you'll get is crappy satellite or your own jury rigged antenna to the nearest town. If you were lucky enough to a) live close to the city b) have telephone poles c) live near a telephone exchange and were chosen by Telstra to get FTTN before the change of government you can get 100Mb+ access. [0] Otherwise you are out of luck. This is largely a political issue that could be fixed by leadership. Australia has weak leaders of both sides of the political spectrum. Market forces are supposed to fix this problem according to our learned leaders, but it won't. Australia is big, really big and we needed a federally funded optic fibre solution to the country even if it cost a lot. Here's my version of NBN... Exchange->fibre->POTS https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/pots Using technology developed during the early 1900s. [0] Relative has NBN fibre to the node.
- jpatokal 9y ago
  Err, no, you don't? Most of central Sydney is on ADSL, NBN has been rolled out primarily in new housing developments way out in the boonies.
  - robryan 9y ago
    Yeah very strange how they have done the rollout. Surely they would have been better off rolling out to densely populated inner suburbs first. Cover the most people and get those most likely to take up the service initially.
    - boyter 9y ago
      It was part of the deal Julia Gillard made to form a minority government. The NBN had to prioritise regional areas first.
      - Khaine 9y ago
        Yes we can thank the greens for a large part of this debacle oh and the lack of carbon tax.
grizzles 9y ago
I have a personal perspective on this. Around 2014 or so, I + some of Australia's top physicists designed and quickly prototyped some tech to lower the cost of the NBN rollout bigtime. Our approach revolved around self install fibre + a far greater use of wireless. I contacted 15+ people in senior leadership at NBNco, all of whom are still on my LinkedIn. No matter how hard I tried, we couldn't get a meeting with NBNco execs to demo our tech. I took it to the local tech press here to get some positive coverage and they told us repeatedly how "stupid" we were. We wrote comments on the now PM (then Communications Minister)'s blog and chatted to his people. Zero interest. At that point they'd been at it for ~7 years, spent billions and had pretty much nothing to show for it. Nada. Last year, an academic completely unaffiliated with us testified at a parliamentary committee into why the existing approach has been such a boondoggle. As a remedy, he suggested our exact approach. He also copped it from the tech press. Here are a couple tweets from that period between me and an online tech pundit. This Renai LeMay fellow runs Australia's most influential tech site, it's very very popular with Australia's politicians: https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705523306699423744 https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705523306699423744 https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705528311330385920 https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705528311330385920 Such is the life of the serial entrepreneur. This is the typical bs that we have to put up with. I folded that company up pretty fast. Idea tested. NEXT.
- eng_monkey 9y ago
  I feel your pain. It is extremely difficult in Australia to get interest in anything related to innovation. I have had surreal experiences when dealing with companies and particularly Government. They will do anything to boycott something that resembles change, particularly if it affects the the way they work, or of course that might expose their incompetency. Australia is not a place to live unless you work in health or in a trade. Scientists and engineers (engineering is not even understood in Australia, usually being associated to things like infrastructure or maintenance) are screwed.
  - grizzles 9y ago
    I'm immune to it now. My motivation in writing about this is because from a public policy perspective I'm convinced that our approach was the correct one. I like to keep the idea alive for those who come after us. I just hope they have more luck with it than we did.
botbot 9y ago
Australian here. I was recently forced from my ADSL2+ service over to the shiny new HFC system. My quality actually degraded - although my bandwidth increased, my latency is off the charts, especially in peak time. I contacted my ISP to see if I could go back to my ADSL2+ service and they flat out said no. The future is bleak.
- Veratyr 9y ago
  Which ISP and where is the latency though? It could be that your ISP has congestion on NBN but not on ADSL2+? Not necessarily the NBN's fault.
  - botbot 9y ago
    This is true, but cable networks tend to degrade because of the way bandwidth is shared compared to DSL connections, and actually gets worse with higher adoption rates. It has to do with where the connection is actually multiplexed. Check out the section 'Shared Bandwidth' on wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Internet_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Internet_access Check out this comparison: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/tech-tips/compare-cable-dsl/pcmcat748301881084.c?id=pcmcat748301881084 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/tech-tips/compare-cable-dsl/pcmc... And check out the post by Net_Sharing in this forum: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28980221-Speed-Does-cable-broadband-really-get-shared-with-the-neighborhood http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28980221-Speed-Does-cable-b...
davidgerard 9y ago
The actual answer: it was directly sabotaged by the Liberal National Party (the conservatives), at the bidding of Rupert Murdoch, who really doesn't want Australian internet not to suck. Basically, Tony Abbott got in in 2013 and the shitty version of the scheme was put into place.
verytrivial 9y ago
An entirely predictable shambles. This money should have been spent on Australian skills and content, not on installing damn cables and routers. Let the market decide how to meet demand for content delivery -- education and social investment are far better places for governments to place these sorts of long bets. I saw this coming a mile away and have a long list of poo-pooed complaints on social media to this effect.
suspectdoubloon 9y ago
At least the South Australian goverment is doing something to alleviate issues of the NBN in Adelaide. Launching 10 gigabit internet across key areas in the CBD. http://gigcity.com.au/ http://gigcity.com.au/
dibbsonline 9y ago
It's about $5000 in tax per household to fund a $38B rollout, and you don't get a choice. That's the unfunded half-ass costed guesstimate which was largely skewed by politicians to make it look better. Why not let people choose to spend $5k on fibre if they want? The majority of connections opt for 12 or 25mbit anyway, sorry couldn't find url for nbnco statistic. Technically, dropping billions on fibre in this day and age is stupid given that so much (vast majority) of the population is already in areas that can get faster IP (over 100mbit) from LTE, wireless technology is the future, imagine if it was spent on LTE sites. Many people use the argument only fibre can do it, when that's just intellectual dishonesty about different types of layer 1. 4 million of Australia's households (roughly half) already have HFC that when upgraded will do gigabit. It is illegal to compete with NBN. The NBN was unfunded in its commitment. The same party implemented a $20b/year national disability insurance scheme which was also not funded. All these arguments saying it was bungled, but only the hollow commitments of the unionist/socialist party that implemented this were bungled. A lot of the angry people also don't pay a lot of net tax either which is the usual narrative of the ALP. So it wasn't properly costed or funded, all these great things that party promised in power, but they still lost the next election anyway, so the people spoke. Also NYT is fake news. :)
antihero 9y ago
In the UK we mostly have FTTC and copper to our property. I'm in London admittedly, but I get 220Mbps/20Mpbs solidly, so copper isn't all bad if you have fibre running to a cabinet that's close to you.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Up in Hull they went FTTP instead FTTC, I can have gig internet at home, they finally did something right, its not cheap but it's not expensive for what it is either.
Khaine 9y ago
The NBN was almost always going to end in failure, as the biggest impediment to Australian internet is the lack of overseas links, and the cost of using these links.
ParadisoShlee 9y ago
http://isthenbnfastyet.com/ http://isthenbnfastyet.com/
swrobel 9y ago
Can anyone from New Zealand comment on whether the same problems exist there? It's even more geographically isolated so I'd expect that to be the case, but who knows.

150 points by bootload 9y ago

Frogolocalypse 9y ago

So they promoted the guy who screwed up the project, Malcolm Turnbull, to be Prime Minister.

i336_ 9y ago
The lead singer in Midnight Oil sung "How do we sleep / While our beds are burning" in 1987... and in 2009 the same person (Peter Garret), in his position as Minister for Environment Protection (among other things), was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be the cause of 224 house fires. You basically have to have a humorectomy to be able to follow Australian politics. Otherwise you go crazy from too much cracking up. -- Some qualifying info to add some substance so this isn't just hyperbole and commentary: - IIRC, what was happening is that the installers weren't being paid enough, and they were nailing the insulation haphazardly without identifying where the 240V lines ran underneath the batts so they could dodge those areas with their staple guns. Said insulation batts had foil on them. So sparks flew where wood met aluminium and exposed/partially-shorted wiring. Even more tragically, four installers were also electrocuted (AFAIK/IIUC) by live foil on the batts during installation. - Mr Garret was actually really mature about the situation and took full responsibility, stated that he wasn't fully informed about various risks, and did raise issues about safety multiple times that were not listened to. So there's that. Some random sources/articles I found: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/peter-garrett-tells-royal-commission-he-was-responsible-for-batts-rollout/news-story/6045bce27f3fbd63ecd5fd5537bc93e4 http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/peter-garre... http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-garrett-was-in-charge-of-home-insulation-program-mark-arbib-20140512-zr9zr.html http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garrett https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garrett
- flukus 9y ago
  > was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be the cause of 224 house fires. House fires went down statistically. The absolute number of fires was higher because more homes were getting insulation, but fires per insulated home went down. The real cause is business efficiency, hiring cheaper workers and not training them properly. You can't hold the government responsible for every grunt a private business hires. You don't hear the current lot taking direct responsibility for the recent shooting in our offshore detention facilities. Edit - in hindsight it's a perfect example of how "fake news" isn't a recent problem.
  - i336_ 9y ago
    >> was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be the cause of 224 house fires. > House fires went down statistically. The absolute number of fires was higher because more homes were getting insulation, but fires per insulated home went down. Oh. I didn't know that. So you mean this occurred after the installation...? > The real cause is business efficiency, hiring cheaper workers and not training them properly. You can't hold the government responsible for every grunt a private business hires. Absolutely, yeah. I was trying to get at that idea but didn't quite articulate it. (Thanks.) > You don't hear the current lot taking direct responsibility for the recent shooting in our offshore detention facilities. Indeed :/ (I have to admit I honestly just don't understand why the offshore detention system has to be the way that it is. But this is largely due to my ignorance of the various variables and difficulties of the situation.)
    - flukus 9y ago
      The fires occur after the installation, 50% occur within 10 days of installation, here is a very long and detailed analysis (with some CSIRO analysis as well): https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/04/24/the-csiro-gets-hip-to-debunking-media-hysteria/ https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/04/24/the-csiro-g...
      - i336_ 9y ago
mmerlin 9y ago
How Malcolm butchered the NBN: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/04/nothing-malcolm-butchered-nbn/ https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2017/04/nothing-malcolm-but...
flukus 9y ago
His mission was to screw up the project, he succeeded and got promoted.

i336_ 9y ago

For people actually sad about the NBN: this mentions that people who want 1Gbps "will have an upgrade option" (I think they said it something like that). This was from Feb 12 this year. http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthisshow/nbn/8276824 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthissho...

Neeek 9y ago
That doesn't really help the business side of things though. Collaborating across state requires just as meaty an upload pipe.
- i336_ 9y ago
  Mmm, that's true. :/ If you have such requirements, I'm genuinely curious what they'd come back with (solution/$-wise) if you told them what you needed. (My current awareness of commercial internet is that you can currently get 500Mbps SLA'd fiber for $499 in urban Sydney. Yay? Not so much.)
boyter 9y ago
Unless you are on FTTN which will comprise more than 60% of the network and are only guaranteed up-to 12 mbit for the coexistence period and 25 mbit after. Unless you happen to be connected to a node less than 50m away (most will be over 400m) there is no chance your connection will support that option.
- i336_ 9y ago
  -_- Wow :( This is insane. We're getting laser beams, and they're literally going to be worse than cable! I wonder if NBN Co would agree to do a FTTH setup if I covered the fiber and installation. Hmm. They might, but then I could be stuck with a $200+/mo Internet bill... Shakes head ...this is just infuriating, how completely this has been mis-sold and bungled.
  - boyter 9y ago

cylinder 9y ago

It'll be fine.

sumedh 9y ago
How?
beedogs 9y ago
Yeah, nah.

marak830 9y ago

I was born and raised in Australia, I left for Japan just as the NBN was beginning to roll out. It's an absolute disgrace how much it has been butchered. I have thoughts about returning occasionally, but going from 2 GB/s unlimited for Aus$ 40 ish a month, back to those speeds and prices is a major factor for me staying here. It is a massive quality of life difference to have amazing internet.

daemin 9y ago
I used to have decent ADSL2+ while living in Inner Suburb Sydney, I got close to 20mbit/s. Now I am living in Poland and have 250/20 unlimited for less than a third of the price. The whole NBN project just irritates me at how it has been mis-managed, by both of the political parties. Yes, Labor included since they could have sped things up by having Fibre to the basement for most apartment buildings in the cities, and then upgraded those lines once the other build out had been completed. Also for having the rollout happen along political lines (as has been alleged). Still most of the blame I assign to the Liberals, since it seems they want to make a shambles out of this for political reasons, and also so they can sell it to some other company in the near future.
- ytta 9y ago
  Just a bit of curiousity - how exactly did you wind up in Poland? Working on a start up?
  - daemin 9y ago
    Working as a Video Games Developer. Also Polish by birth and wanted an easier way to travel around Europe.
Smerity 9y ago
As an Australian now living in San Francisco paying $55 per month for 100/100 (WebPass, which would be the same price but 500/500 or 1000/1000 if I moved to a newer building), I have the exact same feeling. When I journey back home and stay with my parents, it is impossible to get work done. Latency is the first killer - it'll never properly be solved if you're working with remote systems in the US or Europe - but then upload speeds slowly rip at your soul. Download speeds and quotas are no picnic either of course. That Australia didn't end up with a future proof fibre to the home system given the amount of money spent is an absolute disgrace. I get angry every time I have to discuss it. I wanted to move back to Australia sooner than later - and the FTTH NBN promised interesting start-up and other opportunities - but given it has been relegated to a copper backwater those plans are on indefinite hold :( I usually point people to the Australian government debate regarding copper wire over iron wire from 1910 as an anachronistic comparison. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/06/parliament-arguing-about-copper-wires-in-1910-makes-for-some-amazing-reading/ https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/06/parliament-arguing-about-...

znedw 9y ago

Currently I pay AUD$79 per month for the privilege of 1.4mbp/s down and 100kp/s up. My area is slated for the NBN, albiet HFC (using old coaxial) to commence building in 2019. Bloody bonza, mate.

fliptables 9y ago
I'd take HFC over FTTN. Last time I lived with DSL I enjoyed the same kind of speeds you're getting and three visits from Telstra minions came out to "sorry, nothing we can do". I'm in no hurry to play that phone-line lottery again.
ajdlinux 9y ago
ADSL? I would imagine you could go somewhat cheaper than $79 given it would be hard to exhaust a high-quota plan at those speeds...
andymurd 9y ago
I feel your pain as I pay about the same for 1.1mbps down. I can't get any faster speeds (I checked when I worked for Internode) and speed drops whenever it rains. I once tried to follow the Udacity course on Tensorflow, but could not download a 10GB that was needed for one of the exercises. Download kept failing and restarting and eventually I killed it after 8 days. Utterly shameful.

craigvn 9y ago

As an Australian, I think it can be summed up by two reasons. 1. All large scale infrastructure rollouts are difficult and subject to problems and blowouts. 2. It was made a political issue. New government decided to make major revamps for no reason other than it was different to the previous government so they could use it as an election issue.

shakna 9y ago
> All large scale infrastructure rollouts are difficult and subject to problems and blowouts. Some of the utter incompetence involved in the actual rollout was astounding. Telstra's crews had to reinstall the lines under the main road of my town 4 times. Twice it was installed on the wrong side of the road, and once it was unshielded. 6 months of traffic jams instead of 1 month.
shard972 9y ago
To say they changed it for no reason is omitting the state of the roll out at that time. The budget was already blowing out beyond 2x the cost, they were behind on their revised down goals, they missed wireless numbers by 90%. The only positive thing they could tout at the time was pass by numbers which ignores the hardest part of the roll out, connecting fiber to each and every house. You can argue that the last mile problem should have been tackled head on in the NBN and it was a mistake for the liberals to not, but to say that they did it for "no reason other than it was different to the previous government" is just simply wrong.
- flukus 9y ago
  > The budget was already blowing out beyond 2x the cost According to partisan figures that were often repeated but never justified. I don't doubt it would have blown out, world class infrastructure would have been worth it at twice the cost. Instead we have the current NBN who's costs have blown out just as much to delivery 20th century infrastructure.
  - shard972 9y ago
    > According to partisan figures that were often repeated but never justified. I mean if you pretend that the $30~ billion paid to telstra had absolutely nothing to do with the NBN then yea you can avoid the 2x figure but I still have no idea how you can say the two things are completely unrelated. > Instead we have the current NBN who's costs have blown out just as much to delivery 20th century infrastructure. How? It's fiber for over 95% the connection with plans already been tested to allow people to complete the line to their house with fiber if your willing to pay for it. That's a lot better than what was available in 20th century. I don't see the big problem with having the government do the entire backbone and lines close to the houses and allow people to fund the final hop if they want to.

shusson 9y ago

> Average speeds have more than doubled since 2013, according to Akamai, but other countries are connecting their populations faster, meaning Australia’s lag with the rest of the world has grown. The article is very light on numbers. It would be nice to actually see solid metrics around speeds and costs across the whole of Australia.

d_t_w 9y ago

Country is a basket case politically, lowest calibre of politician I have ever encountered. A profound paucity of talent across the board and absolutely no end in sight to the endless stupidity. You can think of the shit infrastructure, crap attitude in general, and intellectually bankrupt waste that make up the political class as the many layers of tax on any high cognitive business in Australia. Coal is the future apparently. Don't even get me started on the racists.

d_t_w 9y ago
Do you want to hear a funny joke by the Australian Prime Minister? The "cartoon that united Australians" - Malcolm Turnbull, PM, 2017 (his comment, he's not the cartoonist) http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/53a5099c7991c37bb152ddf53f2bc429?width=1024 http://cdn.newsapi.com.au/image/v1/53a5099c7991c37bb152ddf53... Funny one, isn't it.
- beedogs 9y ago
  Thankfully, the unhinged racist who drew it just shuffled off this mortal coil. He had many more which were just as terrible as this.
  - flukus 9y ago
    The cartoon wasn't racist, it's your own bias that makes you think it is.
    - d_t_w 9y ago
      Your opinion is a fairly common one in Australia, or at least it is one commonly expressed.
    - dazc 9y ago
      An Aussie friend once told me about a friend of hers who killed a person while drink driving. She said "he (the victim) was only and Ab, but she (her friend) got done anyway" as if it was a perfectly normal thing to say.

stirlo 9y ago

The biggest issue with the whole project wasn't the abandoning of FTTP and move to MTM but the locking in of 2010 prices for the foreseeable future via a ridiculous CVC charge that only existed to turn a profit. The founder of one of Australia's largest independent ISP's Internode (and later NBNco board member) Simon Hackett put it very well in 2011 where he showed locking in a arbitrary $20 charge per megabit hobbled the network.The whole profitability revolved around charging more for faster speeds/more data in the future. Every other technological advance gave users faster for cheaper whereas this network would only work if people paid more. Cut to the future and now you've got competition from 4G cellular data at the low end and private companies providing private fibre/wireless networks at the top end. The whole pyramid is coming crashing down so much that the government has had to introduce a new broadband tax ($7.10 per month) to subsidize it. And even the tax won't solve the problems because the CVC usage charge still exists and the business case still resolves around charging more in the future. In about 5 years when they realize what a stuff up it's been we can only help they write it all off and we can go back having affordable fast internet like the rest of the world. https://simonhackett.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/commsday-w-and-dc-hackett-2013.pdf https://simonhackett.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/commsday-w-... https://blog.internode.on.net/2011/07/21/nbn-retail-pricing-pressure-points/ https://blog.internode.on.net/2011/07/21/nbn-retail-pricing-...

spangry 9y ago
Yep Hackett called it right. He put his money where his mouth was too: he sold his ISP to iiNet/iiBorg (who were subsequently consumed by TPG) and got the fuck outta dodge. It's a pity; Internode was possibly the best ISP in the country.
- voltagex_ 9y ago
  Internode's sort of okay still. TPG routes are slower though. I have unlimited FTTP NBN, static IPv4 and a v6 /56 for $110 a month.
  - spangry 9y ago
    Man, that's pretty nice. Looking at the TPG plan page I'm guessing that's at 100/40? What's bandwidth contention like? I know TPG cop a bit of flak on whirlpool, but for the 2 or so years I had ADSL with them I never had a problem... When you say v6 /56, does that mean you can have 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696 addressable hosts? [I don't CIDR gud...]

runeks 9y ago

Do we have any examples of successful, nation-wide, high-speed Internet rollouts by governments (for countries roughly size-wise comparable to Australia)? It's an honest question, because I'm not familiar with any.

pserwylo 9y ago

The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any slack. However they didn't argue this. They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but one which was sub-par on almost every metric except cost. This just doesn't make any sense to me, especially because they tried to sell it to the public by suggesting that things like "Why invest so much in fibre when it may be surpassed by another technology in the near future". There was also a lot of clever wording around how their version would be "delivered cheaper, faster, etc than the alternative" - I have no doubt these words were chosen because it sounds like the data rates themselves would be faster, whereas they actually meant it the build could be completed faster.

ccakes 9y ago
FTTP or FTTN aside, aiming for 93% coverage in a country as sparsely populated as AU was a terrible idea to start with. I understand the need to support rural areas but the the majority of the initial budget was to cover non-metropolitan areas and while the govt has been messing this up, private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.
- discodave 9y ago
  That's actually not the problem. Australia has a similar percentage of people in cities and large towns as somewhere like the US. The low population density of Australia makes backhaul and overseas transfer of data more expensive, and the last 2-5% of people might be very expensive to get. But the original goals of the NBN were well thought out and modeled properly.
- spangry 9y ago
  This gets repeated a lot, but people seem to forget that a large part of the continent/island [?] is inhospitable desert. Our population distribution looks like this: https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4afe2e7cc5078f81d6a9993b21724bb6 https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-4afe2e7cc5078f81d6a999... About 60% of the population is clustered in 4 cities [0] and we're one of the most urbanised countries in the world [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#Cities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#Cities [1] https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/ https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/ & http://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-australian-cities-have-changed-in-the-last-30-years-65870 http://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-austral...

mingabunga 9y ago

Related: Hosting in Aus is ridiculously expensive too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985137

andrewstuart 9y ago

If you posed the question "Who in the world would be the worst possible person to decide on how to construct a nationwide high speed computer network?", the you might come up with a list that included Tony Abbott. I genuinely believe that Tony Abbott really didn't even understand what purpose the Internet serves, apart from email and playing games - he saw it as some sort of frivolous discretionary spend - definitely not anywhere near as important as roads and mines and coal. It's an absolute tragedy for the nation that the original plan was changed by such ignorant luddites as Tony Abbott. They made such an incredibly huge fuss about the cost, but only a month or two back they handed a $23 billion corporate tax cut over to companies and it barely made the newspaper. I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I have not an atom of respect for any of our politicians. Off topic, to me all part of the same story is my absolute quivering rage that we are literally giving away our natural resources for nothing or close to nothing whilst every litre of natural gas that can be sucked out of the ground is shipped to other countries. Meanwhile the politicians ride around in helicopters, leech the taxpayer blind with their kingly entitlements and are genuinely surprised when there is outrage about it. Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots.

fit2rule 9y ago
>Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country back from these idiots. Nothing can be done until Australians demand Constitution reform. This is the crux of the problems with Australian politics - its Constitution is absolutely atrocious.
- benjoffe 9y ago
  Which parts of the constitution do you think are bad?
  - eng_monkey 9y ago
    E.g. it does not explicitly outline the right to freedom of expression. It is sort of implied within Government, but not necessarily.

spangry 9y ago

Hilariously, the conservative government currently in power made the following election campaign promises [0] [1] in 2013 (the election where they won government): - Every household and business to have access to broadband with a download data rate of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by late 2016. [We're currently trailing Kenya] - Key prices for a Coalition NBN will be capped nationally, ensuring Australians in metropolitan and regional areas alike can obtain services at fair prices. [For the low low price of $80 a month, on a 24 month contract, you can get 25Mbps/5Mbps from our two largest telcos: Telstra & Optus] [2] [3] - "...unshackle the competitive telecom market that Labor tried to stamp out, and reduce the cost of the NBN to prudent levels." [Because of the NBN wholesale cost structure and network inter-connect structure, our retail ISPs are rapidly consolidating. We're likely to have three left standing by the end. To be fair, the latter wasn't the current government's fault.] - They would complete the network roll-out at 2/3 the cost of the previous plan. [The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated in December 2016 that the total network cost will be $49 billion. However, the current government did make the entirely unsubstantiated and unquestioned claim that the $44B plan for FTTP was actually going to cost $90B.] [4] So, things seem to be going to plan so far. The worst part about all this is that everyone seemed to eat this shit right up at the time. Even Australia's tech so-called 'journalists' were all going on about how the Coalition had presented a 'credible alternative'. We deserve this, because we're stupid. [0] PDF of election document: https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download?token=8OjaNaNc https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download?token=8O... [1] HTML cached version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ih8ycWOkmRkJ:https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download%3Ftoken%3D8OjaNaNc+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ih8ycW... [2] https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/nbn/nbn-plans https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/nbn/nbn-plans [3] http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-broadband/plans?bt=FBB&tl=FTEL#Plans http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-broadband/plans?... [4] http://www.news.com.au/national/nbn-cost-blowout-to-impact-budget/news-story/2db99cc39d5f9b337e9c8cdba64671eb http://www.news.com.au/national/nbn-cost-blowout-to-impact-b...

cyphar 9y ago

Yeah, shit's fucked. To be fair though, it's not like Labor would've delivered on their promises either. Honestly the whole thing smells very strongly of a money-making racket on the part of Telstra (how much money did the CEOs profit from the privatisation only to sell their 100-year-old waterlogged copper back to the government?).

ajdlinux 9y ago

I'm lucky enough to live in an area where I can get ~70-80Mb/s down and ~30-50Mbps up VDSL2 for a (by Australian standards) reasonable price. My suburb, unfortunately, hasn't been NBN-ified - but we still have a VDSL network courtesy of TransACT, the broadband provider that was created when the ACT Government decided to start laying FTTC fibre around Canberra back in the 1990s. There's a lot of talk of locally-driven "municipal broadband" in the US, but very little in Australia. I expect that's mostly because local governments in Australia are far less powerful than in the United States (which, for the most part, I'm actually okay with) and wouldn't be able to raise taxes and spend them on broadband projects. The Australian Capital Territory, of course, is a special case - a local government with state-level powers, who already owned an electricity network when they decided to go into FTTN as well.

ordbajsare 9y ago

"Australia was the first country where a totally national plan to cover every house or business was considered," GOVERNMENT!! FUCK YEA!!

bootload 9y ago

The NBN is a tale of geography. If you live in the CBD mainland capital city you will get good coverage. Even that it's patchy. If you live more than 30km out access get mostly worse. If you live in the bush, the best you'll get is crappy satellite or your own jury rigged antenna to the nearest town. If you were lucky enough to a) live close to the city b) have telephone poles c) live near a telephone exchange and were chosen by Telstra to get FTTN before the change of government you can get 100Mb+ access. [0] Otherwise you are out of luck. This is largely a political issue that could be fixed by leadership. Australia has weak leaders of both sides of the political spectrum. Market forces are supposed to fix this problem according to our learned leaders, but it won't. Australia is big, really big and we needed a federally funded optic fibre solution to the country even if it cost a lot. Here's my version of NBN... Exchange->fibre->POTS https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/pots Using technology developed during the early 1900s. [0] Relative has NBN fibre to the node.

jpatokal 9y ago
Err, no, you don't? Most of central Sydney is on ADSL, NBN has been rolled out primarily in new housing developments way out in the boonies.
- robryan 9y ago
  Yeah very strange how they have done the rollout. Surely they would have been better off rolling out to densely populated inner suburbs first. Cover the most people and get those most likely to take up the service initially.
  - boyter 9y ago
    It was part of the deal Julia Gillard made to form a minority government. The NBN had to prioritise regional areas first.
    - Khaine 9y ago
      Yes we can thank the greens for a large part of this debacle oh and the lack of carbon tax.

grizzles 9y ago

I have a personal perspective on this. Around 2014 or so, I + some of Australia's top physicists designed and quickly prototyped some tech to lower the cost of the NBN rollout bigtime. Our approach revolved around self install fibre + a far greater use of wireless. I contacted 15+ people in senior leadership at NBNco, all of whom are still on my LinkedIn. No matter how hard I tried, we couldn't get a meeting with NBNco execs to demo our tech. I took it to the local tech press here to get some positive coverage and they told us repeatedly how "stupid" we were. We wrote comments on the now PM (then Communications Minister)'s blog and chatted to his people. Zero interest. At that point they'd been at it for ~7 years, spent billions and had pretty much nothing to show for it. Nada. Last year, an academic completely unaffiliated with us testified at a parliamentary committee into why the existing approach has been such a boondoggle. As a remedy, he suggested our exact approach. He also copped it from the tech press. Here are a couple tweets from that period between me and an online tech pundit. This Renai LeMay fellow runs Australia's most influential tech site, it's very very popular with Australia's politicians: https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705523306699423744 https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705523306699423744 https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705528311330385920 https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705528311330385920 Such is the life of the serial entrepreneur. This is the typical bs that we have to put up with. I folded that company up pretty fast. Idea tested. NEXT.

eng_monkey 9y ago
I feel your pain. It is extremely difficult in Australia to get interest in anything related to innovation. I have had surreal experiences when dealing with companies and particularly Government. They will do anything to boycott something that resembles change, particularly if it affects the the way they work, or of course that might expose their incompetency. Australia is not a place to live unless you work in health or in a trade. Scientists and engineers (engineering is not even understood in Australia, usually being associated to things like infrastructure or maintenance) are screwed.
- grizzles 9y ago
  I'm immune to it now. My motivation in writing about this is because from a public policy perspective I'm convinced that our approach was the correct one. I like to keep the idea alive for those who come after us. I just hope they have more luck with it than we did.

botbot 9y ago

Australian here. I was recently forced from my ADSL2+ service over to the shiny new HFC system. My quality actually degraded - although my bandwidth increased, my latency is off the charts, especially in peak time. I contacted my ISP to see if I could go back to my ADSL2+ service and they flat out said no. The future is bleak.

Veratyr 9y ago
Which ISP and where is the latency though? It could be that your ISP has congestion on NBN but not on ADSL2+? Not necessarily the NBN's fault.
- botbot 9y ago
  This is true, but cable networks tend to degrade because of the way bandwidth is shared compared to DSL connections, and actually gets worse with higher adoption rates. It has to do with where the connection is actually multiplexed. Check out the section 'Shared Bandwidth' on wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Internet_access https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Internet_access Check out this comparison: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/tech-tips/compare-cable-dsl/pcmcat748301881084.c?id=pcmcat748301881084 http://www.bestbuy.com/site/tech-tips/compare-cable-dsl/pcmc... And check out the post by Net_Sharing in this forum: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28980221-Speed-Does-cable-broadband-really-get-shared-with-the-neighborhood http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28980221-Speed-Does-cable-b...

davidgerard 9y ago

The actual answer: it was directly sabotaged by the Liberal National Party (the conservatives), at the bidding of Rupert Murdoch, who really doesn't want Australian internet not to suck. Basically, Tony Abbott got in in 2013 and the shitty version of the scheme was put into place.

verytrivial 9y ago

An entirely predictable shambles. This money should have been spent on Australian skills and content, not on installing damn cables and routers. Let the market decide how to meet demand for content delivery -- education and social investment are far better places for governments to place these sorts of long bets. I saw this coming a mile away and have a long list of poo-pooed complaints on social media to this effect.

suspectdoubloon 9y ago

At least the South Australian goverment is doing something to alleviate issues of the NBN in Adelaide. Launching 10 gigabit internet across key areas in the CBD. http://gigcity.com.au/ http://gigcity.com.au/

dibbsonline 9y ago

It's about $5000 in tax per household to fund a $38B rollout, and you don't get a choice. That's the unfunded half-ass costed guesstimate which was largely skewed by politicians to make it look better. Why not let people choose to spend $5k on fibre if they want? The majority of connections opt for 12 or 25mbit anyway, sorry couldn't find url for nbnco statistic. Technically, dropping billions on fibre in this day and age is stupid given that so much (vast majority) of the population is already in areas that can get faster IP (over 100mbit) from LTE, wireless technology is the future, imagine if it was spent on LTE sites. Many people use the argument only fibre can do it, when that's just intellectual dishonesty about different types of layer 1. 4 million of Australia's households (roughly half) already have HFC that when upgraded will do gigabit. It is illegal to compete with NBN. The NBN was unfunded in its commitment. The same party implemented a $20b/year national disability insurance scheme which was also not funded. All these arguments saying it was bungled, but only the hollow commitments of the unionist/socialist party that implemented this were bungled. A lot of the angry people also don't pay a lot of net tax either which is the usual narrative of the ALP. So it wasn't properly costed or funded, all these great things that party promised in power, but they still lost the next election anyway, so the people spoke. Also NYT is fake news. :)

antihero 9y ago

In the UK we mostly have FTTC and copper to our property. I'm in London admittedly, but I get 220Mbps/20Mpbs solidly, so copper isn't all bad if you have fibre running to a cabinet that's close to you.

noir_lord 9y ago
Up in Hull they went FTTP instead FTTC, I can have gig internet at home, they finally did something right, its not cheap but it's not expensive for what it is either.

Khaine 9y ago

The NBN was almost always going to end in failure, as the biggest impediment to Australian internet is the lack of overseas links, and the cost of using these links.

ParadisoShlee 9y ago

http://isthenbnfastyet.com/ http://isthenbnfastyet.com/

swrobel 9y ago

Can anyone from New Zealand comment on whether the same problems exist there? It's even more geographically isolated so I'd expect that to be the case, but who knows.