There is an interesting comparison with what could have been. When I moved to New Zealand in the early 2000s, Internet access was worse than in Australia. “Bro

There is an interesting comparison with what could have been. When I moved to New Zealand in the early 2000s, Internet access was worse than in Australia. “Broadband” was 256kbps ADSL at best, insanely expensive, with punitive data caps, and the monopoly telco had no interest in investing to increase service or drop prices. There were other ISPs but they had a hard time competing due to underhanded tactics by the monopolist as well as having to build out their own infrastructure entirely whereas the monopoly had inherited all its infrastructure from the taxpayer built state owned company that was privatised for a song. Around 2007, the government removed this monopoly power and broke up the company into infrastructure and service companies, with the infrastructure company having to provide equal access to any ISPs. Then the initiative to build fibre to the home started in 2008. Luckily, the government of the day did not compromise on the technical approach and it remained fibre to the home, not the node. Roll forward to today, and I have gigabit fibre to my home, with no data caps, for a decent price. There’s still a fair bit of build out to happen but the option now exists for people in most urban areas.