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Completely partisan hogwash. Australia - another giant continent with spread out population - also has a copper legacy base. We tried to rollout FTTP (fibre t

Completely partisan hogwash. Australia - another giant continent with spread out population - also has a copper legacy base. We tried to rollout FTTP (fibre to the premises) on the basis that 1000Gbps is a human right or something. It completely fell apart and stalled within two years, and the government who passed it got thrown out, and the next govt tried to complete it with a piecemeal solution that has left swathes of the country less happy than before (though some people got FTTP on the taxpayer's dime and loved it). And now we have much less competition in technology, a govt monopoly on the hardware mandated in 99.5% of households, and a fig leaf of greater choice in who you will pay to shape your internet speed (as all providers are selling you an identical service based on the single-option mandatory hardware described above). TL;dr this is a nightmare, let the market solve it. Tinker with some regs, at most. It can get much worse if you start centralising the "solution" to imperfect internet on a giant continent. Never model American infrastructure on Tokyo or Belgium or other dense small areas with different geography.

wwtrv 6y ago
“The market” did manage to solve it in most East European countries (which had relatively rudimentary copper infrastructure which I assume played a part). You can get a 1Gb line for €20 or less (usually from multiple competing companies) in all major cities where I’m from (low pop density/low overall population) and I’ve heard it’s even cheaper in Romania. The situation with cellular providers is very similar as well. The downside is that due to very low margins most providers can now hardly afford investing into new tech like 5G now.
wombatmobile 6y ago
Australia has a population of 25 million on a continent the size of USA. 90% of the population lives in the top 10 urban areas. The rest are isolated in small pockets, vast distances from urban centres. > We tried to rollout FTTP (fibre to the premises) on the basis that 1000Gbps is a human right or something. The Labor Party's objective was to give country and regional citizens the same standard of online access as urban citizens. They would charge the same retail price for access even though the infrastructure build was more expensive per capita in regional areas. > It completely fell apart and stalled within two years The project's first two years were spent negotiating infrastructure rationalisation with the national monopoly telco. Before the fibre backbone was laid, the Labor government lost an election and was replaced by the Rupert Murdoch backed Liberal Party. Murdoch ordered the Liberal Party to downgrade the network from universal FTTP so that no competitors could arise to threaten his national cable network. The Liberal Party obliged by scrapping universal FTTP, paying billions to the monopoly telco for obsolete copper, which became a hybrid last mile component of parts of the network, which has now cost double the original estimate for universal FTTP. Less than half the network delivers the max claimed speed of 100/25, for a typical price of A$90 per month (US$70).
- Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  As contemporaneous reporting shows, the installation had stalled before the election, and was continuing to fall apart before the MTM changes. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/nbn-rollout-stalled-on-asbestos-issue-not-turnbull/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/articl... Conspiracy theories like "Murdoch ordered the government to not rollout the NBN, though they did so anyway but more cheaply" doesn't deserve a response.
  - wombatmobile 6y ago
    > Conspiracy theories like "Murdoch ordered the government to not rollout the NBN, though they did so anyway but more cheaply" doesn't deserve a response. Thank you for responding. Did you read Paul Sheehan's 4 Aug 2013 article in The Age? https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/murdoch-sends-trusted-general-col-pot-to-bring-down-rudd-over-nbn-20130803-2r6fk.html https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/murdoch-sends-trusted-gene... How about Rudd's 2019 backgrounder in the Australian Financial Review? https://www.afr.com/companies/telecommunications/the-myth-making-around-the-nbn-is-finally-exposed-20191023-p533es https://www.afr.com/companies/telecommunications/the-myth-ma...

wwtrv 6y ago

“The market” did manage to solve it in most East European countries (which had relatively rudimentary copper infrastructure which I assume played a part). You can get a 1Gb line for €20 or less (usually from multiple competing companies) in all major cities where I’m from (low pop density/low overall population) and I’ve heard it’s even cheaper in Romania. The situation with cellular providers is very similar as well. The downside is that due to very low margins most providers can now hardly afford investing into new tech like 5G now.

wombatmobile 6y ago

Australia has a population of 25 million on a continent the size of USA. 90% of the population lives in the top 10 urban areas. The rest are isolated in small pockets, vast distances from urban centres. > We tried to rollout FTTP (fibre to the premises) on the basis that 1000Gbps is a human right or something. The Labor Party's objective was to give country and regional citizens the same standard of online access as urban citizens. They would charge the same retail price for access even though the infrastructure build was more expensive per capita in regional areas. > It completely fell apart and stalled within two years The project's first two years were spent negotiating infrastructure rationalisation with the national monopoly telco. Before the fibre backbone was laid, the Labor government lost an election and was replaced by the Rupert Murdoch backed Liberal Party. Murdoch ordered the Liberal Party to downgrade the network from universal FTTP so that no competitors could arise to threaten his national cable network. The Liberal Party obliged by scrapping universal FTTP, paying billions to the monopoly telco for obsolete copper, which became a hybrid last mile component of parts of the network, which has now cost double the original estimate for universal FTTP. Less than half the network delivers the max claimed speed of 100/25, for a typical price of A$90 per month (US$70).

Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
As contemporaneous reporting shows, the installation had stalled before the election, and was continuing to fall apart before the MTM changes. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/nbn-rollout-stalled-on-asbestos-issue-not-turnbull/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.zdnet.com/google-amp/articl... Conspiracy theories like "Murdoch ordered the government to not rollout the NBN, though they did so anyway but more cheaply" doesn't deserve a response.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  > Conspiracy theories like "Murdoch ordered the government to not rollout the NBN, though they did so anyway but more cheaply" doesn't deserve a response. Thank you for responding. Did you read Paul Sheehan's 4 Aug 2013 article in The Age? https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/murdoch-sends-trusted-general-col-pot-to-bring-down-rudd-over-nbn-20130803-2r6fk.html https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/murdoch-sends-trusted-gene... How about Rudd's 2019 backgrounder in the Australian Financial Review? https://www.afr.com/companies/telecommunications/the-myth-making-around-the-nbn-is-finally-exposed-20191023-p533es https://www.afr.com/companies/telecommunications/the-myth-ma...