4 ms·

Of course, we're having an election sometime this year, and the Liberal's — who are probably going to win — are planning on making the NBN slower and cheaper[1]

Of course, we're having an election sometime this year, and the Liberal's — who are probably going to win — are planning on making the NBN slower and cheaper[1] (100Mbps by utilising the existing copper network, rather than fully replacing it with fiber). 1. http://www.zdnet.com/coalitions-nbn-to-cost-almost-30bn-7000013702/ http://www.zdnet.com/coalitions-nbn-to-cost-almost-30bn-7000...

quink 13y ago
Up to 100 Mbps. By they'll try to get at least 25 Mbps. Don't ask about upload speeds, those apparently don't matter.
- arbitrarywords 13y ago
  Not to mention latency, which is the most significant factor for me. I'm on semi-NBN and now have a 4ms ping to work. Only have to leave the house once a week (Warning: side-effects may vary).
  - joshschreuder 13y ago
    What's semi-NBN?
    - oohmeplums 13y ago
      Opticomm or something similar?
    - arbitrarywords 13y ago
      Nah, it's South Brisbane. They knocked down the old exchange for the hospital extension, Telstra installed fibre, supposedly eventually it will be rolled into the official NBN network, but until then, we get rates way worse than ADSL and I'm forced to pay $30/mth for a "landline" which I never use... still, it's worth it for the latency.
- tacticus 13y ago
  I think Clarke and Dawe did a fairly decent video on the LNP alternative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TptIs0k-spg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TptIs0k-spg
MarkMc 13y ago
The ABC program "Inside Business" gave a neat summary of the differences between the Labor and Liberal plans: http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7 http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7 It's worth noting that the Liberals plan has 'Fibre To The Premises' going to 22% of households, while Labour's plan goes to 93%. So we're spending an extra $17 billion to give 71% of households a boost from 100Mb to 1Gb per second? That's about $2,500 per household. That doesn't seem like good value to me. Shouldn't we delay the massive cost of installing fibre to existing homes until most households need more than 100Mb per second?
- mctx 13y ago
  Can the current copper network handle 100Mbps? I think anything broken down into a per household cost is going to be large - health, transport, and Internet infrastructure.
- justsee 13y ago
  There is a very significant difference between 93% coverage and 22% coverage with this issue. The value goes well beyond the percentage difference because of network effects[1]. Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. It's hard to estimate how valuable that is to Australia's social, economic, and technological future. The Coalition are expected to romp it in, so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. Their system design around a broken and aging copper network has few tech industry commentators impressed. I can't see how maintaining the copper network and delaying the inevitable FTTP rollout makes any sense. Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    > Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. Let's not kid ourselves. The Australian market is tiny. > so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. There's also the possibility that Malcolm Turnbull, a former barrister, investment banker and venture investor in and director of Australia's first major ISP (Ozemail) has his own thoughts about balancing costs and benefits. > They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that paying someone to dig up every street in the country is more expensive than deciding not to dig up every street in the country. > Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. Japan and South Korea have shown that it's really not that big a deal. Really nice, and enables some new businesses. But you have to trade it off against alternative uses of the funds. The same money could build about 20 new hospitals, a new Sydney airport and a clutch of cross-city tunnels. It's possible these might have been more valuable in the long run. Or maybe not. We don't know because no cost-benefit analysis was ever done.

quink 13y ago

Up to 100 Mbps. By they'll try to get at least 25 Mbps. Don't ask about upload speeds, those apparently don't matter.

arbitrarywords 13y ago
Not to mention latency, which is the most significant factor for me. I'm on semi-NBN and now have a 4ms ping to work. Only have to leave the house once a week (Warning: side-effects may vary).
- joshschreuder 13y ago
  What's semi-NBN?
  - oohmeplums 13y ago
    Opticomm or something similar?
  - arbitrarywords 13y ago
    Nah, it's South Brisbane. They knocked down the old exchange for the hospital extension, Telstra installed fibre, supposedly eventually it will be rolled into the official NBN network, but until then, we get rates way worse than ADSL and I'm forced to pay $30/mth for a "landline" which I never use... still, it's worth it for the latency.
tacticus 13y ago
I think Clarke and Dawe did a fairly decent video on the LNP alternative. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TptIs0k-spg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TptIs0k-spg

MarkMc 13y ago

The ABC program "Inside Business" gave a neat summary of the differences between the Labor and Liberal plans: http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7 http://imgur.com/OtmOBE7 It's worth noting that the Liberals plan has 'Fibre To The Premises' going to 22% of households, while Labour's plan goes to 93%. So we're spending an extra $17 billion to give 71% of households a boost from 100Mb to 1Gb per second? That's about $2,500 per household. That doesn't seem like good value to me. Shouldn't we delay the massive cost of installing fibre to existing homes until most households need more than 100Mb per second?

mctx 13y ago
Can the current copper network handle 100Mbps? I think anything broken down into a per household cost is going to be large - health, transport, and Internet infrastructure.
justsee 13y ago
There is a very significant difference between 93% coverage and 22% coverage with this issue. The value goes well beyond the percentage difference because of network effects[1]. Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. It's hard to estimate how valuable that is to Australia's social, economic, and technological future. The Coalition are expected to romp it in, so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. Their system design around a broken and aging copper network has few tech industry commentators impressed. I can't see how maintaining the copper network and delaying the inevitable FTTP rollout makes any sense. Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  > Being able to count on near-ubiquitous FTTP and speeds of 100Mb - 1Gb p/s for a whole country completely changes the tech startup landscape. Let's not kid ourselves. The Australian market is tiny. > so it's pretty disappointing that Malcolm Turnbull was convinced or corralled into playing politics on this one instead of just neutralising the issue by committing to FTTP. There's also the possibility that Malcolm Turnbull, a former barrister, investment banker and venture investor in and director of Australia's first major ISP (Ozemail) has his own thoughts about balancing costs and benefits. > They happily make baseless blowout claims around the current NBN project, so I don't see why they couldn't have instead made baseless "we'll do the same, but cheaper" claims. It's pretty easy to demonstrate that paying someone to dig up every street in the country is more expensive than deciding not to dig up every street in the country. > Being a first-mover in Western society brings a significant number of benefits for Australia's tech environment. Japan and South Korea have shown that it's really not that big a deal. Really nice, and enables some new businesses. But you have to trade it off against alternative uses of the funds. The same money could build about 20 new hospitals, a new Sydney airport and a clutch of cross-city tunnels. It's possible these might have been more valuable in the long run. Or maybe not. We don't know because no cost-benefit analysis was ever done.