saying you are spending $43b of taxpayer's money without viability research is what's far removed from reality.

i know you guys are in love with fast internet. i have optus cable and love it too. but this s*** is whacked. $43b hah.

i just ran some basic calculations to estimate the average cost required to fund this snowy mountains for the 21st century (lol). it contains a number of assumptions but these are based loosely on standard business benchmarks.

starting from a capital cost of $43b, an acceptable return on investment is 12.5%, so annual earnings would need to be 5.375b. now based on an assumption of 20% profit margin this would require a gross revneue per annum of $26.875b.

I have no ideas how many maximum subscribers you would have at saturation but even using a number like 20m when combining together both private domestic and business users gives an average annual spend per customer of $1343 or $112/month.

Now that is the base revenue for the fibre company and is before resellers add on their profit. If the subscriber base is lower than that, then earnings will be lower and the capitalised value will be instantly written down if not achieved in the 5 year trading up.

These are big numbers and if they aren't achieved, then each year the gap will be eating away our national budget which should be could be used to give handouts etc. instead.


last edited by infi at 12:00:15 09/Apr/09

The announcement was based upon industry and expert recommendations. People that had already done the technology research.

Oh, *experts*. You mean these guys?

Even industry vets like Mark Newton think it's a hilarious idea.

AAPT Chief, Paul Broad, has suggested that consumers may be slugged $200/month for access to the system.

which should be could be used to give handouts etc. instead.

lol

AAPT Chief, Paul Broad, has suggested that consumers may be slugged $200/month for access to the system.

yeh, and then in the same article: "Mr Broad says because the 100 megabits-per-second data rate promised is only around double what is available today for less than half the price, such a drastic increase in price will scare away potential customers."

Where can I get 50mbit (or near 50mbit) for $100/month?

He might be being tricky and talking about bonded DSL or the like. Is VDSL ratified yet? I just googled this.

How much does telstra make a year? 4-5 billion?

I dont see why a company that will basically take over there monopoly cant make the same ammount.

Obviously this doesnt include mobile, but it will certainly be internet phone and TV.

trog, that might be a quote from the article, but it isn't a quote from Paul Broad. You really have to wonder what he actually said instead of how the journalist paraphrased it.

^ the access (fibre) network is only one component of the network. it is not the smoking gun. You also need the edge, core, backhaul and international capacity, plus a myriad of systems in place to get 4-5 billion.

It all depends on what level they are going to split the wholesale/retail.

You also need the edge, core, backhaul and international capacity, plus a myriad of systems in place to get 4-5 billion.

Thats what the retailers will provide, remember, were not just talking about home broadband connections, so infis average of per household isnt realy correct. Remember business are paying thousand's a month for highspeed connections, prices may come down slightly on those connections, becuase you will have competition, but they wont come down that much, becuase you still need network capacity for those sort of connections. Plus all the fixed line rental, imagine how much just business in australia pay for onramp connections to telstra, ill give you a clue, a f***load, when the fibre goes in theyll be able to buy multiple lines from lots of people.

I think alot of people are forgetting just what the current copper network is used for.

I agree that you have a good point. Telstra is uniformly hated out there so I think there is a good market for business grade services that can be ripped away from the teat.

Some of the problem stem from the fact the really old moneymakers for telecom are bound to the tech, but, with 8 years, that's enough lead time.

Typically infi is just frothing at the mouth in a mad diatribe because its once again the end of the f***ing world, courtesy Chairman Rudd. I don't have time for his prattle beyond a couple of responses.

Its f***ing obvious to everyone - except people trying to score petty political points - that the devil is in the detail, and that the broader announcement will need to be backed up by more detailed planning and analysis when it comes time for the legislation to be presented.

What we have now is the announcement and a broad map of the intended process. Half of the reason for the announcement will have been to annouce the end of the RFC process for the previous FTTN plan and the initiation of a new direction.

Should they have spent months in secret planning the fine detail while people wasted millions of dollars in time and effort vying for the prior NBN incarnation when it had been sideleined? Of course not - all the players (and the community in general) needed to be advised of the decision to make a more significant investment and go the whole hog (lol, gettit) for FTTH.

Everyon making grandiose announcements about pricing, ROI etc. ten years before its finished and before the plan is even tabled at parliament are being (deliberately?) absurd.

At least wait until you have all the details, that way you can have some hope of pretending to be objective.

last edited by Hogfather at 12:52:30 09/Apr/09

Should they have spent months in secret planning the fine detail while people wasted millions of dollars in time and effort vying for the prior NBN incarnation when it had been sideleined?

An open transparent enquiry would have been fine. At least you don't get grand proclamations of $43b in spending without any research into financial modeling.

Everyon making grandiose announcements about pricing, ROI etc. ten years before its finished and before the plan is even tabled at parliament are being (deliberately?) absurd.

yeah unlike how campbell newman stated the toll to be charged for the north-south bypass, before it even started construction. see he did the economic modeling and didn't shoot his mouth off.

last edited by infi at 13:00:26 09/Apr/09

Everyon making grandiose announcements about pricing, ROI etc. ten years before its finished and before the plan is even tabled at parliament are being (deliberately?) absurd.

Exactly, It just seems like the liberals have just come out jumping up and down saying this is the worst idea ever, because labor announced it, i'd love to be able to see what people would have said if liberals annouced the same thing, but i guess well never know for sure, of course the liberal lovers, will say "oh of course i would have still said its a dumb idea" and you probably even think that now, but i reckon if the libs did announce it infi would be in here saying, look the liberals have a far better proposal than labors crappy fttn.

without any research into financial modeling.

You realy think they havent done so at least initial rough financial models? You think they arent going to have it properly modelled?

Of course thats what you think, it labor, they must be doing it wrong. Your forgetting how many levels this kinda thing goes through, and its not all labor people, its govenment servents, not labor staffers, that do most of this stuff.

An open transparent enquiry would have been fine. At least you don't get grand proclamations of $43b in spending without any research into financial modeling.

Given that your concerns about financial modelling will no doubt need to be addressed in the supporting legislation, you are objecting to the nature of the announcement. Somehow it should have been more low-key?

infi you know better than that - this is politics! Of course there was going to be a big announcement for any 40B infrastructure plan.

First the broad "vision" announcement, then the actual work to make it a feasible reality.

The Libs would have done exactly the same, and your objection is purely driven by political inclination.

yeah unlike how campbell newman stated the toll to be charged for the north-south bypass

Cause there is no difference in the complexity of a tunnel and Fibre connections accross the whole of f***en australia, its funny how all your examples come from liberals, your just too transparent infi.

Also, I seem to remember tolls going up from what they were intiaily announced.

also

There has also been considerable controversy over the environmental hazards which may be caused by the construction phase and operation of the tunnels, particularly regarding the position of exhaust ventilation stacks.

One of the reasons for building the tunnel as a Public Private Partnership(PPP) is that it should reduce Brisbane City Council's risks regarding the tunnel construction and operation. However, the public disclosure documents released by Rivercity Motorway indicate that there are still considerable un-costed risks left with Council. For example, a 10 metre extension was required for the exhaust stack at the Woolloongabba end of the tunnel and the full cost was required to be borne by Brisbane City Council not Rivercity Motorway.

The losing bid by the Brisconnections consortium incorporated three lanes of traffic in each direction (as opposed to two lanes for the winning bid). With a price difference of $20 AUD million the decision to build a two lane tunnel has been criticised as shortsighted.

Seems your liberals stuff up too!


last edited by `ViPER` at 13:10:23 09/Apr/09

Should they have spent months in secret planning the fine detail while people wasted millions of dollars in time and effort vying for the prior NBN incarnation when it had been sideleined? Of course not - all the players (and the community in general) needed to be advised of the decision to make a more significant investment and go the whole hog (lol, gettit) for FTTH.

That's exactly it hey. The detractors are currently complaining that they have come out with an announcement before having all the details on offer, but the fact is that had they kept us in the dark for the months longer in order to figure absolutely everything out first, detractors would still be s***ty because they don't know what's going on. They can't win.

I agree that the RFP process was a joke, it should have been way more open and transparent, and I agree that we should be able to see the documents and advice now that led to that decision. But I don't agree with the blind pessimistic slagging of where they are right now.

I agree that the RFP process was a joke, it should have been way more open and transparent, and I agree that we should be able to see the documents and advice now that led to that decision.

Actually, further to this, I think that had the industry had a chance to comment on and criticise the offers on the table, we may have arrived at this point a whole lot sooner. It seems that it took far too long for the pollies to figure out what should have been the correct course of action from the start and I think that's due in large part to their NDA ridden RFP process.

EDIT: haha, if you have a few spare minutes, listen to Minchin's commentary here. Funniest part is where he blames the hawke/keating gov for Telstra not being separated when it was privatised. How on Earth can people take his opinions seriously?

last edited by Dan at 14:17:48 09/Apr/09

Minchin is SO annoying. Worse than Conroy. what a f***!

300th comment gaiz woot!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"I think the thing that people sometimes forget is that broadband, when it gets introduced into leading countries - and Australia has been an absolute laggard in broadband in world terms - leads to significant GDP growth - 0.2 to 0.4 to 0.5 per cent growth in the overall economy.

Source: Just for troggles this is an ABC article!

Australia's GDP in 2007 was 770B according to the CIA. That's a 2.3 Billion GDP increase if we take a middle road of 0.3% - it might be less than than after the financial crapola but we're still talking billions of dollars GDP increase regardless.

Surely with those sorts of numbers it would be worth building it, even if in order to make it viable the AU Government needs to take a few billion on the chin...

Australia's GDP in 2007 was 770B according to the CIA.

During the G20, I saw that Aus GDP was around the 1.1TN mark. That surprised me, but I guess the commodities boom was pretty sweet!

edit: I think I saw it in the paper but here is one data source

Highest GDP per captia! Again... commodities boom, the Fed govt should be rolling in tax revenue... WTF are we borrowing money for and running a budget deficit?



last edited by twat at 20:12:06 09/Apr/09

I think I love you Hogfather......lol

Obes - have you got a white paper or some sort of plan for all the technology improvements been done and going on at your school?

White paper ? no (in the process of doing it, 3rd party one was too expensive)
Strategic plan document ? yes

I am however more then happy to talk at length about it, informally. And I'd show you movies of what it can do, but its hard without exposing information I can't expose. (We don't have test parents, and test teachers, and test students, with test subjects, we have a test company but anyways)

And the plan document is not the sort of thing we like to make public, mainly because alot of the things that we plan don't happen. Sometimes they don't happen for political reasons, sometimes infrastructure, sometimes budget. Or sometimes get major reshuffles, the Digital Education Revolution has doubled our capital budget so is changing the order we are doing things.

Our budget compared to other schools that have a similar fee structure is much smaller. (ie. we operate on around a third the budget of say a certain anglican church grammar school in South Brisbane)

All the crap I listed is not even the full list of stuff we are doing. Its the more noticable stuff.
Things like electronic locks don't impact a kid or parent directly. But do prevent theft and vandalism which means money is not wasted fixing it. (ie. cheaper feees long term, or more resources)

here is a quite decent commentary article on the wider reaching benefits of the NBN i came across to day.

The World Bank / infoDev is expected to publish a report which claims that an extra ten percentage points of broadband penetration by 2006 accounted for a 1.21 percentage point increase in per capita growth per year in developed countries and 1.38 percentage points among developing countries.

Highlights how an investment by the gov in broadband now can really pay off in the long run.

Except this is just as much about removing telstra's stranglehold on the industry as it is upgrading our connectivity. Relying on things like Telstra to upgrade their cable network (which covers a much smaller fraction of the country) are just not worthwhile options long term.

Removing Telstra's strangehold and replacing it with another. Consider that in 12 years from now this NBN company will carrying rediculous amounts of debt still, so upgrading will not be under consideration for sometime. And if, as could well be possible, it has little or no competition then its even less likely.

The only reason Australia has ADSL2+ everywhere that it does, is because of companies like iiNet and Internode and whatever else bringing it to Telstra. Telstra dragged its feet even on ADSL(1) because it believed it'd make its investment in cable worthless (at least for internet).

I cannot find anywhere on the government's website how they arrived at the figure $43b.

I found in one report an estimate of $10,000/km which was just ballpark.

This is just a nice sounding media release at the moment.

Fast internet was Rudds promise and I voted him because of this and he should of done this earlier. Will never vote Labor again.

Consider that in 12 years from now this NBN company will carrying rediculous amounts of debt still

This isn't a given? As infi points out we don't really have hard numbers on anything aside from an expected 40B or so ticket price, funded sugnificantly by private investment.

so upgrading will not be under consideration for sometime. And if, as could well be possible, it has little or no competition then its even less likely.

I've mentioned above that there are (reportedly) clear links between upgrades to internet infrastructure and GDP increases. There is nothing to prevent a future Government from re-investing in the network to assist the NBN company to upgrade.

A government doesn't necessarily need to make directly profitable investments in terms of bottom line ROI on the infrastructure build projects. Their concern is (and should be) wider, encompassing benefits at a macroscopic level.

Correct me if I am wrong, but one of the main benefits of FTTP is that is is remarkably upgradeable without needing to go to the expense of relaying cable. From reading, we have only begun to really plumb the capacity of fibre.

A future upgrade to a wholly fibre network is likely to involve equipment changes at nodes and premises rather than a replacement of pipe - a process about an order of magnitude different in scope.

Given that the fed government itself is going to be in debt up to the eyeballs i can't imagine them supporting network upgrades.

Also you state that equipment upgrades are easier because you don't need to lay cable, same thing goes with ADSL tech and look how long that took. Telstra itself took what 2 years(?) to offer ADSL2+ after it was offered by companies installing their own DSLAMs. Anyone thinking this will break the back of telecom monopolies is forgotting that this is pretty much how Telstra came to be.

The market has already stepped up and brought fttn albeit only to a small community, but theres no reason on a bigger scale other than that it might be economically unviable.

nf, another thing that you're really not considering was touched on in that last article i linked.

Under public ownership less than half the population had broadband exceeding 12 Mbps leaving over 4 million people without a high speed broadband service. Again Telstra has refused to roll out its own NBN and is now proposing to upgrade its HFC network to speeds of between 70 Mbps to 100 Mbps but it only passes 2.4 million homes in the capital cities leaving out 70 per cent of the population.

Turnbull has criticised the Government for building a second Telstra but only Government ownership will provide social equity to all Australians, private ownership will just cherry pick the most profitable markets ignoring the remainder as repeatedly demonstrated by Telstra in recent years.

Imo that really flies against you 'the market will step up and make it right' mentality.

Dan I think you are missing the point behind their arguements. Its not a liberal policy, if it were they'd be all for it.

private ownership will just cherry pick the most profitable economically viable markets

if there's not enough demand for fibre optic broadband in certain areas but it gets rolled out there anyway then they will lose a f***tonne of money on that particular part of the investment. that's the beauty of markets - they are (mostly) the most efficient way of allocating resources.

having said that i have been swayed by a few of the arguments dan and obes have put forward. i'm more concerned now about the execution of the idea.

nF - you're crystal balling again. You just can't speculate on the state of the Government debt in 2030 and beyond because in 2009 there has been a big spend.

It took a long time for ADSL to be rolled out, but there's nthing to say that future upgrades to the NBN (say a 1 gig rollout) need to be done particularly quickly either.

My point is that the ADSL rollout cost nothing close to the cost of replacing the copper network. The same would apply to upgrades to the NBN.

if there's not enough demand for fibre optic broadband in certain areas but it gets rolled out there anyway then they will lose a f***tonne of money on that particular part of the investment.

Well that's the point. A private company rolling out there won't see an economic return, but a government will. Because although the actual retail services might not generate enough direct revenue to pay back the investment, economic boosts are gained from the increased productivity of people using the service.

The Alternative would be the gov just throwing money at an existing company for them to fund regional areas, but that alone wouldn't solve the problem that is Telstra. Since T would be the one receiving said funding, it would only really perpetuate the problem we already have.

A private company rolling out there won't see an economic return, but a government will. Because although the actual retail services might not generate enough direct revenue to pay back the investment, economic boosts are gained from the increased productivity of people using the service.

no, i understand completely the point you are making. i suppose i am a little more sceptical about the potential and difficult to quantify indirect productivity increases vs. the quantifiable direct costs of constructing and operating the network.

i'm not saying it's a bad idea, i guess i'd just like to see a few more numbers before i get my fan-boi on like you guys =)

it's just cable at any cost for some people. even if it was budgeted at $100b they would still think it's a good idea.

typical buy now, pay later attitude.

last edited by infi at 11:26:42 10/Apr/09

Well, you've gotta spend money to make money eh. I can't personally speak for the specific number they've chosen but a lot of people have actually speculated that it's a big over-estimate and there's already experts suggesting ways that it could be even cheaper.

Then there's also the fact that some investors may even be bringing their own existing infrastructure to the table.

It's still a s***load of money, but most of the people with the actual technical knowledge seem to be cautiously confident about it so I think that's reason enough that we can be too.

What makes me cautiously optimistic is how the T reacts to this.

The political emphasis is now squarely in a 'if you don't do something, we'll do it for you'.

I guess you can't out-politicize a politician?

Well that's the point. A private company rolling out there won't see an economic return, but a government will. Because although the actual retail services might not generate enough direct revenue to pay back the investment, economic boosts are gained from the increased productivity of people using the service.

And I'm the one crystal balling? I couldn't find much before that conclusively said that increased broadband access increases GDP, and there was some mentions of the opposite. Aka, greater employment and more money in people hands leads to more people taking up broadband. Its certainly not conclusive regardless.

The reason that cable only covers a fraction of the population is that there was simply no way for Telstra and Optus to make it profitable enough to keep laying it. (They even took shortcuts like putting it in the air to save money.) FTTP is massively expensive, and imo totally not suited for Australia. (Isn't Brisbane one of the most loosely populated city in the world?)

I freely admit that the market won't bring 100mbit to the people as quickly as a 43billion dollar government cash splash will. The point is they'll do it in a way thats profitable in the short term for them and in a way that is going to maximise coverage and take up. And there will be competition for services.

The FTTP plan to me reeks of something that will be obsolete before it turns a profit.

One thing I want to know is: what happens to all the DSLAMS and other infrastucture installed by ADSL companies which will become redundant once this is installed? Do they get compensated?

last edited by infi at 11:45:34 10/Apr/09

There's no detail yet. This is why this is a 'vision' and not a plan.

I remember an unresearched policy statement like this once before.

One thing I want to know is: what happens to all the DSLAMS and other infrastucture installed by ADSL companies which will become redundant once this is installed? Do they get compensated?

Huh? unlike the FTTN plan, DSL equipment is not made redundant by this rollout. It will still be there able to operate alongside as an alternative to people that want a slower cheaper connection, just like dial-up is today.

If you read Simon Hackett's response, you would have noticed that he expressed that once they get a clearer view of completion times it will in fact allow them to continue rolling out new ADSL2+ DSLAMS in the interim because they no longer have that looming fear that FTTN tech will come in and make them all unusable.

This article restates in another way my main concern about the announcement:

But a rush-rush style does bring risks and can leave things half-finished. Take broadband. The Government has been forced to abort its election plan for a scheme that would have cost $10-12 billion because, it says, the global crisis meant none of the tenders delivered value for money. Realistically, Telstra's non-participation also made the scheme difficult to implement and open to a big compensation claim.

The logical course would have been for the Government to say, we'll now consider our options. The Government, however, never wants to allow negative headlines if it can avoid them. So it put a very thick sugar coating on the situation, announcing a $43-billion plan, which it compares to the Snowy Hydro. But it has had to simultaneously set up a study into how to implement the scheme. It did look as though things were being done in an odd order, a gamble that may work out, but could force further adjustment, inviting charges of ad hockery.

Well that's the point. A private company rolling out there won't see an economic return, but a government will. Because although the actual retail services might not generate enough direct revenue to pay back the investment, economic boosts are gained from the increased productivity of people using the service.

this is very dubious reasoning. customers of broadband should be able to capture the value of any productivity increases so be in a position to afford paying more for broadband. if they are not willing to pay more for broadband it is probably because the 'productivity increases' are a fairy tale made up rudd who wants to make a monument for people to remember him by. i'm really not sure which is more cool: pyramids or nbn.

This isn't a given? As infi points out we don't really have hard numbers on anything aside from an expected 40B or so ticket price, funded sugnificantly by private investment.

sounds to me like there is only going to be 5 billion in private investment and the rest will be government equity and government debt. infrastructure bonds are going to be treasuries with a different name. i'm sure they were like lets call them infrastructure bonds and no-one will realize we are issuing more government debt. even more hilarious if the government ends up selling them at a discount below treasuries which seems to be the plan (wtf?). maybe the real plan was to give it a different name so it would be less liquid and the government could have the awesome opportunity to pay more for it's debt. so in conclusion mostly government funded and not much private investment.

last edited by hast at 22:19:44 10/Apr/09

I'm already paying $70 a month for adsl1. I'm willing to pay $100 for the same download limit but with awesome speed.

Infi: I agree with that to an extent, it refers back to what I said earlier about them not being able to win either way.

If they had have just came out and told people "the RFP is scrapped and we're considering options". They would have been completely roasted - regardless of whether it was unavoidable or not (if the GFC really was to blame and not their shortsighted tender process).

So instead they come out swinging with a credible solution.

I for one think it's far better to have a proposed solution than another year of NDA ridden silence as they "consider options".

this is very dubious reasoning. customers of broadband should be able to capture the value of any productivity increases so be in a position to afford paying more for broadband.

You missed the point and obviously didn't read the article I was referencing. It's about social equality - bringing opportunity to those in regional areas instead of just the areas where it's directly immediately profitable to retailers.

lol. i'm all for social equality with regional areas if the benefits of living in regional areas are brought to non-regional areas. maybe people in the country can pay a special tax to subsidise rents in cities in order to increase equality.

Since when is broadband related to social equity?

If you live in a remote area, then you shouldn't expect 100mbit internet. Its completely unreasonable for for someone 200km west of Cairns to expect the same level of internet service as someone in Brisbane.

They wouldn't get town water, they wouldn't get a sewer system, and theres a good chance they wouldn't get electricity. Its a bit rich for them to start complaining if they can't get broadband.

Social equity has absolutely nothing to do with universal broadband.

Huh? unlike the FTTN plan, DSL equipment is not made redundant by this rollout. It will still be there able to operate alongside as an alternative to people that want a slower cheaper connection, just like dial-up is today.

This does not magically protect the CAN from being upgraded. Actually, I would think it puts a greater onus on it being deployed. I mean, if we're getting Fibre, why not upgrade the copper network in the meantime? Ramp it up baby!

...maybe people in the country can pay a special tax to subsidise rents in cities in order to increase equality.

They wouldn't get town water, they wouldn't get a sewer system, and theres a good chance they wouldn't get electricity. Its a bit rich for them to start complaining if they can't get broadband. Social equity has absolutely nothing to do with universal broadband.

your counter arguments are retarded, and absolutely elitist self deluded crap. Greater efficiency in the agricultural/mining industries has allowed the migration of people to the "big city", allowing YOU to have the very benefits that you deny them and then have the audacity to claim that they complain about the inequity.

Additionally, providing the "outlanders" with decent broadband will prolly have the greatest efficiency and benefits to those communities that are most isolated. A bold statement yes, but seriously, having access to live data of their properties, like cattle movements, rain data, irrigation monitoring, the list would go on, could have a massive impact to their production/yeild levels. And in turn, you would benefit.

Not to mention such qualitative benefits, like remote education, keeping in touch with the world! stuff that you and I would take for granted.

So please try really hard and live with your higher rent and luxuries of running water & electricity. I mean if it is not too hard.

I am sure if you tried hard enough you could justify running fibre to every person in Australia, to Katherine, Cape York and Arnhem Land.

They all deserve it! Let's do it for Australia and build a real nation for the future. Don't worry about looking for affordable solutions, just roll the cable EVERYWHERE.

edit: think of the jobs it will create too...

twat: why do people live in remote areas? because there are things that remote areas have that the city doesn't. why should the city subsidise things remote areas don't have when people are more than willing to live in remote areas because of the advantages of remote areas.

having access to live data of their properties, like cattle movements, rain data, irrigation monitoring, the list would go on, could have a massive impact to their production/yeild levels. And in turn, you would benefit.

do you think people who run farms are stupid. if it made economic sense for them to have this they would already have it and we wouldn't be talking about subsidising the cost.

infi, your sarcasm only shows your ignorance on the limited plans that have been released.

The new network will dramatically improve broadband for all Australians, including those living in regional and rural Australia. We have consulted
widely and experts agree that for rural and remote areas wireless and satellite are more practical than fibre.

For the regions fast, reliable broadband networks help overcome the challenges of distance – it will become less important where you live.
People living away from major cities will have:
• less need to travel to get specialist services,
saving people time and money;
• convenient access to city services; and
• opportunities for communities to connect with
one another using real time, high-definition
video conferencing.

twat: why do people live in remote areas? because there are things that remote areas have that the city doesn't. why should the city subsidise things remote areas don't have when people are more than willing to live in remote areas because of the advantages of remote areas.

I think they go there for the easy living and education!?!phaaawt!?! why do you think they are there???

I imagine most would be xth generationers, as I would say that the flow from rural to city is higher than city to rural. So I dont really understand what you are actually trying to suggest.

do you think people who run farms are stupid. if it made economic sense for them to have this they would already have it and we wouldn't be talking about subsidising the cost.

No I dont think farmers are stupid. Practically wise. But I dont think they have the economic means to lay fibre or launch a satellite etc, do you?... some of the technological innovations, products, services would not be viable unless you have better infrastructure.

your counter arguments are retarded, and absolutely elitist self deluded crap. Greater efficiency in the agricultural/mining industries has allowed the migration of people to the "big city", allowing YOU to have the very benefits that you deny them and then have the audacity to claim that they complain about the inequity.

Additionally, providing the "outlanders" with decent broadband will prolly have the greatest efficiency and benefits to those communities that are most isolated. A bold statement yes, but seriously, having access to live data of their properties, like cattle movements, rain data, irrigation monitoring, the list would go on, could have a massive impact to their production/yeild levels. And in turn, you would benefit.

Not to mention such qualitative benefits, like remote education, keeping in touch with the world! stuff that you and I would take for granted.

So please try really hard and live with your higher rent and luxuries of running water & electricity. I mean if it is not too hard.

pfft, they can do everything you name with nextg. and they can do it with greater flexibility.

also, i wasn't just talking about farmers you moron.

Since when is broadband related to social equity?
This is silly.

Of course telecommunications is a utility, and reduced access to it provides inequity. Many (most?) offices today couldn't function without access to broadband internet.

This will only become more apparent as we move deeper into the information age.

If you don't think that broadband internet is going to play a critical role in 21st century commerce, government and eduucation then you are being deliberately obtuse.

pfft, they can do everything you name with nextg. and they can do it with greater flexibility.

As someone who actually lives in a regional area, you can stick NextG up your arse. Its s***house.

twat: why do people live in remote areas? because there are things that remote areas have that the city doesn't. why should the city subsidise things remote areas don't have when people are more than willing to live in remote areas because of the advantages of remote areas.

Because if everyone gives up on living in regional areas then it all gooes to the s***?

Do you really want more f***ing people moving to Brissy?!

Another factor a lot of people seem to be discounting is how much our upstream connectivity will be potentially increasing. FTTN would have been much the same as we have now - asynchronous. Even Telstra's planned 100mbit cable rollout is going to only be offering 2mbit upload max.

Fibre meanwhile has the potential to deliver 100 up and down. It's probably going to spell the end of unlimited upload allowances but damned if it doesn't open a lot of new doors.

wow, i didn't realise that they haven't even figured out how they're going to implement any of this. i would have thought they'd have worked out the details before they made the announcement.

market analysts seem to be all but unanimous in voicing their scepticism about the plan. the courier fail reported today (pg 65) that analysts have said the following:

Goldman Sachs JBWere

In our view, there is a real possibility of the national broadband network failing to eventuate as a result of poor returns.

Credit Suisse

We believe that the economics of the proposed fibre-to-the-home do not stack up without reducing the capital costs and without guaranteed network traffic from Telstra.

Merrill Lynch

We don't think it will get off the ground post the inital $4.7b investment

JP Morgan

We find the lack of meaningful details behind an investment of this magnitude surprising, and we beleive it legitimises some level of scepticism from the market.

Some people here seem to have the opinion that Australia will remain in Recession for many years to come.
Some people complain about the stimulation package sent out to all earning under 100k/year.

Im sure most of us would rather money spent on Asset's and creating jobs. Isn't this creating jobs aswell as giving Australia an awesome asset, FTTH! :)

Isn't this a course of action that will help push us out of the big Financial Anus the world apparently finds itself in?

Some people are so bent and twisted over politics that they'd prefer the government did nothing or better yet f***ed up so that their team got back in.

Yeah like investment banks that would have to buy the government bonds, for example.

if in doubt, spend! cartoon from 1934...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3654/3430983536_9e8b131ac8.jpg

last edited by infi at 15:09:24 11/Apr/09

last edited by infi at 15:10:06 11/Apr/09

taggs all those f***ers can eat a bowl of dicks. If you build it, they will come!

infi you would have to be the most negative person I've never met. When this is all over you are going to look like a giant douche or we are going to eat humble pie but you need to ease up cause we can;t do anything about it :)

This doesn't apply to obama because he is black and everyone in that cartoon is cracker white.

infi you would have to be the most negative person I've never met.

I am only putting the alternative argument because everyone else here is so infatuated by 100mb internet at any cost.

^ sorry infi but I am highly suspicious of the nobility of your stated claim.

As for nF and Hast, besides being a pair of neanderthals they're just plain friggin ball sucking wankers.

fine then, have your little romance with FTTH. I will just wait and see how this pans out.

Anyone that thinks creating 43 billion dollars of deficit on the australian economy is wise needs a good f***ing kick in the groin,ear,brain (do you even have one?)

There are better projects to be had for creating jobs than the FTTH. Some people are still living inside a box.

I am only putting the alternative argument because everyone else here is so infatuated by 100mb internet at any cost.

I haven't seen you present an alternative in this thread? Falsification, criticism, yes.

But where is the alternative that meets the needs of an aspiring information-based economy while navigating the pitfalls of the legacy of the Telstra sale?

taggs all those f***ers can eat a bowl of dicks. If you build it, they will come!

seeing as they are the big boys of the financial markets who are supposedly coughing up billions to fund the project i wouldn't be too sure it will even be built =)

i'm still not totally opposed to the idea, though the execution so far isn't inspiring much confidence with me.

As for nF and Hast, besides being a pair of neanderthals they're just plain friggin ball sucking wankers.

That may be so, but we are right aren't we?

If this provides the ability, to have online ondemand content (tv shows etc..) and for long distance telecommuting, then I honestly dont understand how you can not think that this is a good idea.


Obviously the idea alone wont make it a success, and where the arguments has been derailed. The issue for me is whether or not is should be funded through a GSE.

1st the idea to sell the infrastructure off at the end is not in the interest of the Aus people. Because when infrastructure is needing to be maintained or replaced, a private company will go straight back to the return, and we will be back to square one.

2nd the idea of using PPP is fine, but for smaller projects, not something worth in the ball park of 20-60B. The reason being is the risk allocation can not be resolved. From a government's perspective this is too big to fail. From an investor perspective (although you dont like it) you may never see that capital or a return on it and be willing to walk away. If the government is not willing to walk away, then the PPP has failed from the start. If the government is willing to walk away then why would anyone lend to the GSE, when the alternative is to lend to the same government (slightly less return) but riskfree - ish. Or will lenders have guarntees/recourse from the government???? Then why pay higher returns - taxpayer gets screwed.

This to me is why Investment banks dont like the economics of this project. not to mention that there is more than investment banks that would like to fund this infrastructure project. Just would like to know the returns they are going to get upfront, and the risk involved. The lack of details is why they are genuinely cautious.

Personally if they want to run this as a GSE, it would have been a better start up, if the government spent the 8Bn in cash handouts to fund the company, with the individual taxpayer becoming the shareholder. Then a lot more people would buy into the idea. Allow some funding to come from Funds/private equity, and the remainder from the government.

Its not that its not a good idea, it is.

Its just how expensive it is. And, fyi, on-demand TV doesn't need 100mbit. More like 12mbit a video stream.

Anyone that thinks creating 43 billion dollars of deficit on the australian economy is wise needs a good f***ing kick in the groin,ear,brain (do you even have one?)

Yeah you obviously haven't read any facts about it at all, you probably should before commenting :)

There aren't any facts about it. And that's the problem.

If the government is willing to walk away then why would anyone lend to the GSE, when the alternative is to lend to the same government (slightly less return) but riskfree - ish. Or will lenders have guarntees/recourse from the government????

people will lend to the GSE because it will be equivalent to lending to the government. the government is going to issue bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the australian government. they are going to be called INFRASSSTRUCTURE bonds but they will have the exact same risk as treasuries.

Then why pay higher returns - taxpayer gets screwed.

rudd brought this up when he gave his spiel about australians not having a good place to put their money with the implication that treasuries aren't yielding high enough. i think he was just spinning s***. the bonds will will have the same yield as bonds issued by the treasury. rudd is talking about small investors buying these bonds. i reckon he either trying to get the punters participating in the NBN for political reasons (the good thing about bonds is they are not going to blow up in your face like telstra) or he is scared about not being able to sell all the debt.

i've heard they might be using inflation indexed bonds but if the government wanted to issue inflation indexed bonds it could just start issuing them again. they don't need the NBN to issue inflation indexed bonds. though, indexed bonds are probably more attractive to small investors than normal treasuries because of the wholesale funding/deposit guarantee to the banks.

last edited by hast at 20:36:14 11/Apr/09

on-demand TV doesn't need 100mbit. More like 12mbit a video stream.

I agree, but you still need the demand, and australia is a sprawl. We dont have the 'backhaul' (?) infrastructure to support the saturation levels needed. But lets put something inplace that has long term sustainability.

How many choices are there of content providers? 1.5? fox and ausstar?

If things like phone/internet/tv, run through one line the uptake would go up from 50% to 80/90%. That would enable content provider numbers to increase to create genuine options.

We prolly have the same amount of households in Australia, that the Bay Area, California has in the size of South east Qld. You need to include regional demand to enable content providers to have the economic viability, assuming you dont want monopolistic markets.

why dont they spend the 43 billion to build a highway on a cruise ship so you can cruise while you cruise

rudd brought this up when he gave his spiel about australians not having a good place to put their money with the implication that treasuries aren't yielding high enough. i think he was just spinning s***. the bonds will will have the same yield as bonds issued by the treasury. rudd is talking about small investors buying these bonds. i reckon he either trying to get the punters participating in the NBN for political reasons (the good thing about bonds is they are not going to blow up in your face like telstra) or he is scared about not being able to sell all the debt.

It will be very interesting to see the details come out on this, as having the same yeild, if the GSE is sold to private investors, is a sweet deal, but again, why would any investment fund, want to take on greater risk without a higher return?!? Doesnt add up - inflation adjusted or not.

I know alot of people here have said they are spending their 950 on strippers from china, but there is genuine concern that the majority of taxpayers will just save the money, ergo banks can use the savings for investment purposes. They should have saved the middle man and just dumped the funds into this company and given the 950 as a stake in the company.

TWAT: there is no higher risk on the bonds. you are falling for rudders trick. just because it says 'INFRASSTRUCTURE' doesnt mean they are different from treasuries. though, the government might not guarantee the interest so there is early pre-payment risk (nbn defaults and you got the whole principal but you can't find as good interest rate). my guess is they will get sold in an auction like normal treasuries so it won't be really possible for the government to artificially increase their yield because people will just bid more for them.

TWAT: there is no higher risk on the bonds. you are falling for rudders trick. just because it says 'INFRASSTRUCTURE' doesnt mean they are different from treasuries. though, the government might not guarantee the interest so there is early pre-payment risk (nbn defaults and you got the whole principal but you can't find as good interest rate). my guess is they will get sold in an auction like normal treasuries so it won't be really possible for the government to artificially increase their yield because people will just bid more for them.

that is my point, why would "they" lend to a company to receive the same yeild?

If it is a true company then the default risk is higher, therefore the return should be higher. IF it is not, sweet deal for any investors in the company.

This is why a PPP should not be entered into. It is a sham, as there is clearly no intention to assign any risk to the private side of the partnership, both in debt and equity sides.

twat: i don't see how PPP are a sham on the debt side. if the government is issuing the debt with same yield/risk as treasuries there is no extra problem over purely government run. it is a sham in so far as the real costs of the project are hidden because taxpayers will bail out debt holders when the project fails and cheap government loans can crowd out better investment opportunities but this is the same problem as when the government runs it on its own.

on the equity side it can be a scam. i think part of the justification for PPP is private investors bring expertise to the project and hopefully projects that are unviable fail to get PPP funding are scrapped. however, the last point is probably never true because if the government has a boner for the project then it will just rewrite the rules (ban competition, etc) to make it profitable before the project starts or give the private partners under the table guarantees. for whatever reason it looks like the Rudd Government has a boner for NBN. they failed the first attempt to get it off the ground and now they are trying again. australia is going to end up getting telstra v2 pre-deregulation. if you thought telstra is bad today remember what it was like 20 years ago.

i can just see the telcos trying to roll out 100mbit ASDL on existing copper infrastructure and being able to offer broadband at half the price of NBN and the government going, 'sorry: you need to use our toll roads'.

last edited by hast at 22:24:02 11/Apr/09

its a sham because it is masking what it actually is. It is a government debt issuance.

The theory of a GSE, i thought, was to have some resemblance to private enterprise. If you agree with that then this GSE should have the similar risk profile of similar private enterprises. And if that is the case, I dont see why lenders would want to lend at a lower rate of return? especially given the fact the plan is to privatise the damn thing.

As an example: Tabcorp are issuing Bonds to raise $200mn, and are paying an interest rate of 4.25% above the 3mth bank bill rate. Yes, there is a risk that the company will default but you will be rewarded for that risk.

If the government has declared that this company's debt is guaranteed, even after it is no longer in the government's hands, then that is BS. Hence a sham! It should work out great for the private equity participants.

Either stick it in a government department or allocate risk appropriately to the private sector. But per my previous statements, the second option is not feasible due to many other factors.

its a sham because it is masking what it actually is. It is a government debt issuance.

you're exactly right. and that's probably why they will get the funding from financial markets in the end. i've heard from a quite a few people that there is speculation these bonds will be sold at a discount as they'll have some kind of tax concession.

The theory of a GSE, i thought, was to have some resemblance to private enterprise. If you agree with that then this GSE should have the similar risk profile of similar private enterprises. And if that is the case, I dont see why lenders would want to lend at a lower rate of return? especially given the fact the plan is to privatise the damn thing.

agreed. though if the debt is essentially government guaranteed then the lenders likely won't give a s*** where/how the money is being spent - they know their money is safe.

this raises more questions about the viability of the project in my mind. i'd really like to see details as to exactly where the capital is coming from.

They don't know where it's coming from. Rudd just figured it will cost about $43b (give or take $10b, hey it's for Australia's future producitivity guys) andf figure out all the less important stuff like who's paying for it later.

The more I think about it, I'm not so negative on the concept. I would have gone for a radial rollout that completed and connected the remainder of metropolitan cities first to give the venture cashflow. Secondly, if the government is paying for it, it should own it. As much as I loathe taxpayer ventures, if it's taxpayers' money the taxpayers should benefit.

What I am negative on is the sheer scale of Rudd's arrogance in flipantly announcing this massive financial commitment. Do some f***en research you headline driven sod and make the effort instead of another platitude of tech-cool words. It's like the 2020 summit all over again.

Wouldn't they have gotten the estimated figures from the tenders? I'm not saying they didn't pluck the number out of the air, but that's where I thought they would've obtained alot of their information from as the submissions contained alot of research and data.

The only tenders who did FTTH were Tasmania and ACT. They don't really scale to the rest of the country I'd imagine.

Speculation is that Axia's proposal was predominately FTTP too.

Some opinion pieces in today's Australian:

Economics editor, Michael Stutchbury arguing that the expansion of the rail infrastructure in the 1880's deepened the recession of the following decade.

Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turbull argues a company promoting investment bonds without a business proposal such as Rudd is doing would be under investigation by ASIC. He supplies his own set of rough estimates (based on a takeup of 4.5m users at 50% gross profit) and concludes it cannot make a profit.

Interesting to note in Turnbull's piece that he estimates the number of available connections to be 9 million. Then my rough estimate of average charge to the user from this post changes from $112/month per connection wholesale to $248/month per connection, to achieve the required return of a commercial venture.

last edited by infi at 02:16:07 14/Apr/09

last edited by infi at 02:22:37 14/Apr/09

You missed a couple:

Telstra open to break-up as broadband plan forces telecom to overhaul strategy

Opportunity rides the super-highway (yes, that one's ex-Telstra CEO ziggy)

last edited by Dan at 08:14:53 14/Apr/09

$248/month per connection

That's a massive saving for businesses

It was going to cost well over $70,000 up front to get fibre + monthly fees + data + gear to drive it all

based on a takeup of 4.5m users at 50% gross profit

But anyone can see that the fibre wont just be used for broadband, if it is then thats just silly, I can see it being used for phones, tv and internet, and not just for home connections, for buiness aswell (and dont go quote number of abn's registered times profit like i've seen someone do, obvioulsy business's can have more than 1 connection cause they have multiple offices)

so the 4.5 million users is just a stupid number to pluck out of the air, whos doing back of the envelope number crunching now infi, seems like the liberals to me.

Basically there is no way with a project of this huge scale that you can go x users times x profit equals fail. its about eleventy millions times more complex than that and neither you or me can sit here and say it will definalty profitably or not, cause we dont have any where near the details to make those calculations.

I thought this was interesting - a post in response to some comments I made on slashdot about caps not being all bad from some dude in India, where they have an Internet service option provided by the government, which has lead to a lot of competition between the commercial providers. Interesting approach:

In India, it is 50GB a month at 16 Mbps speed for US$100 a month. That includes 50 free telephone calls (you do not get naked DSL, because their billing system expects telephone number. But hey its free).
Hell, the law states that providers of Cable TV, DTH and IPTV must provide channels on a-la-carte basis. No bundling of channels you don't want.
Ya, the providers cried that this will make them suffer losses, the government asked them to shut shop and pay exit tax (!) before they leave the country.

1) No traffic shaping crap (disallowed under law).
2) No throttling (again disallowed under law: actually its a criminal offense to throttle a connection here, seems Vodafone tried it and a few thousand of their subscribers switched quietly to state provider. Vodafone got this law passed!)
3) No protocol blocking. I used BitTorrent to download Johnny Sokko & his Flying Robot series recently (its in open domain). My Steam powered games work great. Relic's Tales of Valor is able to use peer-to-peer patch downloading.
4) Clear bills detailing KB/MB/GB used per day.
5) VoIP (skype and other crap) allowed inherently, until this Government passed a law banning those. (highly unlikely considering the party will lose next elections if it does).
6) A State owned provider which is aggressive in pricing, servicing (i have two DSLs: state-owned provider at 2Mbps and a private one at 16Mbps, not because i use both, but because the state owned telephone i use gave me the DSL by default). This forces private operators to increase bandwidth and speed or die. And no, India does not provide bailouts of even state-owned companies.
Hell, the state owned provider is so aggressive in expansion, that it has linked almost all small towns with 2Mbps connections. In cities, it has offers daily for new subscribers and if you are moving out of private provider, they are extra smiling)
7) No minimum contract period. The private providers experimented with 2 year contracts, but soon realized that the state provider dropped contracts from its clause, and with it gained a HUGE business. So now, no provider has any contracts.
8) Reachable customer service: You talk to a real person every single damn time. No automated menus crap to complain. You get a ticket number and if its not resolved within 3 days (again set by law), you don't need to pay your bill until resolved.
9) Every year the telecom regulator publishes a report detailing each provider's uptime/downtime, performance, quality, customer satisfaction, etc. This is submitted to public at their website: http://www.trai.gov.in/Default.asp/ [trai.gov.in]

The flip side?
1) Cities are HUGE markets here: stiff competition. In small towns & villages? Not so much. The state owned provider is the only provider. But they maintain their service quality at a high rate since their promotions depend directly on customer satisfcation in those villages.
2) Silent disconnection if bills not paid. No warning whatsoever. If you feel charges are expensive, complain and get a ticket number. If you don't have a ticket number and refuse to pay, DSL will be disconnected without warning.
3) Slow process of law. The law is quite advanced. In fact India was the first nation to regulate internet providers in 2000 with specific laws applicable to them: like digital contracts, etc.

It's an interesting approach, but only possible because of massive market. That's where Australia fails - we don't have enough people to justify multiple commercial companies laying their own infrastructure to compete. Unfortunately, that means the Government has to get involved.

Reachable customer service: You talk to a real person every single damn time.

I bet they are in a damn Indian call centre.

I'd love to see broadband connections per head of population for India. Watched Slumdog Millionaire last night. Found the trai.gov.in "Truth Alone Triumphs" particularly lolworthy.

Oh... Also - Telstra now open to idea of separation

last edited by mongie at 11:54:40 14/Apr/09

Keep up mongie!

Yeah, india is very comparable to australia, with it's 1.2b population and all.

Dan, your enthusiasm for this proposal is amusing, but it is going to lead to a great disappointment for you if, but most likely when, it doesn't eventuate.

Instead of being head FTTP cheerleader for QGL, why don't you wait for some actual details to come out instead of just spinning the spin and me2'ing mongie.

Wishing it into existence doesn't work, no matter how hard you try.

Just ask Conroy and his filter plan.

Instead of being head FTTP cheerleader for QGL, why don't you wait for some actual details to come out instead of just spinning the spin and me2'ing mongie.

Thanks for that. For the record, I'm more than happy to wait for details and see whether this will be viable or not.

I find it hard to believe though, that this won't get built. The Government have made it a big thing, and it will be very dificult for them to turn around and say - "Oh, we told you we'd build a $43bn network, but then we realised we couldn't do it profitably, so now we'll just go back to FTTN - you know, that inferior technology".

Infi and you (Ara) could do from taking your own suggestion. Wait for details before you start saying "IT WONT EVER HAPPEN - LOL ITS NOT PROFITABLE"


last edited by mongie at 13:12:10 14/Apr/09

They made a big thing about alcopop tax and the internet filter too and both aren't happening.

I have never said it won't happen, just that it is unlikely and a healthy skepticism and more details and information are required.


last edited by ara at 13:19:52 14/Apr/09

Instead of being head FTTP cheerleader for QGL, why don't you wait for some actual details to come out instead of just spinning the spin and me2'ing mongie.

Instead of attacking me personally, how about you contribute something to the discussion in this thread?

This flamebait s*** shouldn't fly from anyone, but it's particularly poor form coming from you. We should be trying to set an example for how other forum users should behave, not loading petty insults others.

The two links I posted were, imo, interesting reading relating to this topic and I posted them because they were positive artcles, in contrast to the other two negative ones that infi posted from the same publication.

I understand that you probably have some decent insights into technology that others here don't, so how about sharing some of your own points of view, as speculative as they might be? Otherwise, please refrain.

Positive and negative articles are all the same, just opinions, you don't get extra credit or kudos because the articles you linked confer with yours.

There isn't enough real information out at the moment, so as my post you replied to and my prior posts have stated, it is time to wait and let the dust settle instead of just hyping the hype and spinning the spin over and over again.

How about you follow your own advice and refrain until some solid information comes out?

I was hoping for pics of dan in a cheerleader outfit.

How about you follow your own advice and refrain until some solid information comes out?

Because I'm finding much of the speculation to be interesting. It would appear that others here are too (whether for or against) so why shouldn't we continue to share those various observations?

I find it hard to believe though, that this won't get built.

Just remember, Rudd promised a full response to every issue arising from the 2020 summit. This never happened.

This guy is all spin and no substance.

Now that the idea has been thrown out there though, it's hard to imagine any government being able to offer up much less.

If the libs won the next federal election, what do you think their course of action would be now? Let Telstra to build a FTTN network?

IMO. The fcous needs to be more about what can be done to make sure it's done right (and as cost effectively as possible).

IMO, if it's a massive overcapacity for the nation, it shouldn't be built at all. Why not built a national subway system, while we have the ground open?

Is that seriously your opinion though, that the stated goal is massively overcapacity?

If so, speculation or no, that's one thing we can flat-out disagree on. 100mbit connectivity to a majority of the population within the next decade is something this Country needs in order to prosper.

last edited by Dan at 14:40:59 14/Apr/09

It is a massive overcapacity running it to places that won't achieve basic viability utilisation.

There should be a far higher reliance on wireless technologies instead of running trenches over all the bloody nation.

haha, nice on Dan. better start nuking the rest of the forum since Trolling is 80% of QGL.

Oh noes, Ara is getting pussyhurt.

It is a massive overcapacity running it to places that won't achieve basic viability utilisation.

There should be a far higher reliance on wireless technologies instead of running trenches over all the bloody nation.

Lol.

You need backhaul for wireless anyway, for a town with 1000 people, you'd still need to roll fibre out to the tower, the only thing you're saving on is digging for the last mile. The benefit of Fibre for the last mile over Wireless is obvious...

It is a massive overcapacity running it to places that won't achieve basic viability utilisation.

Interesting point.

Just this morning I rolled out a new web-based harvest planning package to a bunch of cane farmers in Tully. The website uses a sophisticated non-linear optimisation algorithm to help the farmers to better their cane quality using layered quadratic equations.

The level of sophistication in these remote farmers was the most interesting part of the whole process - they made meaningful contributions to all aspects of development from underlying theory to technology platform!

Sadly, part of the project brief was the requirement for the software to work productively over piddly dial-up connections as ADSL wasn't even 100% available to growers.

So yeh, from experience rural Australia has a genuine need for world-class telecommunications infrastructure.

last edited by Hogfather at 15:02:47 14/Apr/09

Have already made the point on social equity so shouldn't need repeating, but from my (admittedly limited) understanding you're grossly overestimateing the aibility of wireless technology and grossly underestimating it's limits.

3G certainly doesn't stack up, even with the proposed speed upgrades. I'm not sure what tech the gov is planning for their 12mbps minimum service, but then, that's targetted only at towns with populations under 1000.

You're talking about relying on wireless solutions for towns over 1000 (which is the supposed cut-off for gov fttp). The higher the pop, the higher the contention and wireless spectrums just can't stretch that far. It's not good enough.

Sadly, part of the project brief was the requirement for the software to work productively over piddly dial-up connections as ADSL wasn't even 100% available to growers.

Dialup/low bandwidth requirements is, imho, still a good thing, as it encourages you to make the most out of what you got.

Microsoft learned this lesson the hard way when they ALMOST lost the netbook war when Asus came out with the eeePC at the same time as they launched Vista. They nearly screwed themselves out of the market by just throwing hardware at their bloated-ass OS. Now they're backpedalling and XPs life has been extended to suit.

Same thing is true of Internet applications - optimising the s*** out of everything to ensure the bare minimum data transfer is going to result in a better product overall, imo, and thus a better experience for everyone (as resources aren't being squandered, especially important on a shared medium).

Well let's compare it:

In India, it is 50GB a month at 16 Mbps speed for US$100 a month

That's about $135 a month aussie. Just to keep things interesting,

Looking at iiNet, $100 aussie will get you about twice that (100G, 40G peak, 60 off) and comparable peak. With as much as you can sync.

1) No traffic shaping crap (disallowed under law).

Given the sordid history with random $$$$ bills (nice cottage industry this), it's probably a good thing to have this.

2) No throttling (again disallowed under law: actually its a criminal offense to throttle a connection here, seems Vodafone tried it and a few thousand of their subscribers switched quietly to state provider. Vodafone got this law passed!)

There is no throttling (anymore) in place for DSL services. As fast as your line can hack it.

3) No protocol blocking. I used BitTorrent to download Johnny Sokko & his Flying Robot series recently (its in open domain). My Steam powered games work great. Relic's Tales of Valor is able to use peer-to-peer patch downloading.

We all know there is no such protocol blocking in place in Australia.

4) Clear bills detailing KB/MB/GB used per day.

For mobile services, I'd argue that is important given the premium one can pay on mobile data, and the devilish-like obfuscation telco bills tend to have. I think ISP billing (online, ie, iiNet) is pretty detailed and accurate.

5) VoIP (skype and other crap) allowed inherently, until this Government passed a law banning those. (highly unlikely considering the party will lose next elections if it does).

There is no such de-prioritization in place, I know it doesn't fit with the tin-foil philosophy, but mainly because the difference between a proper telco switched voice circuit and a "store and forward" internet-grade Skype call are night and day (especially internationally, but hey, it's free, I'm not complaining).

6) A State owned provider which is aggressive in pricing, servicing (i have two DSLs: state-owned provider at 2Mbps and a private one at 16Mbps, not because i use both, but because the state owned telephone i use gave me the DSL by default). This forces private operators to increase bandwidth and speed or die. And no, India does not provide bailouts of even state-owned companies.

I believe that Telstra is not allowed to compete on price, otherwise they'd burn their competitors out of the marketplace. Telstra don't want to compete on price, but anyway.

Hell, the state owned provider is so aggressive in expansion, that it has linked almost all small towns with 2Mbps connections. In cities, it has offers daily for new subscribers and if you are moving out of private provider, they are extra smiling)

I am not really sure we should welcome this kind of predatory market conditions.
I think you would find the iiNets of the world would suddenly lose margin.

7) No minimum contract period. The private providers experimented with 2 year contracts, but soon realized that the state provider dropped contracts from its clause, and with it gained a HUGE business. So now, no provider has any contracts.

This is something we could do with; but compared to the other points, this is really ancillary.

8) Reachable customer service: You talk to a real person every single damn time. No automated menus crap to complain. You get a ticket number and if its not resolved within 3 days (again set by law), you don't need to pay your bill until resolved.

You may get somebody useless, but you'll get somebody always. Customer Service isn't really without it.

9) Every year the telecom regulator publishes a report detailing each provider's uptime/downtime, performance, quality, customer satisfaction, etc. This is submitted to public at their website: http://www.trai.gov.in/Default.asp/ [trai.gov.in]

lies, damn lies and statistics. I am pretty sure most aussie ISPs provide this as a service and a competitive advantage, but then you get into the sticky, was this fault my upstream providers or mine, and does it count... etc.

We're all crying poor but it seems to me that Aussie Broadband is in pretty good shape, if you just take a completely abstract comparison between the text above and the marketplace as it stands now.

They are 1.2 Billion, we are 20 million. They are the worlds IT service hub, we aren't.

last edited by dranged at 15:29:09 14/Apr/09

Thats true trog, but good programming is no replacement for a heap more bandwidth.

dranged, that is exactly how i feel.

Which part of the country? Indusrty? Bussiness? Home?

I think there are certin sectors (Health, Education etc) that I would see it as a *need* but other places (such as the home) it's more of a want then a need.

100mbit connectivity to a majority of the population within the next decade is something this Country needs in order to prosper.

Haha is that a troll?!?!?!? I honestly can't tell if you're serious or not... if you are, I couldn't disagree more; to me it's just a total coin-flip as to whether we'd prosper or not. I don't know how you can believe that without some sort of roadmap going:

1) roll out 100mbit
2) ???
3) profit

What's your 2?!!@#!@#@!

If you're not serious, then you got me

So will we build the NSN too? (National Subway Network - think of the jobs for our economy in these tough economic times.)

I estimate a National Subway Network connection for all towns with minimum population of 1000 people serviced by an 8 car subway service at least every 15 mins will to cost approximately $1.9 trillion dollars. Preliminary estimates have shown it will result in a net GDP growth over the next 40 years of $2.5 trillion.

We were proposing to run the Subway to regional cities only using feeder buses but have instead decided to roll it out to every township provided their population is minimum 1000.

Existing highways will also be maintained for road traffic. Allowing all people a choice of which way they wish to travel.

last edited by infi at 15:21:03 14/Apr/09

Thats true trog, but good programming is no replacement for a heap more bandwidth.

riiiiiight. build more resources and use them as wastefully as possible == recipe for success.

While we're talking about towns of 1000 people, let's imagine for a second they all have 100mbit FTTH. How much bandwidth is required for them to use their connections at 100% capacity all at the same time? 100mbit * 1000 people == 100,000 mbit == 100Gbit. Even at 50% capacity, that's 50gigabit. That's a big pipe.

Oh yeh, and for those dreaming what it would be like to be on 100mbit NOW - I'm already downloading stuff from international links on GIGABIT links. Been doing it for years, actually. It's pretty rare that I get more than a few hundred kbytes/second, and even rarer that I'd get upwards of a few megabytes a second.

So will we build the NSN too? (National Subway Network - think of the jobs for our economy in these tough economic times.)

I would be fully behind a massive federal project to improve public transport; I think that would be something that is actually useful.

I think a High-Speed (over land) rail network between major city centres would be awesome. You're comparing apples to oranges with that one though Infi.

I think a High-Speed (over land) rail network between major city centres would be awesome.

Why not to all towns with population of minimum 1,000 people? Don't you care about our economic growth - we would be just leaving those small town who have the most to benefit from their remoteness, to wither on the vine.

Moore's law appears to apply to consumer broadband.

If that's the case, then we need to plan and deal with the reality of a world where first-world internet access is 100meg and greater. Anything else is short-sighted!

It assumes that as bandwidth increases globally that industry somehow won't take advantage of it to realise competitive advantage - which is completely f***ing absurd. Imagine an Ausgamers that could no longer host files for Australians because we couldn't feasibly download 200G to 1TB files?!

Remember, game demos were 10-20MB in the mid-90s. They're often much more then two orders of magnitude larger now! We're seeing online distribution of games and other software of 3-5GB. What will it be like in 2020?

The inescapable reality is that we either bite down and upgrade, or sit back and accept that we will be a minnow in the information economy.

last edited by Hogfather at 15:38:32 14/Apr/09

Trog, if serving backhaul for 100mbit (and Gbit) connections is technologically dificult, how do they do it in Japan / SKorea? (Don't give me the density s***, I'm not talking about that).

Remember, game demos were 10-20MB in the mid-90s. They're much more then an order of magnitude larger now. We're seeing online distribution of games and other software of 3-5GB. What will it be like in 2020?

Brings back memories of downloading the 15GB of AOC beta. Oh that was fun at 350K/s.

whopping amount of money

It's only about 5 or 6 aircraft carriers. (Without planes or a crew)
Or 1 tax cut oO (aparently that's how much the last one cost).

Moore's law appears to apply to consumer broadband.

This is an inaccurate observation. 8Mbit cable internet was out back in 1996 in Australia. If you say that has doubled every 2 years since then we would have, or need, 250Mbp/s cable currently to exist on the internet. Just because Conroy misapplied Moore's law when he was arguing for broadband filtering doesn't mean you get to.

Furthermore, I don't think anyone is arguing that some people might like/require faster broadband, the argument is if the government should be shelling out $43B for it so it can reach every town with 1000 people in it for that minority.

If it isn't economically viable for a private company to do, why do you think it is going to be economically viable for the government to do it?

This thread can pretty much be closed. Until there are more details its just those who are "pro fast broadband" vs those who aren't.

What's your 2?!!@#!@#@!

You reaction seems to be a bit over the top so maybe you've missunderstood somewhat, but yes, there have been studies that indicate the potential benefits of increased broadband availability. Presumably the same ones that fed Rudd's mention of the GDP increases in his NBN announcement.

As an example, a quick google points to this one.

The "2" is the vast number of things that having that kind of connectivity across the board allows people to do and the commercial ventures that are made possible because of that.

It's not like we're all going to die if it doesn't happen, it's just one significant area of economic prosperity that we stand to miss out on - in terms of opportunities that will be available in other countries.

Or another way of saying it would be, those who are "pro fast broadband at any cost" and those who are not.

The inescapable reality is that we either bite down and upgrade, or sit back and accept that we will be a minnow in the information economy.

What, so we can compete against India in the IT services industry?
I would wager there may be some long odds against that.

If any IT services that would really benefit from "super-fast" broadband I would expect they to be intra-country, as in, enabling businesses and entities within Australia to rapidly exchange and consume services. Very-high bandwidth (and speed-of-light limited) applications across the pacific will be the exception, not the rule. Which, for occasions, could be catered for. (Don't be thinking Batman in Blu-ray will be streamed from San Jose to your door in Carindale!).

Now, Telstra have already integrated the infrastructure to do all this, (apart from last mile) in the 'Next-IP' transmission backbone. It's sitting idle. This massive beast of engineered scalability is just sitting there, doing squat.

Now we will have another year of nothing-happening, nobody will invest, because hey, Aussie Govt. might pull another 180 !

This is an inaccurate observation. 8Mbit cable internet was out back in 1996 in Australia. If you say that has doubled every 2 years since then we would have, or need, 250Mbp/s cable currently to exist on the internet. Just because Conroy misapplied Moore's law when he was arguing for broadband filtering doesn't mean you get to.

Your example is also fabricated to serve your purpose. Just because 8MB cable was available in Australia to a select few doesn't mean that it was a viable consumer grade option. Most users in 96 were on 28.8-33.6k dialup, because they had no ADSL or cable option.

There are guys in Greenfield estates today with FTTP - is that now the benchmark for 2009? What about ADSL 2+ which is not available to even a majority of Australians?

Of course not. We must make use of a more reasonable figure. To suggest that 8MBit cable was a benchmark when V.92 56K wasn't inveted yet is insane.

Internet access today is probably more typically available at 4-5M uncapped ADSL 1.

So, if we double 56K from 94 (very f***ing generous, V.92 was late 90s) ...

128K 1996.
256K 1998.
512K 2000.
1024K 2002.
2048K 2004.
4096 2006.
8192 2008.

Which is amazingly about where we are today - if you're unlucky you can get 4-5M, if you're in a sweet spot you can get up to about 20. If you're very unlucky you rely on wireless or even dial-up.

Or another way of saying it would be, those who are "pro fast broadband at any cost" and those who are not.

That definitely seems to be the crux of the argument that's going on here, but I think think the 'at any cost' is a bit overstated.

From my point of view, the proposed cost (as much money as $43B is in reality) seems like a reasonable expectation (especially when compared to other recent gov expenditures) and doesn't seem to be disproportionate to the benefit.

There are guys in Greenfield estates today with FTTP - is that now the benchmark for 2009? What about ADSL 2+ which is not available to even a majority of Australians?

The concept of "benchmark" is interesting. I'd say the best benchmark is, "what speed do you need to download the average amount of data in a reasonable time?"

Obviously that is fairly subjective, but I reckon using it you could come up with some pretty realistic figures.

^ 80% or more of the expected benefit to GDP could be attained by an investment of around $41B less.

it doesn't matter for two reasons.

1. moore's law doesn't apply to broadband.

and

2. broadband in Australia doesn't reflect broadband in the rest of the world, which in itself disproves moore's law applying to broadband.

As trog alluded to, _it doesn't matter about the *size* of the access pipe_. You still need to pull down whatever data you're requesting, and much, much more often than not that is 1) completely outside of your control and 2) completely based in reality, ie, some reasonable and provisioned rate.

(especially when compared to other recent gov expenditures)

just because this govt is happy to throw away billions of dollars on poorly thought out ideas doesn't mean we should now let them do it with impunity because they have done it before.

especially when compared to other recent gov expenditures

oh dear, using a $10b cash splash as justification for a $43b over-capitlised sinkhole is not good policy.

That's an opinion ara, not a fact.

What's obviously true is that exponential growth of bandwidth has occured during the lifetime of the internet. If you don't want to call it Moore's law then I don't care - but bandwidth has exponentially increased.

If that continues - and I think its likely it will for some time yet - then Australia's ongoing failure to keep up will result in a widening gap of service and our eventual exclusion from the cool new internet stuff that we can't even imagine today.

See you in ten years anyway.

What cool internet stuff are we currently missing out on?

None, this internet backwater story is hyped-up like its made for ACA.

What's obviously true is that exponential growth of bandwidth has occured during the lifetime of the internet. If you don't want to call it Moore's law then I don't care - but bandwidth has exponentially increased.

Question - if Australia gets FTTH, but our links in/out of the country don't change, has the bandwidth of the "Internet" increased?

What's obviously true is that exponential growth of bandwidth has occured during the lifetime of the internet. If you don't want to call it Moore's law then I don't care - but bandwidth has exponentially increased.

so? you think this means the govt has to step in and do something?

if the need for high speed broadband becomes so important to people that they can't live without it then private enterprise will respond. the fact that this hasn't happened yet shows that there is no dire need for it. furthermore, that there is no market for it.

i bet that not even half the people on this forum advocating this proposal would be willing to invest in these broadband bonds right now with the information currently available, yet they are quite happy to advocate the plan as it currently stands.

Call them Faster Porn Bonds.

If you download from ausgamers or Jims 0-day porn dump, then hell yea.
But, generally um No.

Also alot of people are on Wireless G LANs at home which limits teh internets to around 800kb/s in most cases anyway.

last edited by Fn at 17:03:02 14/Apr/09

I'm advocating the proposal. I think 40B is a reasonable price for an upgrade to the third utility that should last for quite some time - probably similar to the lifespan of the copper network.

Would I buy bonds now? Of course not. What is the point of this observation? Obviously it needs to be fleshed out and properly planned, including feasibility studies.

Clearly I'm optimistic about it, but it doesn't mean that I don't want it properly costed, evaluated and scrutinised before implementation. Not sure where you pulled that from ara?

last edited by Hogfather at 17:06:30 14/Apr/09

1) roll out 100mbit
2) ???
3) profit

What's your 2?!!@#!@#@!

trog couldn't have summed up that sentiment better, imo. i keep hearing people argue that we will increased tax revenues due to productivity gains from the NBN yet i haven't seen anything that indicates broadband increases productivity.

this is taken from the OECD report Dan posted, pg 14:

3. What’s the evidence on the productivity impacts of broadband?

Very few studies look directly at the economic impact of broadband, especially since it is relatively recent and bandwidth continues to increase and the technologies continue to evolve. There are also very few studies with cross-country comparisons – most tend to be regional comparisons within a country. Most studies consider the impact of ICTs more broadly, but to some extent those results can be extrapolated to broadband, even though any impact of broadband will also depend on other ICTs and complementary factors.

essentially, they don't know. now if the OECD, one of the most prominent economic research institutions in the world isn't sure that broadband directly (or indirectly) impacts productivity, why should anyone else be?

i also checked the IMF and World Bank websites. nothing about broadband's effect on economic variables like growth or productivity. checked UQ's largest economics database, Econlit - nothing there.

if broadband is so critical (and i'm not suggesting it isn't, i'm just asking the questions) wouldn't it be prudent to get some independent research conducted on the subject before we start spending the billions of dollars?

I bet that not even half the people on this forum advocating this proposal would be willing to invest in these broadband bonds right now with the information currently available, yet they are quite happy to advocate the plan as it currently stands.

That's quite likely the truth. Can only speak for myself but I'll tell you straight up that I wouldn't.

Not sure why that's relevant though. We're just discussing and debating the merits of a topic we find to be interesting. It's not like anyone here actually thinks what they post will have any bearing on the outcome of the process right?

I've certainly learned a few interesting things from the arguments against it and I'd like to think that others have learned a thing or two from some of the info I've shared.

last edited by Dan at 17:27:17 14/Apr/09

i think the relevance is, that no matter how uneconomic and poorly thought out this plan turns out to be, or is, the govt is going to push ahead with it anyway because that is what they do (see filtering scheme, ruddbucks, alcopop tax).

That means committing taxpayers money to the scheme regardless of the feasibility studies and what not because it is popular with the voters and i am trying to bring attention to that.

now, thinking this idea is interesting is one thing, advocating it another. if people had their own money on the line they might be more reserved and what i'm trying to point out here is that taxpayers money is our money.

I'm out, not much point discussing this further until we know more details.

no matter how uneconomic and poorly thought out this plan turns out to be, or is, the govt is going to push ahead with it anyway because that is what they do

This we definitely agree on.

Personally, my justification for it being a reasonable solution comes mostly from how much better this option seems than the crumby "live under the thumb of Telstra for the next 20 years with sub-par FTTN". Anyway I'd just like to go back to talking about stuff.

One thing I haven't really seen touched on, is how people think they'll end up treating apartment blocks. Every dwelling has copper wiring, but surely a whole lot of these buildings aren't going to easy to re-wire with fibre.

Probably safe to assume that new developments would be mandated to wire with fibre, like they're doing with greenfields, but for existing buildings, I wonder if that cost comes out of the $43B or whether the body corps will get lumped with it.

Reckon they might decide to treat buildings like nodes? Fibre to the building, then VDSL to the dwellings? That'd be pretty sucky, especially having to buy a different modem if you lived there.

FTTP doesn't mean you get your own fibre that runs all the way back to the exchange. they use wave division multiplexing (WDM is using different colours of light down a common fibre) and/or switches to aggregate the fibres. this is where the contention actually starts (with the switch scenario anyway).

with apartments it would be done the same.. a few fibres out to a point in the telco cupboard in the building and then split into multiple fibres, one to each apartment.

if this is done like the green field fibre they roll out in new estates, it will be terminated at CPE that is owned by the telco and installed on wall. this then splits the service into POTS (phone), UTP CAT5 ethernet (internet) and COAX (foxtel/free to air tv) to which you then plug your kit into.

VDSL would still be possible i guess, but would be the nasty/cheap option.

Since the CPE on the wall is telco owned, one would expect the fibre rollout in the building to be telco owned too.

last edited by ara at 21:22:35 14/Apr/09

Yeah, I understand that the residential fibre companies here generally deploy PON architecture as opposed to point to point and that that's how a fttp NBN would most likely end up.

I wonder if there's many buildings that can't be easily wired with fibre though. Everywhere has copper, but I was under the impression that not every unit block is lucky enough to have cable (even when there's a telstra hfc running past in the street and it's connected to houses next door).

In terms of research before you buy a house/move, I suppose it would still have to be better than what we have today, where people can still move into a new estate only to find out s*** like the ports are full at their exchange, or that they're on a RIM and Telstra or wireless are the only options.

FTTP doesn't mean you get your own fibre that runs all the way back to the exchange. they use wave division multiplexing (WDM is using different colours of light down a common fibre) and/or switches to aggregate the fibres. this is where the contention actually starts (with the switch scenario anyway).

I was under the impression that they don't always use WDM due to limitations down the line.

Question - if Australia gets FTTH, but our links in/out of the country don't change, has the bandwidth of the "Internet" increased?

According to Ara, if there is demand, the companies will build it. Sounds logical to me.

One thing I haven't really seen touched on, is how people think they'll end up treating apartment blocks. Every dwelling has copper wiring, but surely a whole lot of these buildings aren't going to easy to re-wire with fibre.

in houses simple enough, in apartment blocks, good luck, especially as a renter. Body corp approval / expense - nightmare at the very least, thats even if it is feasible at all.

Since the CPE on the wall is telco owned, one would expect the fibre rollout in the building to be telco owned too.

Not sure why that would be? Parent's apartment built in '04, has fibre already installed.

Question - if Australia gets FTTH, but our links in/out of the country don't change, has the bandwidth of the "Internet" increased?

According to Ara, if there is demand, the companies will build it. Sounds logical to me.

Dont see too much relevance to this question. It is completely a domestic issue, and I understand this debate is on a gamers forum, but there are much wider practical implications then downloading a game demo, or my "anywhere on demand" tv.

To me, whether this policy was inadvertently created by public popularity, i'm not sure, but this should be about a wider national development blueprint for Australia's long term future.

although australia has been more resilient from the global economy meltdown, there are certainly a few drawbacks from being service / commodity driven country. I believe exports were in the vicinity of 60% of GDP last year. While not a bad stat on its own, we certainly should be using the good times of commodity booms to create a solid domestic market for future proofing of harder times.

I believe, that the NBN is an enabler not a detractor from achieving that goal.

It should enable greater viability to regional areas and help promote growth to these areas. Additionally it would help reduce the strain on the larger cities infrastructure. Like water infrastructure, having been down to 16%, it would be good to spread the burden out across the regions.

It should enable better health services, outpatient care, monitoring. Better diagnostic (checking) for remote and regional areas.

The practical benefits of enabling greater population mobility are endless, but undoubtedly it would stimulate the domestic market. There is a net migration into metro areas from regional. It would be a tragedy and a cluster f*** to have only a few populous centres.

I for one can do my work from anywhere in the world, and am all for telecommuting. It is a change to the mindset, but one worth the effort.

Rubbish article about Conroy saying prices will be the same as they are (doesn't appear to have a direct quote mind you).

Clicky

If he did say it, they obviously have a plan (or a still completely clueless).

He does actually say that "the network will be wholesale only" which is suposed to mean that the viability calculations of Turnbull are wrong.

Just more confusion I think... This doesn't prove anything.

For me, the most interesting development is the companies looking to buy into the network with their own fibre. Optus, AAPT and NextGen are keen to do it, and there are rumours that Telstra are meeting with the Government about it.

Pretty hilarious that now that Sol has been turned off, Telstra are being all nice again (to the Government at least).

Henry Ergas, in today's The Australian, writes that the market should determine when fibre rolls out.

Nah this way is better.

Tucker: five broadband myths busted

Rod Tucker, Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, writes:
The Rudd Government’s proposed fibre to the premises (FTTP) broadband network has generated a rich variety of ill-informed media commentary. It is time to debunk some of these myths and set the record straight.

Myth number 4: FTTP will provide little value because most home users are happy with today’s broadband service.

I think they were running out of myths by Myth 4.

i hadn't come across most of those 'myths' :/

well he is a proffessor and academics tend to be off and away in la-la-land

British Telecom's boss has argued that FTTH cannot be justified in densely populated Britain.

I can't justify reading that article.

Yeah Australia would be silly to learn from other countries' experiences.

I'm not Australia.

I thought it might be relevant to the debate to know that British Telecom has rejected FTTH in Britain, a country roughly 30 times smaller geographically than Australia and roughly 100 times more dense than Australia (per sqkm).

Just because they have a higher population in a smaller area, does not mean that their market is ANYTHING like ours.

Good try though.

You can't get away with such a bland throw away line like that.

What a retrarded idea. Great vision, completely not practical. Go spend the money on the Bradfield water scheme or any of the other measurably useful infrastructure projects on the table. blah

Of course he can. They probably already have decent infrastructure so most of their country can get good internets so the cost/benefit of upgrading there isn't worth it. Here it's different.

Our Internets is pretty good I reckon, trogdor quoted an Indian poster from slashdot, and I compared it here.

Damnit I was out of this thread.

Is our internet so s***house that we need to compare it to what's available in a developing nation to make it look good?

I'm sure it is the bees knees compared to what's available in Zimbabwe too..

Yeah - what hogfather said.

Hogfather is my new favourite poster. He tells it straight!

Also...

In India, it is 50GB a month at 16 Mbps speed for US$100 a month



That's about $135 a month aussie. Just to keep things interesting,

Looking at iiNet, $100 aussie will get you about twice that (100G, 40G peak, 60 off) and comparable peak. With as much as you can sync.

You can't seriously compare India's 50GB to Australia's 40GB peak, and 60GB off peak, and say that in Australia you get twice as much. Off peak data may as well be counted as nothing.

last edited by mongie at 14:54:27 21/Apr/09

British Telecom's boss has argued that FTTH cannot be justified in densely populated Britain.

So is this what you do? Spout liberal rhetoric and occasionally link to some irrelevant article to try and back up said rhetoric?

What also amazes me is not far back someone said something about India, and you are like 'kekke lol u cant compare india to us they have population of eleventy billions!'. Yet here you are, doing the exact same thing, comparing Australias' case to a country that is as geographically different to Australia as you can possibly get.

The way you speak and act really reminds me of the way nana used to speak to me about the time of the early 90s recession. Harping on about how the national debt will kill us, and how soon Australia will be a dictatorship and blah blah f***ing blah. To me I see the whole national debt thing as some retarded topic fundementalist liberals like you bring up to try and justify the s*** way liberals govern (f***ing over people in the interests of corporations and money). It's like you can't actually find any valid arguments against what the labor government does (and how could you? $900 for everyone? Superfast and future proof internet infrastructure?) so instead you just default back to the old national debt argument.

edit: no but wait, national debt is serious! Soon the world governments will collapse, and 'Chairman Rudd' (f*** that is lame) will take sole control of Australia! That's why we all need guns so we can stand up against the tyrannical government isn't it infi?

last edited by fpot at 17:39:07 21/Apr/09

Quiet fpot, dont you know who you are talking to? infi is a business man he knows what he is talking about. As a hard lined conservative liberal extremist he knows whats best for this country. It's clear that "Chairman Rudd" (your words not mine!) is trying to hand over this country to China. Why don't you go back to bouncing, you're nothing but a thug while he is a highly sophisticated high horse riding entreupeuner.

You're full of s*** fpot. I highlighted the clear difference in population between Australia and India when India was used as an example of affordable high quality internet. Of course it will be easier to deliver due to their immensely lower per capita cost.

On the other hand Britain even with its lower per capita costs cannot justify FTTH which Australia with one hundredth of its density is considering.

As per usual where there is a way to upend logic, you will usually find it first. Well done.

Edit: a complete ignorance as to the risks of personal and national debt is all I would expect from you.

last edited by infi at 18:21:09 21/Apr/09

But it just isn't simply a black and white situation like you are making it out to be. The article simple reeks of 256k syndrome, and just because he is saying that the plan isn't feasible in Britain doesn't mean s***, for the reasons that Saint already outlined.

Infact the whole article was s***ty and incredibly scant of any details. You've just seen it and gone hehe I will post this and at least people will see that at least one person is agreeing with me... I hope they don't actually read the article!

You're a s*** poster infi. You are an unfunny white noise posting drone. When you make a joke it is either some s***ty internet catchphrase which has been done to death or some lame piece of dryness that couldn't make a kookaburra laugh. When you post your 'hard hitting' opinions they don't even sound like your own thoughts. They sound like the thoughts of someone brought up in a liberal household, similar to how religious kids are indoctrinated by their parents. You're arguments are always weak, and this is proved by the way you link to articles and s***ty comics from the 1930s in some sort of vain attempt to back them up.

your posts are absent any form of informed comentary or context fpot. You are merely a stonethrowing observer, the rude child no one listens to.

Well I'll admit that about politics. Politics are something people with incredibly boring lives talk about to try and sound intelligent. If there was any major difference between the parties then maybe it would be worth talking about.

You are Hunter's polar liberal orientated opposite you know that?

this is getting a bit tired and old, methinks

banning infi would save alot of bandwithd trog. Just think about it. He's probably the type of person that blocks ads because they are too laborish. Whatever that means.

On the other hand Britain even with its lower per capita costs cannot justify FTTH which Australia with one hundredth of its density is considering.

They are what 10 trillion of our dollar in debt ?

For that ammount of debt we could build a few hundred fibre networks.