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.