Interesting article yesterday at BusinessSpectator.com.au looking at the new independent undersea cable connecting Sydney with Guam, Cheaper internet in the pipeline.

It states that the $200 million cable will have paid for itself in less than 12 months, and that it is expected to half the price of overseas data.

The article also looks at why data is so expensive in Australia, claiming that a major cause was the Government's treatment of pornography - forcing it offshore and reducing the volume of locally sourced traffic.

f*** you govenerment

i want my pron local

This is a really cool development - good luck to em!

It's going to take a couple of years to deploy (Telstra via Alcatel are doing the same thing), so it's not going to impact your iiQuota just yet, but the really cool thing about this is it opens up the other access mechanisms like wireless and mobile and makes them not just gimmicky but actually practical to transport significant quantities of data! (see Vodafone's $39 for 5G of mobile data offer?)

We need like an Australian Federal Porn Cache...

we can host it at my place or evem better, the datacentre where I work!

last edited by natslovR at 14:43:38 28/Feb/08

It is also interesting in conjunction with this news from Google about getting massively increased bandwidth from Asia to the USA

yes, and with google building at least one large datacentre in SE Asia they'll need it.

wouldn't it be cool if instead of someone like malaysia or vietnam winning the bid that australia got it, and kept it similarly close to the equator, in Darwin

I wonder how much of an issue geography plays in these decisions, not just cheap power and tax rorts.

would make more sense to keep it around the population mass, rather then the equator?

nah they'd go where the labor's cheap, with multiple redundant fibre links, cheap power, and good tax benefits.

Manila and Singapore are the two obvious choices in *SE Asia*. If you were doing it on the cheap Manila I think would be the choice, but being Google I reckon Malaysia would be the better option

wouldn't it be cool if instead of someone like malaysia or vietnam winning the bid that australia got it, and kept it similarly close to the equator, in Darwin

Has there been any mention of the unity link connecting to Australia?


Also, Internode announced recently to expect download limits to increase as a result of them purchasing more capacity on the SXC, and signing on as a member of the PPC-1. Should be hitting around June apparently, Simon has talked about it extensivley.

australia needs 10 more of these things to increase compition and drive down prices

does anyone think it's a bit like the usual conspiracies
EG. OPEC with oil?
fuel companies with hydro cars?
energy companies with solar?

is it really that hard to provide "adequate" bandwidth or do the telcos rule and keep the prices high by telling us "it's not possible" or "it's to expensive"
whatever happened to fibre optic or optic fibre? (can never get that in the right order, does it matter?)
how come they can keep pumping more through copper when all we started with is dial up and that was the max at the time?

and i still think Telstra killed JFK!!
paranoid? i am not (am so) shut up crazy.....
gotta go

I wonder how much of an issue geography plays in these decisions, not just cheap power and tax rorts.

It's pretty much all about tax rorts.