99% of Australians With Broadband By 2009?

Recently a study of broadband penetration rates around the world was in the news, because the US has fallen to 24th place worldwide, at 53%. Now comes word that the Australian Prime Minister has announced a $1.68 billion (US) plan to move Australia to 99% penetration within two years. If they accomplish this goal they will be the most-wired nation (South Korea currently occupies the top spot with 90%). The Prime Minister's plan was attacked by his political opponents because it would create a two-tier system with the country's vast (and almost empty) interior served by wireless at "only" 12 Mbps.

The Real Reasons Howard Wants Broadband = Spam

[tpgp]

Remember - This is the same Prime Minister of Australia (John Howard) who phone spammed [theage.com.au] the continent prior to the last election, then paid his smug looking son to email spam the nation [smh.com.au].

The reason Howard's talking about broadband (apart from the fact that he's running scared from a buoyant & surprisingly competent opposition with a better broadband plan) is because this will give him access to more Australians to spam, spam spam.

My apologies for being ontopic. I now return you to your scheduled 'why broadband is crap in the US' offtopic flamewar.

the measurements are wrong!!!

[flukus]

I saw our communications minister (Helen Coonan) on lateline last night. She had the perfect solution to change all our broadband woes, change the way the measurements are taken. That sums up the current government though. If you don't like the statistics change the methodology.

Potential Problem

[Frogbert]

While this would certainly be a great improvement for Australia I have to wonder if we will have enough offshore bandwidth to keep up with the demand this network will create. Australian offshore bandwidth is in short supply after Telstra gave everyone access to 8mbps ADSL1 plans, I can only see this getting worse. As far as a short term solution I think it is time that the Government reformed library laws to allow an "Australian Online Library" that hosted television shows and movies for the country. It wouldn't be popular with the media companies, but then again Australia is its own nation so there isn't much they could do about it. I know it would never happen but it would be sweet.

Heck, No

[freedom_india]

Heck, i could not even get Optus to provide a telephone connection to my apartment in Ashfield, Sydney, let alone getting me a broadband.
My employer was in Hurstville and he has a 2 Mbps broadband line as small business.
Most of the time, the line was out and Telstra support sucked.
If this is how broadband is going to be, i guess Aussies are worse off than Indians in reliability of broadband.
My colleague who was in production support for Westpac Bank, was "advised" not to rely upon the company-funded broadband connection to his home to remote telnet into their servers as it was not reliable.
If Westpac could say Telstra was unreliable (and they are as high as Woolworths), imagine for poor folks at home who see their modem lights blinking...

Heck, even in India (Chennai/Madras) my Tata broadband had a failure rate of 3 hours in a full year.

Good luck aussies. Telstra will deep fry your b....

To be fair...

[distantbody]

...this plan is largely a catch-up response to the the opposition Labor Party who announced a similar plan a few weeks ago. IMO, the oppositions plan is superior because it doesn't rely on half of the funding to come from the private sector who would surely (and currently do) rape customers above and beyond what is a healthy profit and go into price-gouging territory. It is also FTTH (fiber to the home) as opposed to the government who, although are promising the same, are almost certainly lying and will default back to the FTTN (fiber to the node) that they so short-sightedly love.

99% of Australia upgraded, but read the fine print

[jimmybishman]

According to Tasmania's leading newspaper, The Mercury, the whole state is classed as regional and does not get the upgrades. Currently down here, the main connection we have is ADSL 1.5mb/256k. Some have a connection with a theoretical maximum speed of 8mb, but they have to pay twice the cost and, in practice, may only get 4-5mb based on how far from the phone exchange they are. The contract only says a minimum of 1.5mb. I currently pay AU$49.95 for my 1.5 meg plan with a 10gig download limit per month. Download any more and it's slowed down to a 64k connection. This is actually the fastest and best value plan available to suit my needs and I live in a suburb within 10kms of our state's capital city centre!

Some really lucky people get ADSL2, but AFAIK, that's only 1 exchange down here in the whole state, servicing Hobart (the capital city) with a radius of only a couple of kilometres.

So, while we're classed as broadband, we'll still be stuck on connections with a fraction of the speed of our other Aussie counterparts. And forget wireless. Unless they lower the prices significantly, only businesses and the wealthy can afford that!

Source:http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,2288 4,21929477-3462,00.html [news.com.au]

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[Snad]

Here in the USA, the standard is "200kbps in at least one direction".

Here in New Zealand, the definition of "broadband" is essentially "anything that isn't a dial-up modem". Hence the telecoms monopoly gets aways with a 128kbps ADSL link being referred to as "broadband" and although I've never actually seen it as such I'm sure there will be those who consider a 64kbps ISDN line "broadband".

Note for the geographically challenged : NZ isn't part of Australia (yet ... give it time) but we like to whine with the best of them...

Population spread vs. broadband saturation

[Asterra]

Not sure why this persists as being such a big deal. The US is perpetually under the spotlight but the statistics are fond of ignoring just how much land (per population) needs to be covered in order to accomplish broadband penetration. Korea, for example, being a country the size of a small US state but with a highly disparate population, has no excuse for failing to be 99%+ broadband; if anything, their 10% presence of non-broadband solutions is conspicuous.

How about the blackspots?

[OverflowingBitBucket]

You know, it'd be nice when rolling out these huge links to the country areas if they stopped for a few moments and looked at those of us in modern suburbs who cannot get broadband for love nor money- even when there is complete and total ultra-high speed coverage four streets away in every single direction.

There are a whole bunch of blackspots through the country, reasonably new suburbs where Telstra cheaped out on the phone connectivity initially and won't pay a damn cent to upgrade it. 12Mbit/s to the country? How about letting us have something better than .056Mbit/s over dialup modem here in the suburbs without splashing out for ultra-expensive wireless?

Re:Problem is links going out of Australia.

[Matt_R]

The total over(under?)seas capacity will increase 10x in the next year.

Telstra are building their own 1.2Tbps cable to Hawaii [itwire.com.au], Pipenetworks are building a 640Mbps cable to Guam [pipenetworks.com], and Southern Cross are upgrading their cables from 240Gbps to 1.2Tbps [southerncrosscables.com].

So things are actually looking good.

Re:All this complaining!

[jimmux]

I'm sure all these people complaining about lack of infrastructure have looked at other options.

I live in our nation's capital. Half an hour away from the nice shiny house in which Mr Howard made this generous promise. The best speed I can get here (in a practical sense) is about 1.5mbit. Until last year I wasn't able to get DSL at all, and it was only with the help of a very good alternative ISP that I was able to put enough pressure on Telstra to upgrade the dodgy copper lines to my home, making DSL a possibility.

(Handy Hint: if the other ISPs say that DSL is not available in your area, try Internode)

Re:the measurements are wrong!!!

[cammoblammo]

Note for the geographically challenged : NZ isn't part of Australia (yet)

That really depends on your reading of Point Six in the Preamble to the Australian Constitution [aph.gov.au]

I asked a constitutional lawyer once about the mechanism by which NZ could ever become a state of Australia, but she never got back to me. However that turns out cricket would never be the same again.