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The Internet

U.S. Carriers To Share Connection Fees To Oz 98

Posted by timothy from the good-news-for-aussies dept.
T J Quoll pointed us to this story from Australia's The Age announcing an agreement reached this weekend among telecommunications officials from Australia, the U.S. and other members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group. The officials, says the article, "agreed to scrap arrangements under which non-U.S. Internet carriers had to pay for the cost of links to and from the U.S., while U.S. carriers paid nothing." Sounds only fair to me. The article concentrates on Australia; can anyone enlighten us on how it will affect connections to other countries?
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U.S. Carriers To Share Connection Fees To Oz More

U.S. Carriers To Share Connection Fees To Oz

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  • Let's set some rules while this is taking place. If America is going to help offset the costs here, if you're some little Chinese/Japanese ISP, close your friggin' mailers to anonymous relay, will ya?? Pisses me off every time I open my inbox and find five or six messages that passed through some open relay based in some backwater Asian location.
  • I disagree. As a member of a new Telco in Australia I am very confident that Internet pricing will drop in the future. There are a couple of factors which cause the prices currently being experienced in Australia.
    1. It costs a lot to support off-shore links.
    2. The last mile is still expensive.
    Both of which are being attacked to reduce costs.
    A megabuck per megabit per year has been a good rule of thumb for data going and coming off-shore of Australia. This cost will reduce as technology and innovation improve. Just as innovation and use of alternative technologies will assist in solving the last mile costs. There are many more generations of wireless technologies destined to hit the markets. Coupled with pressure from the ACCC and competition, Telstra will slowly open up their local loop and reduce prices.

    Additionally, I disagree on the basis that if the other Telcos don't drop their prices, we certainly will.
  • Thought struck me though while reading about IPrimus's "Jetstream" business DSL service - okay, it provides "2048Kbps upload and 2048Kbps download rates", with "2GB traffic included every month". So presumably if you go over that you pay extra, right?

    You wouldn't want someone to abuse your link - at 2048 kilobits per second, you could go through 2 gigabytes in a mere two and a quarter hours - that's 0.3% of a month. Ouch. A few clueless users and bam, byebye allocation. And if your sysadmin doesn't notice right away...
  • (snip valid stuff about Telstra rip-off)
    ...Telstra is makeing way too much profit (to the tune of about $1000 profit per person in the county per year).

    The 2 billion odd dollars is more like AUD$100 (US$60-65) per person per year, given approx. 20 million people.

  • The current rate to call the US from Australia is about AU$.24/min and you can get 1/2 hr blocks for AU$8 or the special Optus deal that has a cap of $9 for up to three hours. MCI runs deals to call from the US here for US$.05/min at select times. I have a firend that lives in a small town about 2 hours drive outside of Melbourne. It was cheaper to call her from the US than it was to call her from Melbourne. I guess that shows just how screwy the rates are.

    I just read on the Optus web site that they are now doing unlimited local calls (like in the US) for about AU$35/mo so that puts it slightly higher than SW Bell.

    I wonder if Senator Alston knows that Australia is loosing thousands of jobs in the call center area because of Telstras overcharging. If US compaines are willing to route their call center calls to Ireland, why not route then to Australia as well?

    I wonder if the wireless x.net [x.net.au] is going to take off. I need more connectivity.
  • What do you mean? Telstra is receiving blows from the ACCC - Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the TIO - Telecommunications Industry Ombudsmen and the ACA - Australian Communications Authority.
    Maybe you should read http://www.accc .gov.au/telco/competition/Anti-compconductteleco.z ip [accc.gov.au] which outlines Anti-competitive conduct in telecommunications markets and what the ACCC has in place. Already the ACCC has slapped Telstra with notice of anti-competitive behaviour, prevented Telstra from buying OzEmail. The ACA - Australia Communications Authority also produces reports and measures Telstras performance. As a result some substantial Government funding is up for grabs to deliver Universal Service Obligation services in remote areas.
    The ACA and Federal Government are attempting to allow a healthy self-regulated telecommunications industry. As a result the teeth of the ACCC are not being used fully (at the moment)).
    Deregulation is also bringing about competition which should in any normal environment reduce costs and improve services.

    There are Telcos out there determined to be extremely competitive and innovative in order to capture market share and loyal customers. This should shake up the market a little.
  • Middlesex University in the UK
    That would be with Donald Davies, idiot. Paul Baran at RAND made the same thing and got it to work. You're pretty stupid for pretending to be informed.

    Also, a Brit invented the web
    Larry Roberts invented the concept of a 'web', dumbfuck. He's from Boston.

    many researchers from different countries who made a contribution along the line.
    Obviously you are trying to eliminate nationalism and start a New World Order in which the UN will be in control of the globe. You must be stopped. I call on the Power of Slashdot to vanquish you before you can Destroy the World !!!

    world have to pay taxes to the UK
    No, because nobody over there decided to patent the industrial ideas and processes. And those were developed by underfunded peasants, not by military professionals.
  • Several companies own the cables. MCI owns some of them through their subsidiary UUNET. Sprint owns a few. AT&T Southern Cross Cable. They are still rolling more undersea cable, because cable is faster than satellite....
  • From when this topic has come up before an Australia, I think that one of the points the Aus telcos were making is that orignally the agreement was fair because very little traffic was to the US, but now its not. That makes me think that that figure is probably wrong
  • 36k with a 56k? Not all that bad. A lot of US locations are lucky to get over 28.8. 56k modems don't do 56k except in the lab. Before somebody flames me saying they get 57600, grow up, that is your port speed. If you go through more than 5 miles of wire, or more than one analog to digital switch.
  • Bah, yeah they've got cable in Sydney Brisbane and Melbourne etc. Even the Sunshine Coast. (100 km north of Brisbane) BUT consider this. I live midway between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast. The FASTEST connection I can get here is 64k ISDN at approximately $1400/month. (and No I'm not joking, visit the Cynosure ISP website to check). We are 4km (lousy isn't it) over the boundary to Brisbane or Sunshine Coast either way, Cable (according to Telstra and Optus), is not slated for rollout here in the next 5 years, and DSL is not slated for here for another 2 years at least. Plus, what good will cable do the average web hoster like me? Telstra and Optus's policy is NO SERVERS AT ALL. Telstra will let you run a server, but it's 1.6GB download limit per month on the cable, and 27c/Mb afterwards, and no, not a standard Mb either, (1000000 not 1048576). 1.6Gb? jeez, cable could knock that over in about a week without trying. Work that out. lets see, say you did 1.6GB a week Thats, 4.8GB over your limit, which is, (according to them), 4800Mb, multiply by 0.27 = $1296. Add your basic monthly cable rental $70, for a total cost per month of $1366. I may as well get ISDN, may be slower, but at least it's unlimited.

    Sucks to be Australian (when it comes to the internet).

  • The people who put up the capital for the cables get paid. And it doesn't make any difference to the cost of internet access for Australians whether those people are Americans of Australians.

    What is different is that American internet users will be paying their fair share of the costs of those cables.

    Tom
  • bah, do you get kicked off after 4 hours online no matter what? do you have a 200 or 300mb download limit with excess costing at least 19c/mb?

  • that converts to $938 australian per month, if that's line and internet access, that's cheaper than the major providers in Aust. For me to get 64k ISDN here it's $1000 setup and $900/month for the Internet access (not including hardware costs on my end, that's the ISP charges), and $295 setup and $135/month minimum on the ISDN line.

  • I think he's referring to the 64k of Bandwidth, which is indeed $900/month, then add your NDD1 on top of that.

  • well, chew on this, 50 Internet service providers available to me at local call rates if i moved a mere 10km either way from where I live now. Either toward Brisbane, or Toward the Sunshine Coast. Does it make sense? That to get to the Sunshine Coast you have go thru our area, yet, we don't enjoy the benifits that either Brisbane or Sunshine Coast do? Great for Telstra, everything from here is rated Long distance. And as a result the local ISP's are forced to drive their prices up because they can't operate at the same margins that city ISP's do, due to Line costs that can sometimes be 5 times more than city rates. Work that one out.

  • Bah, what about me? just outside (and i'm talking 5km at most) the local ISDN call boundary in 2 directions? Gotta wonder bout Telstra sometimes.

  • This has resulted in the USA subsidizing the telephone systems of many countries, the outflow was $5.4 billion in 1996. I wonder what the actual telecommunications balance of trade is between Australia and the USA is when both voice and IP are considered.

    What you do forget is that the United States Telcos are actually getting the better deals. Because of their power and size they get the best deals (though alot of countries still rip them off) If you don't live in the United States, you really are screwed. Because your telco isn't as important as the US telcos, they have to pay even more for the connection to other (espescially third world) countries. This has had as a result that it was often cheaper to first call to the US and then to the country you really wanted to talk to. That is why companies like Callback have been growing so much.

    I would figure that your question would have to be answered with the statement that the United States on balance is probably doing better then the rest of the world. Or to put it in your words: Other countries are more screwed then the US.

  • And yet you forget that we subsidise our gas prices.
  • You subsidise your gas in the US?

    Unbelievable, I remember the 'apple war' where Norwegian applegrowers got hell because of subsidies.

    In Norway we tax petrol. We tax it on principle, we have petrol tax, which generally is for upkeep of our transportation system, and supposedly for subsidising public transport, we have pollution taxes, we have sales tax thrown on top of all that.

    Well, well, at least we can be proud of living in one of the costliest nations in the world, and laugh about it, because we're ridiculously overpaid and lazy. We're mostly clicking our tongue, smiling lamely of it and re-electing the same swines.

    Cheerio.
    --
    The Speedy Viking

  • Here in Canada, with only 30 million people, we have one of the lowest bandwidth costs in the world!
    I use ADSL for $35 Canadian/month (which is about $23 US) but I used to have an unlimited dialup connection for $12/month (also Canadian - aprox. $8 US).
    So, I don't see why a small pop. should make that much of a difference in a deregulated economy...
    Hell, we have better rates here than most yanks do!
  • Hrmm... you mean the same way that British naval expenditure lead to the discovery of other continents?

    Big deal if you created the Internet. Wasn't X.400 standardised in Europe? Didn't the Brits have CIX? Don you think that the Internet is the only thing that could have emerged into a global network?

    You could probably lay claim to TCP/IP, and that's it. The modern internet has nothing to do with the old. Most of those 'funds that were supposed to be going to military research' went into laying the original cables and making the original routers, and I can bet you that none of them are in use today. exodus.net and uunet have a lot more claim to the modern internet than the US military does.

    Hrmm, what about the link from Britain to France? Traffic can pass through Europe on European-owned cables that never had to do anything with the US. One of the first things they teach in networking courses is that the Internet is just a collection of smaller networks... ours is connected to yours, doesn't make ours yours.

    When I get data from, say, www.doomworld.com, it goes from Telefragged to Alter.Net to uuNet (who get paid by iiNet) to iiNet, to me. I don't see anything in there I'm not eventually paying for.

  • We're paying for our link to America. But we want America to pay for our link to us as well.
  • Well, of course you pay more for access. It costs more to give it to you... just accept that if you choose to live 100km away from the nearest hub, you're going to have to pay the costs of connecting to a hub 100km away.

    If you don't like it, than come live in the city :P

  • Damn, I should read more carefully, and put brain in gear before fingers hit keyboard!. I see you are referring to the mass of people congregated over on the sourh-eastern side.

  • Don't you get it? You see, deep down, we all want to be American!

    NOT!

  • I just about always get a 52000 connection here in Holland. Never less than 48000.
  • When the current agreement was made almost all of the Australia U.S. traffic was generated by Australians. Thus Australians footed the entire cost. That made sense then, but times have changed and a significant proportion of the traffic between Australia and the U.S. (about 30% of the total according to the article) is generated by Americans. The new agreement should reflect this. The U.S. carriers would not have agreed to pay more than their fair share, rather the agreements reflect the current situation.

    Chris
  • Only in the capitals (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne), and only in some areas of those cities. I can't get either where I live, and Optus don't install into apartments, so when I move into one (as I'm planning to in a few months) my only choice will be Telstra (which sucks cause Optus' plans are sweet... and Telstra's ones are crud).

    --
    "You take a distribution! Rename! Stamp CD's! IPO!"
    - CmdrTaco, Geeks in Space, Episode 2 from 6:18 to 6:23.
  • I have an unlimited account with www.tpg.com.au for just A$20 a month (about US$13). Which sounds as cheap as anywhere else in the world. Pity about the 3 hour session limit. They also give you a free midnight to dawn account for long downloads.
  • for genuine long term cost cutting in telecommunications. For example look at GSM services. At the moment there are 3 firms (Telstra, Optus & Vodafone) with Australia-wide GSM networks. Which means there is a triplication of all the fixed costs & in telecommications a greater proportion of costs are fixed than in just about any other industry. For example, whether a firm has 20% of the market or 90% of the market, they still have to have virtually the same network costs. Actually most pudits recognise that if Telstra was still allowed to have it's Analog monopoly & the competing GSM networks were not introduced. Then the costs regarding the Analog network would now be virtually nothing, as they had re-couped there costs years ago. However because the Fed govt signed an agreement with Vodafone & Optus to disband the perfectly good Telstra Analog network (afterall at least 95% of people with mobile phones never use those fancy services that digital networks provide as an extra). Which means that Telstra has been forced to spend billions building its new GSM network. Plus both vodafone & Optus also had to spend billions too, on there networks. Even if the govt had made Telstra setup a GSM network, if they hadnt brought in Vodafone & Optus too compete, Telstra would have re-couped its cost much earlier & would now be free to charge as low a price as the govt desired.
  • for genuine long term cost cutting in telecommunications. For example look at GSM services. At the moment there are 3 firms (Telstra, Optus & Vodafone) with Australia-wide GSM networks. Which means there is a triplication of all the fixed costs & in telecommications a greater proportion of costs are fixed than in just about any other industry. For example, whether a firm has 20% of the market or 90% of the market, they still have to have virtually the same network costs. Actually most pudits recognise that if Telstra was still allowed to have it's Analog monopoly & the competing GSM networks were not introduced. Then the costs regarding the Analog network would now be virtually nothing, as they had re-couped there costs years ago. However because the Fed govt signed an agreement with Vodafone & Optus to disband the perfectly good Telstra Analog network (afterall at least 95% of people with mobile phones never use those fancy services that digital networks provide as an extra). Which means that Telstra has been forced to spend billions building its new GSM network. Plus both vodafone & Optus also had to spend billions too, on there networks. Even if the govt had made Telstra setup a GSM network, if they hadnt brought in Vodafone & Optus too compete, Telstra would have re-couped its cost much earlier & would now be free to charge as low a price as the govt desired.
  • here in Australia with www.tpg.com.au
  • Okay here is what happened:
    The Australian government gave Telstra and Optus permission to install overhead cables without having to gain permission from the local goverments (councils).

    The councils wanted to get money out of Telstra and Optus for installing them so they started a big PR campain with the basic aim of getting the general public to not want to have these "ugly cables" destroy the skyline. (Never mind that there were already power cables on those polls).
    The councils ended up taking Telstra and Optus to court to stop it and in the mean time got protesters to blockade the cable people from doing their job.

    The end result was that Telstra and Optus offered the councils about A$20 per power pole but they wanted more so both Telstra and Optus ended up telling the councils where they could put their power poles. (at this stage amost all of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne were cabled but Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Hobart and Darwin were not)

    The end result: The councils charge their council rates based on the value of the property. They are now finding that the values for the property are going down because of no cables and they are getting less rates because of it. They suffer, the consumer suffers, Telstra and Optus suffers.


    -TheScream

  • Great news! (Score:3)

    by Matts ( 1628 ) on Sunday May 28, 2000 @10:37PM (#1041092) Homepage
    I seriously hope this is a trend that will spread. The cost of internet connections in non-American countries is insane because of this factor (that most US citizens don't/didn't even know about). Of course it's not the only factor, take for example the crazy profits of our own British Telecom - their profiteering and monopolising makes sure that my internet costs remain at over £360 a month for a 64k link.
  • So when either "the US" or "Australia" pays for moving data to the other nation, who gets paid?

    Who owns the undersea cables?

    If they're mostly owned by US-based companies, then the US negotiators were probably laughing up their sleeves when they made this "concession."

    Maybe Neal Stephenson can track it down [wired.com] for us...

  • does this mean cheaper internet access for Australians?
    about time! access costs up to $40 per month for a reasonable ISP are starting to get annoying.

    Will this have any effect on speeds of traffic Aus<->US? or just cost?

  • I think you got that wrong, now non-US ISPs pay US undersea-cable companies. After the change non-US and US isps are going to pay the undersea-cable companies. If they are US-based then there is less money coming into the us.

    Still a good thing (tm)

    Jeroen Vreeken

  • Wondeful (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Wonderful. Internet access in the Asia-Pacific is hideously expensive and slow. There's no such thing as high speed Internet access in the AP country where I come from - there are 'cable modems', but you're lucky to get 5kb/s out of it. Perhaps we'll start seeing decent prices and service - once we get rid of government backed telecommunications monopolies.

  • Re:Who gets paid? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward

    If they're mostly owned by US-based companies, then the US negotiators were probably laughing up their sleeves when they made this "concession."

    Whatever, it's a start. For the first time, the US companies have admitted that maybe they should pay for some of the cost of connecting the US to Australia.

    Think about that next time you download a copy of Samba

  • If he is online 24/7 this figure could be right. Local calls are not so cheap in Europe
    BTW sixty-four kilobit-per-second link...

    Jeroen Vreeken

  • This seems to me to be a fairer reflection of content on the internet. As far as I understood, the pricing structure whereby other countrys would pay the US ISPs for 'net access was a result of most of the content on the web being a US export in the early days. This has obviously changed now, with more and more content having a non-US origin. It is only in the last few months that the number of internet users from outside the US have exceeded those in the US (or is this only a rumor?)
    Ben Tindale
  • While this sounds really good, I must admit to being a bit sceptical. I can't see it lowering prices for Australian consumers. I think it will lead too larger margins for Australian Telcos. I say this besause Australia is not a large enough market too support a great deal of competition. To give people who don't know much about Australia an idea the current poulation is approx 18mil which I am lead to believe is smaller than that of New York. So with such a small market there is not enough push for Telcos to reduce prices. The state owned carrier, Telstra, has approx 40% of the ISP market. They are even higher for landline and cell phones. Our market here is unfortunately not large enough nor mature enough to support large competition. Thus I believe this will have little benefit for us.

  • I agree. Sharing the cost is definitely a much fairer way of doing it now, but how much of that will the consumers see?

    I disagree that the population of Australia itself prevents strong competition. See how much long distance (and now local) calls have dropped now that real competitors (one.Tel and a few others) are in the market?

    I think the size of Australia is more the problem. 20 million people spread over a country roughly equal to the United States slows down competition somewhat!
  • Hah, sounds kind of like what happened to ISDN. The phone companies decided it would be a good idea to make you have to refinance your house in order to have 128Kb of bandwidth. My local government even decided to put a 4 cents per minute tariff on ISDN! Blah!

  • Re:Great news! (Score:3)

    by thogard ( 43403 ) on Sunday May 28, 2000 @11:10PM (#1041103) Homepage
    Is this good news or not?

    Personaly it sounds like blamestorming where the US compaines are being blamed for the high price of the trans-pacific link costs.

    The real reason access to the internet cost so much in Austrlia a simply Telstra is makeing way too much profit (to the tune of about $1000 profit per person in the county per year). Right now Telstra is 1/2 owned by the goverment and 1/4 owned by Aussies and 1/4 owend by large institutions. It can't compete in the real world because the goverment won't let it and they use all these lame excuses about service to the remote parts of the country and thats way stuff is expensive blah, blah. The areas where there is phone service in Oz is more dense than where there is phone service in the US plus it much cheaper to run cables (no ice--ever).

    My company pays about $1000/mo for 128K isdn access from Telstra. We pay $.19/megabyte for
    incomming traffic even though most of it comes from other sites on Telstras joke of a backbone.

    We just got a E1 for a digial modem. The set up fee was $1600 for the first 10 phone lines. Extra sets of 10 are an additional $800 each. The installed a 6 foot rack full of equipment to provide the E1. It was not a low cost solution.

    Telstra -- the cheapest phone company on earth unless you want to use the phone
  • Oh my God, it's Ed Anger [weeklyworldnews.com] posting on slashdot!
  • now non-US ISPs pay US undersea-cable companies


    Um, are the non-US ISP going to stop paying US-owned undersea-cable companies under this plan?


    No. They'll pay a bit less, but all of the money spent will still end up inside the borders of whoever owns the cables -- Japanese, US, UK, take your pick. What percentage of the bandwidth connecting oz to the rest of the world is owned by Aussies?

    It looks to me like we're moving from a system resembling colonialism to a system resembling sharecropping.


    the economics of the situation would be completely different if we were talking about the UK or Japan (but probably only the UK or Japan).

  • I think the size of Australia is more the problem. 20 million people spread over a country roughly equal to the United States slows down competition somewhat!

    Does 16 million spread over an area roughly the size of California sound a bit better? What they pay in Perth I've no idea.

  • one the the problems with the lack of settlement in the past has been virtually no incentive to host any content in australia - not only does it end up on the deep end of the internet gravity well but you actually have to pay a component of this *back* to american telcos when you ship bytes in that direction in "backchannel" costs. this starts to be significant when you're shipping terabytes of traffic a month and as your outbound is growing quickly, so is the bill.

    with some settlement now available perhaps the long term trend will be that it simply makes more business sense now to leave content within australia instead of hosting it offshore.

    as a maintainer of a large public archive i can state that we had to shut down international access to it because _more_ people in the US were accessing us than locally in australia, which was incurring horrendous network charges for to keep letting them do this!

    -jason
  • 30% of IP traffic between us and the USA comes from us to the USA, so the USA should have to pay for that traffic, just like we have to pay for the 70% that we get from the USA, it's just like paying for what you download.

    But it's not just about downloading, it's about uploading as well. At least, that's how most traffic based accounting works. And if the ISP is going to charge for the traffic regardless of direction, they might as well equally share peering costs. (And even if traffic is not metered, the same logic applies - the better network infrastructure is a bonus for both sides, so they should share the cost.)
  • Maybe the prices for web hosting will drop from the stupidly high levels its at now. I approached a few of the major isp's to find out the pricing and plans for some simple web space space (and hosting my domain name). Well for about $50-60 you can get some bare bones basic web hosting. So I say to the isp business dept ( because only business have web sites ..doh) operator that I'm talking to on the phone " for that price i could get cable access and host the site from my place with linux" his reply was "geez how old are you ? you seem to know a lot" He didnt have a f*ckin clue what I was talking about.
  • I can only think that this development will make it easier/cheaper for organizations like GeekCorps [geekcorps.org] to help rollout internet access in other countries. Anytime the price of internet access for anyone comes down, it's a good thing.

  • I know the real reason that foreign countries originate more traffic to U.S. than in reverse. Spammers! :)

    A few simple packets to some unfortunate foreign open mail relay and then bango, that relay is initiating mail back to mainly U.S. addresses.

    The spammers cry: "I paid for my ISP account, I can do whatever I want. Save the trees, unsolicited e-mail is free."

    OK, maybe this isn't the joke it was meant to be. All of my U.S originated spam lately seems to be bounced through open foreign relays... :(

  • the average bloke who doesn't have glorious co-ax running past his castle (thanks to the freak'n greenies - 'no more overhead cables!')

    I assume you are a resident of .au, so may I ask a couple of questions (this one and the next): what is the frequency of lightning storms there? I live in Kansas, US (the heart of the US "Tornado Alley") and I love underground cabling as it greatly reduces the chances of my gear getting fried. Granted, it's somewhat more expensive to install....
  • Telstra started to make a major issue of this, including petitioning the FCC and then filing a lawsuit against the FCC, after the FCC threatened Telstra and other international phone companies with unilateral reductions in the international settlement rates applied to international telephone calls.
  • I didn't know that it cost .au mirrors that much to download from them. I used to pick .au mirrors because of the time diffence (the middle of the day in Kansas is about the middle of the night in .au, and that oft allowed me to get better throughput.) I'll keep that in mind when I pick my download sites in the future.
  • I know I speak for the majority of Internet users in most of Latin America when I say the the actual cost of Internet connection is not the biggest problem.

    The bigger, more pressing issue is the fact that Telefonica (The government sponsored monopoly on telphone service) is billing by the minute for local calls. Where I am, Perú, it costs about 2.50 US an hour for any and all local calls, including dial-up internet access.

    And if you want something as extravagent as an ISDN line youre going to have to stop eating and paying rent in order to afford it.

    Unless the governments in South America stop supporting the monopoly (not likely in the near future) the only way that it will get better is if Bell South starts implementing wireless services (which Telefonicas monopoly has no control over) and introduces some competition, forcing Telefonica to be reasonable.

    Until then, were kinda stuck with what we have.

  • Thank you, I live to please.

    I say, sometimes you have to point to something and say, this is what I don't like, or you are my enemy. We can't sit back and rub each other's backs saying it is all right.

    Stir up some action, make people think. I know my post was drenched in a couple of bits of humour and some name callign, and little facts.

    I admit it, I'm poor at carrying and argument (at discussion).

    Get upset, do anything, but don't think that any system is better than another, don't think that because my taxmoney finances a lot of clueless people here in Norway I'm entiteled to everything here.

    Personally I'm of the belief that most of the modern western countries just turn a blind eye to what really matters. The one basic right of all people:

    The right to live.So who cares about mine or thine when we still can see children die of war, famine and pestulence?


    --
    The Speedy Viking

  • I think it's about 80% of the total price, good estimate.

    Your conclusion is right, though I don't think it cowardice, just too much money and too litle initative.

    I say, learn from the French peasants. Burn some cars in the street, torch a few gas-stations as a protest.

    I'm too comfy, and I don't drive a car, I use bus, trams or trains for my transporation needs.


    --
    The Speedy Viking

  • Hey cock head, read the article, we DO pay for our links, we want you cock suckers to pay for yours. And Australia is a third world country is it? Maybe you fuckin yanks should pull your fuckin head out of your asses, and get into the REAL world, we ALL live on this planet, in aint owned by you fuckers, time you started to realise, you cant exploit the world, and then dump them when they have troubles. Yeah the yanks were a great fuckin help when the shit went down in Indonesia, whats the problem, didn't they have enough oil for you greedy bastards? Yeah sure you help a lot of countries, when YOU people can get something from it. Superpower? That aint gonna mean much in the future, when a country the size of Singapore, or Taiwan could bring America to its knees, time to eat some humble pie.
  • it's not likely we'll see any benifit from it. the prividers will just keep the extra cent per month it saves them per account.

    get cable if you can. $60-70 for unlimited traffic (no servers though). $40 for a standard modem is a rort.

    and remember, mirror.aarnet.edu.au - it's local so is faaaaaaaast.
  • 3 faults with that, 1. i can't get it here. 2. They won't give me a static ip, and 3. I can't get a block of 8 ip's for my network. These services I believe in the states are significantly cheaper, eg I pay $180/month now for 56k permanent with 8 ip's, and 800mb download limit. I have a choice between that and same price and only a 300mb download limit. Not bad for my area, just on the regional outskirts of a capital city.
  • What's wrong with underground cables? They're a bit more pricey, and harder to fix, but they tend not to get pulled down so much. They were very popular in my part of Florida. (Granted, there are idiots with backhoes, but that doesn't happen all that much)
  • 40AUS$/mo. is still incredibly unreasonable for a dial-up connection. Just because it's similar in the US, doesn't mean that it's at all reasonable.
  • i live in perth australia and most people i know get a minimum 42,000 connection everyt time. personally the lowest speed i have ever seen is 48000 and it normally connects between 50000 and 54000.

    although i have been told that telstra only gauruntees 14400 baud (which is the line speed for facsimile) on any phone line in australia.
  • i live in perth and the availability of cable internet is non existant telstra cable is supposed to be coming to perth in 2005 and optus in 2007 :( fuck that telstra adsl will be available within 12 months

  • I love underground cabling as it greatly reduces the chances of my gear getting fried.

    I have personally had two modems fried from lightning hitting our underground phone cable. In one case I unpluged the computer from the wall before the store (which I knew was coming). Both of the modems didn't work at all, and both computers lost their serial ports (but the computer otherwise worked) FWIW, our electric service is above ground.

  • fuck you yankee boy
    eee aww
  • er cock jockey
    are you joking???????

    how many ppl do u know with a mobile fone that have never used SMS, call waiting or the extra line?
  • what is it with americans and cock suckers
  • Never mind Samba, I think about that every time I use non-crippled crypto.
  • The US isn't going to be paying for .AU access. The problem was that, say if for every 100 megs downloaded from the us to Australia 30 went the other way (no, I have no idea what the true figures are, but this is what the article implies). The Australian telcos would have to pay for the 100 megs, but the US wouldn't have to pay for the 30 megs. Australia will still be paying for what we use - just not what the US uses.

    The question really should be why should the US get it for free?

    OTOH, I think the figures in the article are mixed - I'd be very surprised if "Seventy per cent of Internet traffic between the two countries is from Australia into the US". I thought it would have been the other way around. Or does that mean 70% of requests?
  • If you read the article, it said that 70% of the trafic between the US and Australia was going FROM Australia TO the USA.

    So i dont see why the USA shouldn't have to share the cost.

    Besides, the operative word there is SHARE.

    I would assume the pricing would appropriately reflect the ratios involved.


  • OTOH, I think the figures in the article are mixed - I'd be very surprised if "Seventy per cent of Internet traffic between the two countries is from Australia into the US". I thought it would have been the other way around. Or does that mean 70% of requests?
    I wondered about that at first too....but if you think about the difference in population between the two countries, it sounds a little more possible.
  • We don't have a strong enough consumer watch dog in australia to make sure that the fully corrupt Telescum pass this further down the chain.. Plus the fact that the watchdogs will be flat out looking out for GST cheats during the next 6-12 months.. :-( damnit I'm sick of 27cents per meg...
  • And this isn't flamebait. United States Haters go elsewhere. No, it's a troll. The "ETHERNET" reference was a dead giveaway. Charles Miller
    --
  • Do you get velcro for free in the US? How about ceramics?

    No? But, but, but, but, but, NASA was funded by your precious tax dollars (which is way fewer than in most European countries, if I'm not mistaken), do I dare think that someone is earning money of them...wow.

    You fucking idiots (to use perfectly nice language, I could get rude, if I was wont to do so), you even pay ridiculously little for the petrol (gasoline, juice, whatever), here in Europe you'll pay close to a dollar pr. litre all around. (In fucking Norway, where I live, and we're the second largest fucking oil-fuck-producing country, we pay about a Britsih pound pr. litre).

    Go fuck yourself, you sanctimonius, hypocritical, back town, southern hick-cut, lawyer lowing, asslicking, gun toting, idiot with a hyena as your proudest ancestor.

    And now I'm being nice about it.


    --
    The Speedy Viking

  • Good news, but will it effect us? (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 29, 2000 @12:23AM (#1041136)
    Simply, what it means is that right now, 30% of IP traffic between us and the USA comes from us to the USA, so the USA should have to pay for that traffic, just like we have to pay for the 70% that we get from the USA, it's just like paying for what you download. Currently, the fastest connection one can afford here in Australia is a 56K modem, that in most places the fastest it will connect at is about 36K. Telstra (Tel$cum) won't pass on this saving because just like banks, they are greedy and only answer to their shareholders now they have been privatised, but at least we're seeing prices for calls finally come down in price! (Even if a local call costs 22c as opposed to 25c) Until the day arrives that Tel$cum make xDSL affordable to the average bloke who doesn't have glorious co-ax running past his castle (thanks to the freak'n greenies - 'no more overhead cables!') I'm not going to be a happy chappy. Perhaps we need to organise a 'walk for cheaper bandwidth' over the Sydney Harbour Bridge to show just what we think of the outrageous telecom prices we've been paying for so long.
  • Save money for your ISP and you country! BLOCK *.AU FROM YOUR WEB SITES.

    just kidding

  • Unfortunately, there are only a few major suppliers of bandwidth into australia at the moment, and the way i read it, it will only affect new deals.

    Therefore, as there will be no immediate change in what our supplier's suppliers will be paying, nothign will change. When they do renegotiate, will they pass it on?

    As mentioned earlier, there are only a few major providers of bandwidth at the moment - telstra/aarnet, optus, and tig/ihug. Smaller satellite based services 1) suck, and 2) arent big enoguht to challenge formentioned ISPs.

    Disclaimer - myt info is a few months old, but i dont think it has changed much.

  • Australia is a large enough market to support competition. Good telco management is what is needed.

    Roughly 16 million of its 18.75 million population is concentrated in southeastern Australia, in an area rougly 200 miles E-W by 500 miles N-S. This is only slightly fewer people than the population of the State of Texas, in an area roughly the size of Oklahoma.

    Southwestern Bell Telephone Company provides excellent service to most of the area South of Nebraska lying between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with a total population of rougly 27 million, 21 million of which are in Texas, Oklahoma and Eastern New Mexico, and most of the population is concentrated, like Australia's, in large metropolitan areas. Though SW Bell gives excellent service, until recently their intrastate and intralata rates were absolutely predatory - 42 cents a minute to call Amarillo from as little as 40 miles away. I can call anywhere in the U.S. for 5 cents a minute, and only a little more to Canada. It just takes some competitive pressure to bring the rates down. Now that Texas allows subscribers to choose their local service carrier, you can bet rates will come down.

    SW Bell has commited to providing DSL service in all the larger cities it serves and seems to be making good progress, as recent comments on ZD Net indicate. And the rates are reasonable. Without impending competition, this would almost certain have been delayed for as long as possible.

    With competition, deregulation and good management Aussie telcos ought to be able to do as well as Southwestern Bell has in a roughly equivalent market.

    Octalman
  • Err I think Oz is just a tiny bit larger than California.

    As for low population density, don't forget most of the population lives in the big cities.

    AFAIK, the Aussies are getting screwed more on internet connectivity than in NZ, especially as NZ has no local call charges.
  • >This has resulted in the USA subsidizing the telephone systems of many countries, the outflow was $5.4 billion in 1996. I wonder what the actual telecommunications balance of trade is between Australia and the USA is when both voice and IP are considered. I'm not sure it's subsidy of Australia that's a problem (UK-Australia costs 4-6p/minute (10c.)), but subsidizing all those developing countries whose main source of foreign income is incoming telephone calls.
  • Slow and expensive ?? Not in all AP countries. NZ prices are not too bad, at least in the main centres (I doubt you get much choice Hokitika!). No state run monopoly, only a non-state run semi-monopoly ;-).

    $NZ 39 or less (today about $US17) for unlimited time with the biggest ISPs (Xtra or Clear), and I there are some free ones too. Remember, NO local call charges either.
  • Unfortunately, only *some* of the cities are being served. Optus@Home's website lists Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne (state capitals), and as far as I can tell BigPond while having POPs in other capitals too is likewise restricted to the major metropolitan areas. My east coast city (Bundaberg) certainly doesn't have cable - much as I wish it did - and doesn't look like it will get any laid within the next five years at least.

    It's not all doom and gloom though - hopefully the upcoming big DSL rollouts will manage to reach here by sometime in 2001.
  • the same as they pay every where else in australia
  • has any one ever told you what a small penis you have?
  • a) its not Oz, its Australia
    b) its not gaseline its fuckin petrol
    c) its litre not liter
    d) petrol costs AU$0.70 to AU$0.90 depending on how much they feel like ripping us off at the time
    e) stupid... yes, you are
  • Govt. Role Rejected

    ASIAN GROUP MOVES AWAY FROM SETTLEMENT PLAN FOR INTERNET

    Commercial entities rather than govts. should
    set compensation for interconnecting Internet
    traffic, Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
    Conference ministerial meeting in Cancun agreed
    Fri., but only after tough negotiations.
    Agreement signals regional support for U.S.
    position that compensation for interconnecting
    Internet traffic should be decided by commercial
    negotiations, rather than govts.

    ITU study group's recommendation that
    Australian govt. has backed, at apparent urging of
    Telstra, still is expected to be on agenda of ITU
    World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly
    in Montreal, which starts in late Sept. Ensuring
    that that doesn't move beyond draft recommendation
    stage remains significant priority for Commercial
    Internet eXchange Assn., Public Policy Dir. Eric
    Lee said. Opposition to draft recommendation has
    emerged among English-speaking countries and the
    Netherlands, he said. "There was no sort of
    precedent for this," he said. Lee said that even
    one of Australian study group members who backed
    draft acknowledged "that it was not possible to
    track various cost components." APEC language
    appears to be "helpful" but questions remain about
    how issue will be resolved, Lee said. "Clearly,
    we would like to leave it up to the commercial
    sector to resolve because international settlement
    regimes are never as fully up to date with
    technology and financial issues," he said.

    APEC principles that emerged from last week's
    conference appear to move regional group away from
    international settlement system Australians have
    been backing, which has sparked opposition by U.S.
    and others. APEC language diverges sharply from
    draft ITU study group recommendation that would
    impose international settlement system now in
    place for voice telephony on Internet traffic.
    One U.S. official said Australia still is expected
    to back draft recommendation in ITU, although APEC
    text is significant because it shows lack of
    regional support for that stance. "In this
    particular venue, it shows that there wasn't that
    much support," source said.

    Language that emerged from ministerial
    meeting is reaction to ITU study group
    recommendation that administrations that provide
    international Internet connections negotiate
    bilateral arrangements for compensating each other
    for cost of carrying traffic that each generates.
    U.S., Canada, Netherlands, Russia and U.K. have
    expressed opposition to plan, although April Study
    Group 3 memo had indicated that other European
    countries hadn't expressed concern.

    Specifically, APEC principles reached at
    Ministerial Meeting on Telecommunications and
    Information Industry says: "Internet connectivity
    is an essential element of the global information
    infrastructure." Earlier text that had been part
    of negotiations had cast Internet connectivity as
    "integrated" rather than "essential" element of
    this international infrastructure. While only one
    word is changed in final text, distinction is
    important because "integrated" could have meant
    that Internet traffic could be considered part of
    basic telecommunications, govt. official said.
    That would have meant that Internet traffic could
    have been considered under discussions of
    regulated services, including potentially
    international settlement rates.

    Importantly, principles reached at
    ministerial meeting also stipulate that
    "governments need not intervene in private
    business arrangements on international charging
    agreements for Internet services achieved in a
    competitive environment, but where there are
    dominant players or de facto monopolies,
    governments must play a role in promoting fair
    competition." In part, message here is "let the
    private sector work it out," govt. official said.
    The principles also underscores that Internet
    charging agreements between network service
    providers "should be commercially negotiated." --
    Mary Greczyn *********
  • Let's hope the telcos sit up and pay attention to the dissatisfaction of rural Australians about the lack of services offered in the country by extending their Internet, especially cable services to more rural areas. They should have got the message with the outcome of the last Victorian State election, but if not hopefully the trend to elect out of office politicians sacrificing the needs of country Australia to the cities will continue at the next Federal election, sending out the feeling, strong and clear.
  • Australia may be getting screwed on the cost of IP links, but the USA is getting screwed by many countries on international telephone calls. Many countries charge high rates to terminate international phone calls, much higher than their actual costs. While rates in the USA have dropped over the years, rates in most countries have not followed suit. This has resulted in the USA subsidizing the telephone systems of many countries, the outflow was $5.4 billion in 1996. I wonder what the actual telecommunications balance of trade is between Australia and the USA is when both voice and IP are considered.

  • Re:No price drop for consumers (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Australia is not a large enough market too support a great deal of competition.

    Not so, we are currently one of the most internet-connected countrys in the world.

    Adsl is coming REAL soon and there are already 4 companys that have setup web pages on adsl access

    IPrimus ADSL [iprimus.com.au]

    Telstra ADSL [telstra.com.au]

    XYZed ADSL (Optus) [xyzed.com.au]

    Sign up for Adsl trial here:Pilbra Mines [pilbaramines.com.au]

    I'm sure there are others too, but i cant be bothered searhcing for their links.

  • Re:Who gets paid? - These people do (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    SoutherCrossCables Gets paid. http://www.southerncrosscables.com/ [southerncrosscables.com]

    Warni ng, page is flashed

  • There's no point charging based on the ratio of traffic. It does not reflect accurately who is benefitting from the information being transferred.

    Even the simple act of reading a webpage benefits both the websurfer and the website. Other examples are even more complicated and difficult to disentangle (e.g., a US software company making patches available for download).
  • Well in France that is about the same price, 3000 F for a 64 Kbit leased line. Of course ADSL or cable is cheaper, but not as reliable.

    Now you know why we all host our sites in the US...
  • Actually, I think that it DOES make sense -- though not, necessarily, for long.
    When I managed the email for a medium-sized ISP, I talked to someone in Australia about a spam complaint. He said that, as peeved as he was about it, personally, there wasn't much he could do. His explanation was that privacy laws in Australia made it essentially illegal to nail the spammers.
    For this reason, he explained that there were a LOT of PORN sites hosted in Australia. They were basically allowed to do their dirty work scot free.

    Of course, with the new censorship rules in Australia, the porn sites may be going away.... I think, however, that they may still get a free ride as long as they don't provide the porn to Australian civilians (haven't read the law that closely).

    In any case, the explanation is that porn generates a lot of traffic. If there are a disproportionat number of porn sites in Australia, that would explain why there is a noticable bit balance in favour of Australia.

    BTW: My expectation is that -- except for countries with developing markets, the bit balance should be somewhere near even. Granted -- there may be 10 times as many sites in the US as in AUS, but there are also 10 times as many USERS in the US. This implies that (as long as quality is somewhere near even) an AUS site of non-local nature should get about 10 times as many hits (from the US) as a similar US site would get (from AUS) ie: 1/10 as many sites with 10 times the transborder hits each.. comes out about even .... Then you factor in porn.
    --

  • You're forgetting that Optus@Home [optushome.com.au] and BigPond Advance [bigpond.com] now have cable services serving the cities on the east coast of Australia.

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