100% broadband coverage

[time]

In Oz, our current government is attempting to rollout FTTP/FTTH (fiber to the premises/home) to 90-93% of premises. It is expected to be scalable for the next 40 years.

It will replace telephony, cable TV and, of course, Internet access. Video on demand is expected to be just one service that third parties will want to offer.

The remaining 7% of the population will get wireless (4G) or whatever other technology is available, meaning 100% of Oz will have an *absolute minimum* of 12Mbps connectivity.

Commercially, Layer 3 Internet access will initially be a minimum of 20Mbps, ranging up to 100Mbps. The expectation is that this will keep increasing over time as back-haul is upgraded to support it. The submarine cables to Oz are a significant bottleneck.

Wholesale cost is expected to be AU$25-35, meaning retail charges will be about the same as for 1.5-8Mbps currently.

The infrastructure is a government project because no private consortium has been able to come up with anything resembling a viable plan. With private capital contributing after the first 6 years, government investment is expected to top out at AU$26 billion, or about $1200 per head of population. The government hopes to get their(our) money back after 15 years.

Short of war, I can see that this may be the most significant infrastructure project this country has ever undertaken - mainly because nothing else has been so unilateral across the country, but also because of the short time frame.

Our parliamentary opposition has chosen to oppose this in its entirety, saying that current DSL is more than fast enough for the foreseeable future.

It's probably worth pointing out that Oz cable TV is majority owned by some guy called Rupert. They currently own most of the 'cable' (fiber + copper) that was deployed 10-15 years ago, as well as satellite coverage for those of us who don't have coaxial cable to our door. He seems to like the parliamentary opposition rather a lot, or at least the 90% of newspapers he owns in Oz do.

It's best not to talk about who owns the existing copper phone wiring, because it involves expletives, such as "Telstra". Formerly a government-owned monopoly, by the way, which is how we got the original bunch of phone wiring in the first place.

Unfortunately, our current government has also disappeared up its own orifice through trying to spin the time of day and weather, not to mention unbelievably incompetent management of setbacks in some political programs - not the problems themselves so much, but the management after the event.

This hasn't gone down well, government popularity is in decline, and I fear they may try to bastardize the FTTP plan in some sort of weird attempt to placate Rupert et al.

I'm personally pretty unhappy with the government, but having skimmed the $25 million 500 page review of the fiber rollout, I suspect this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and probably the best national bargain we'll ever see.

After the health-care debacle, I figure this couldn't even be discussed in the US. What do you guys think, as well as the European contingent?

 

[ddrueding]

A good thing, IMHO. FTTH should be as common as the gas, sewer, water, and electric lines running into a house. Of course, exactly how to bill for the service is another matter. Allowing multiple carriers onto the fiber network, and having competition would be one way, establishing strict rules on network neutrality (QoS) and pricing, then giving it to some carrier would be another.

Unfortunately, our government is not up for such a task. It wouldn't pass until it was eviscerated, then corrupt corporations would cause billions in overruns before failing to deliver even the smaller, much simpler network in the bill.

This incompetence and corruption is so certain; it is better to do nothing at all and save the money.

 

[Pradeep]

Hope it gets through and succeeds. With the vast remote population areas it always had to be situation where the governement invested in the infrastructure. Tech jobs are the future, can't keep mining forever. Back when I was in Tassie the best I could do was 28* dial up, too far for DSL. Ended up with line of sight microwave (12-15" square grid doohicky, terminating in a PCI card with the encoding/decoding guts. Managed to get it working with win2K despite all the odds), thru Austar to the local repeater station which I got thru after cutting down some monster pine trees. That was actually absurdly fast, not many customers on it and I was getting preemo quickness.

Hell here in the US Verizon are already bypassing lower income neighbourhoods when deploying FTTH.

To tell you the truth I could probably get by just tethering when needed to the droid. With 4G hopefully Verizons 5GB monthly cap will be removed.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

Soon my subsidised health care will require me to pay over US$1000 per month for family coverage. 9f course paying those premiums doesn't exempt me from paying a co pay of between $10 and $40 per prescription, and $20-$30 each doctors visit.

Frankly moving to Aus would end up saving me a shitload of money, even with the increased PAYG tax regime.

 

[time]

We had a federal election 17 days ago. It's taken 17 days to work out how to form a (minority) government. The most important factor mentioned by the two independents that ended up supporting the existing government was this, the NBN (National Broadband Network).

Things are looking up.

 

[time]

Interestingly, wholesale access to this infrastructure is (supposedly) guaranteed to have the same rates across the whole country. This is a big thing in Australia with its huge distances between cities and extremely sparse rural population.

Obviously, it costs far more to provide this service the further you get from a capital city. The NBN is cross-subsidising city and country services, which is a socialist aspiration. But I think it's the only way to do it - we need to offset the tyranny of distance that distorts investment in this country.

 

[ddrueding]

...we need to offset the tyranny of distance that distorts investment in this country.

Sorry, what? I think that makes some assumptions that aren't true. Looking at the definition of tyranny, the words that come to mind are "arbitrary", "unjust", and "undue". Internet costing more for people whom it costs more to provide with internet is hardly arbitrary. In fact, saddling people who choose to live in metropolitan areas with the additional cost of providing said internet along with their own higher costs of living in a city seems pretty unjust to me.

Everyone having internet is a good thing, and this is the only way to achieve that. But saying that the people in backwater whatever deserve it and have been oppressed is going a bit far.

 

[time]

It's an anthropomorphic expression coined by an Australian historian 46 years ago. Try thinking like a pioneer rather than a suburbanite.

I can drive in a more or less straight line from here for 2600km (1625 miles) and still be in the same state. And this is nowhere near the biggest state.

The state is represented in the federal government with 28 members, each of which who represents a distinct geographical region. One of these regions is 82% of the size of Texas.

Despite this, Australia is highly urbanized in a handful of cities. As the population grows, this has created all sorts of infrastructure headaches. It's very much in the national interest to try to maintain regional populations.

I invited comments because I was curious to see if Americans would find the egalitarianism a bit foreign. So I'm really quite interested in these responses, thanks.

 

[Howell]

If OZ is as highly urbanized as you say this implies that people make an effort to be rural. Do people in the rural areas even want it?

 

[time]

Very much. We're talking dial-up if you're lucky. Not to mention a single TV channel or none at all (although satellite obviously alleviates that), poor access to movies, etc.

The problem for this and other infrastructure like roads and power is that the population to distance ratio is too low to be commercially viable. Yet the country depends on these communities for food and export income (including mining). So they often feel, with some justification, that they're being screwed over.

There's loose plans to use the broadband network for remote medical consultation, including some diagnosis. When the alternative is sending a doctor by plane, it's not as far fetched as you might think.

I should probably point out just how bad our telecommunications infrastructure is. I live in a suburb that's 25km from the city center, inside the city authority boundaries (pop ~1.5 million). Three years ago, nearly half the houses could not get DSL. Six years ago, that was most of the houses. That's because when the suburb was being developed, the monopoly telco simply ran really long wires to an existing exchange in the next suburb. The exchange is overcrowded and has to borrow phone numbers from six other exchanges.

I recently upgraded to ADSL2+. My maximum connect speed is 8-9Mbps, but the S/N is a pitiful 3dB. This means that the connection has to be renegotiated every few days. My ISP tells me that the telco won't even look at it until I get several disconnections every day.

That's by far the fastest technology available to me and there's nothing in the pipeline for the future. I'm one of the lucky ones.

 

[Howell]

1. I guess I don't understand why people who choose the simple life would also really want to bring rubbish entertainment into their life.

2. Why can not rural workers like miners adjust the price of their product so as to pay for the things that make it worth it to work out there?

 

[time]

You have a romantic idea of why people live outside capital cities. Most people would rather have the option of the facilities and social interaction of the cities, even though there are obviously advantages to semi-rural life.

People who do mine-related work do it so they have a job. The hours are horrible (12 hour shifts) and the living conditions depressing. Some actual miners are facing fines of $30,000 each because they protested over a change in their living quarters: the company wants to introduce 'motel-style' accommodation by allocating them a different room after each shift. In other words, they will no longer have a home.

But there's a lot of other people that indirectly benefit or support enterprises like a mine or farms. That's creating infrastructure problems as well, but that's another story.

 

[ddrueding]

Your take is a bit more left-leaning than mine.

You have a romantic idea of why people live outside capital cities. Most people would rather have the option of the facilities and social interaction of the cities, even though there are obviously advantages to semi-rural life.

What I hear when I read this is "they want the advantages of living in a city without the disadvantages".

People who do mine-related work do it so they have a job. The hours are horrible (12 hour shifts) and the living conditions depressing. Some actual miners are facing fines of $30,000 each because they protested over a change in their living quarters: the company wants to introduce 'motel-style' accommodation by allocating them a different room after each shift. In other words, they will no longer have a home.

That life is crappy for at the bottom rungs of the employment scale is one of the reasons they are the bottom rungs.

The capitalist in me sees this as black and white, either they are being compensated sufficiently or they should leave. That the realities of the situation make it difficult for them to do something else complicates things, and makes the liberal in me wonder if they are unionized.

But there's a lot of other people that indirectly benefit or support enterprises like a mine or farms. That's creating infrastructure problems as well, but that's another story.

Capitalist wins here. Either someone is paying the actual cost of a product/service, and therefore doesn't owe anyone anything, or the product should cost more. If the workers in the mines deserve better, then by all means put a tax on the product of the mines and let the miners have internet. But that seems an awfully complex way to resolve a perceived inequity. So complex in fact, that it would be difficult to measure or adjust so the right balance was struck.

Edit: I'm thinking that a better way about it would be to use that money to increase the mobility of the mining workforce, increasing scarcity of miners and therefore increasing their demand/pay according to supply/demand.

 

[Chewy509]

Very much. We're talking dial-up if you're lucky.

What happened to the subsidised Rural Broadband scheme, that covered up to $2500 for installation and capped the monthly cost to the end user to $89 for 2M/2M with 10GB of data? (2-way Sat).

The only condition was no DSL/Cable/Fibre/Wirelss was available to your area.

Did it die, when the ALP took government in '07?

 

[Pradeep]

You know, we in the US are also subsidising the great unwashed in rural US areas. Look for it on your bill:

"OKLAHOMA CITY --There are lots of fees and taxes on your phone bills, but, one in particular caught our eye. It's called the Federal Universal Service Fund. Billions go in and out of it every year. The goal is to provide phone and sometimes internet service to everyone in the U.S. at an affordable rate."

 

[time]

What happened to the subsidised Rural Broadband scheme, that covered up to $2500 for installation and capped the monthly cost to the end user to $89 for 2M/2M with 10GB of data? (2-way Sat).

The only condition was no DSL/Cable/Fibre/Wirelss was available to your area.

Chewy, I confess I was way out of date on this, I thought it was still the downstream-only regime where you had to use dialup/ISDN for upstream data. I also assumed most people weren't eligible because ISDN was counted as broadband, but I *think* they stipulated 512kb/s minimum download speed (there's also a mention of 256kb/s, so I'm not certain).

Did it die, when the ALP took government in '07?

No, but it's been changed twice. As I read it, wireless started to be counted as broadband in January 2009.

From what I can glean from forums, most people found that the huge satellite latency (800-900mS) really hurt the usability. And unsurprisingly, dish orientation is critical to achieving reasonable upstream performance.

For those who don't know, satellite comms die in the ass when it rains. So not a great solution for the tropical parts of Australia in the wet season.

People are happier with 3G wireless. In flat country, enterprising people are getting good results by installing (and aiming) their own directional antenna. Makes sense where the population is sparse - I assume this is the 7% not covered by the fiber rollout?

 

[Mercutio]

At one time, I remember reading posts on Slashdot regarding a Canadian initiative for wide broadband availability. time, you're talking about dealing with a flat country with relatively mild weather. Imagine the challenges involved in getting decent network access in, say, the Yukon.

I really don't understand why bandwidth caps in your part of the world are so damned low. Transpacific blah blah blah, but don't most sites have a .au version that's relatively local?

 

[LunarMist]

Everyone doesn't want the social interaction of the cities. It's awful most of the time. If I had substantial wealth, I'd buy a place in the desert about 120-180 miles from a mid-sized city and only go to town a couple times per month. I'd be fine with 1 Mbps or thereabouts.

 

[Chewy509]

I assume this is the 7% not covered by the fiber rollout?

from what I've read on NBN, yes that is correct. For areas with no 3G, sat is still being considered for inclusion in the NBN setup, but AFAIK it's still undecided (or it's been dropped and the gov is being very quiet about it).

 

[Chewy509]

but don't most sites have a .au version that's relatively local?

They do, or have local caches... Just about everything I've downloaded from IBM, Dell, HP, Sun or Microsoft has come from a local server somewhere in Oz.