opinion The Coalition was roundly criticised last week for its complete lack of anything resembling a policy in relation to Australia’s technological development, and rightly so.
As David Braue noted for ZDNet.com.au, the party’s policy on technology appears to be that it is against anything that costs money. E-heath projects, the National Broadband Network, even netbooks for school students — all of these things — which most people possessing a modest degree of a common sense would see as being broadly positive for Australia’s development, the Coalition has thrown into its “too expensive” basket.
However, I feel obliged to point out that when it comes to having policies about technology, the Australian Labor Party — the party which is currently governing Australia — is little better.
Let’s start with Labor’s biggest technology policy — the much vaunted National Broadband Network. Yes, the NBN represents a massive effort by the Federal Government to divert both attention and funding towards solving the ongoing problems with Australia’s telecommunications sector.
In one fell swoop, so Labor’s theory goes, the NBN project will vault the nation’s telecommunications infrastructure to the same level as South Korea’s and the industry as a whole into a state of thriving and even-handed competition.
The problem is, there are significant doubts that that utopian vision will ever come to pass.
For starters, in the two and a half years since the Government started enacting the policy, almost no infrastructure has actively been laid (except for a few suburbs in Tasmania). Yes, eventually the NBN will reach the rest of Australia, but NBN Co’s own timeframe for the rollout puts it at more than half a decade until it’s even hitting significant percentages of coverage.
The project is targeting pain points in some areas (such as the competitive backhaul cable currently being laid in Qld and about to be laid in Western Australia), but that infrastructure will serve a relatively small percentage of the Australian population.
With doubts continuing to abound about the rate of return which the NBN Co will deliver to its shareholders (currently, only the Federal Government), Labor will face tremendous difficulties in enticing the private sector to invest in the NBN. Although it didn’t show up in the last Federal Budget, this will mean that every year for at least the half-decade or more, billions will have to come out of the public purse to ensure the project’s continuance.
In the meantime, questions must surely start to be asked about exactly how many “retail service providers” (as NBN Co labels Australia’s beloved ISPs) will eventually buy services from the newly created wholesale-only player.
Far from becoming more competitive, since the NBN policy was announced, Australia’s telco sector has become increasingly less so. We now have three major mobile telcos instead of four (with the merger of Vodafone and Hutchison), and another integrated wholesale/retail player in TPG after its acquisition of Pipe Networks and a number of other ISPs.
Another potentially explosive opportunity for consolidation has long existed in the complicated ownership structure involving AAPT, iiNet and Amcom. With Telecom NZ reportedly placing AAPT on the market, that situation could come to a head at any time, taking other large players out of the market.
The question hanging over the NBN’s head at this point must surely be: Australia will get fibre to the home – but at what cost?
We should now turn to other Labor policies.
I hardly feel it necessary to remind readers of the incredible embarrassment which the mandatory internet filtering project has delivered to Australia in the eyes of our Western allies. With the internet filter, Labor is pushing ahead with a policy which surveys have consistently shown Australians almost universally are against — and the more so, the more they learn about it.
Labor itself has admitted the technology is pathetically easy to circumvent, and many security experts have pointed out it may not even be successful, given that most of the nastiest internet content is not passed around via the public World Wide Web, but instead via private forums and chat rooms.
We also have the problem -– some evidence for which has already been demonstrated –- of scope creep. Where is the line between restricting access to objectionable and illegal content, and censoring unpopular political material online? Currently, as censorship of abortion and euthanasia websites has shown, that line is extremely grey.
Mr Braue’s article mentioned that Labor Senator Kate Lundy has recently attacked the Opposition for its lack of a broadband policy.
What it didn’t mention is that Lundy has also repetitively attacked the Internet filter project -– a policy of her own party. Even now, I have no doubt she is continuing to lobby her Labor colleagues to get an “opt-out” clause inserted into the Filter legislation.
The final Labor policy which I wish to address is its national Health Identifier initiative, which received some $466.7 million in funding in the Budget this month, to be spent over the next two years.
To be honest, when the Government allocates this amount of money to a technology project, you would expect it to have some plan which it would publish for what it intended to achieve with the funding, and how it is expecting to achieve it.
As analysts have noted, Australia’s health industry is currently “confused” about what exactly the Government intends to do with the money. I have followed the e-health debate in Australia for years and even I have no idea how the money will be spent. Will the Government issue a massive request for tender for e-health solutions? Develop a solution in-house? Pile the money up in a corner and dance around naked on it? Nobody currently knows.
To be honest, I don’t want to be too hard on Labor. The truth is that the current Labor Government’s technology policies are not terrible. In five years’ time we will likely look back upon them and agree that while there were problems with them, in general they pushed Australia’s technological development forward.
But to pretend they are dramatically better than those of the Opposition is simply not true.
I would chalk up a lot of its current policies, in fact, to concerted lobbying efforts from industry (NBN), the conservative religious right (the filter), and public servants (the Health Identifier).
There is little evidence that Labor (with the notable exception of certain clued-in Senators such as Lundy) really understands how Australia’s technological development needs to progress. And certainly it has not demonstrated much more insight into the area than the Coalition.
Image credit: Office of Stephen Conroy
Did I miss something?
Where’s the Libs tech policy or is theirs just to block anything and everything?
There is no demand for internet censorship, except from christian lobbyists. If there was, the private sector would pick it up.
Atheism should be a prerequisite for entering parliament. Only then will we get some sane and rational decisions from our politicians.
I would like to point out that there is also no demand for filtering from this Christian lobbyist either…. Protecting children is a noble idea, but it’s a pity the answer is not as simple as using a filter (if it actually worked, that is)
While either party may not understand many aspects about IT/Telecommunications in general, at least they have a policy of moving forward.
That is a big difference compared your defense of Liberals.
Which they pointed to scrap the NBN entirely and nothing to be replaced, except some obscure references to OPEL, which is already impossible to do because of a number of reasons…
In-regards to the supposed competition, there are already providers signed upto both NBN TAS and Telstra Point Cook, which also goes to show that even Telsta can do FTTP in brownfield’s.
Telco’s have already rolled Wireless/WiMax networks.
LTE can’t be done until spectrum is freed (Which is why even Telstra or optus haven’t started yet, other than proposed internal trials).
The point of the article over the ISP Filtering was a separate subject/policy (of which, you conventionally included) of which you also refused to point out as Liberal party have neither gave a definite YES/NO on that subject, instead he bypassed the subject with “We do need to protect our children online”.
I think if you included the ISP Filtering (in an NBN Policy) as your main attack on Labor, then it’s bad journalism.
Sorry, but try something better with something abit more equal please.
Daniel.
I read your blog with great interest and would like to add the following:
1. LNP had 10 years to get communication and broadband to a world class level but failed. I do not like for a second the notion to wipe this and revisit the OPEL solution. Can the LNP hmove out of the 70’s?
2. I was once a LNP but did vote ALP on the policies they came ot hte election with and I did think it was time for a change. I did not know about the mandatory filter for the sake of the government doing what I see, can be managed by parents. There is enough software on the market (Net Nanny and the like) to accomplish this without blanketing the population.
3. I still believe Conroy is a douche and Ronald McDonald be shuffled into the front cabinet straight away.
Thank you for listening.
I have no idea how you can compare Labors existing tech policy to a non existing Liberal policy, You’re crazy and that’s being kind.
Comparing something to nothing is easy;
ALP: Slowly delivered, poorly thought out NBN.
vs.
LNP: No NBN, no ideas. (score 0 points)
ALP: Government mandated censorship.
vs.
LNP: No censorship. (score 0 points)
ALP: Fuelwatch (fail), Grocerywatch (fail), e-Health failure in waiting).
vs.
LNP: Internet? What’s that??
The way I read it is the LNP is winning on internet policy, without having one.
It took me a while to figure out why this article seemed so familiar.
And then it hit me: the “what have the Romans ever done for us” scene in “Life of Brian”.
What has this government done for the tech sector? Well … to put a positive spin on it, the government has begun begin the very complex task of telco reform, injected massive energy and resources into the NBN, had a good early stab at gov 2.0, reformed public service IT procurement and initiated important e-health reforms.
Sure, none of these initiatives are perfectly designed or executed. But is that really realistic to expect?
At the end of the “What have the Romans” scene, the Peoples Front of Judea won’t even accept peace as an acceptable outcome of the Roman occupation, never mind clean drinking water, law and order or viticulture.
What, exactly, would be enough for the Australian IT industry?
Wade A.
I Actually think someone like Kate Lundy should be Communications Minister (I know your probably making fun there).
Liberals also have too much power in the Senate, it has to make up for it with Labor and Greens MP’s.
Considering it took about 80 years to roll out copper to almost everyone, and it took at least 10 years to modernise exchanges for adsl, it seems only reasonable that it will take at least another 10 to roll out fibre to cover 90% of the population.
This is a once in a lifetime upgrade to replace something that hasn’t fundamentally changed since the first telegraph stations in the late 19th century. As long as they lay enough of it, It seems unlikely that we’ll need to upgrade our cable for another 100 years until quantum mechanics miraculously improves upon the speed of light!
The issue is not whether fibre will be rolled out, because that will happen regardless of the government, the issue is whether we get stuck with a small proportion of businesses and households with high speed access, and the rest of the population – particularly businesses having a gun held to their head over pricing for fibre to compete. As the Exetel chief said, the NBN resets the industry.
Brett, I agree with what Extel chief, but with one minor flaw.
We have better data rates (new players and international data rates gone down and all), and better position on the fibre network than we did on Copper network.
And over time, these plans on fibre will either get cheaper (or see new ones) or get fatter downloads.
Daniel.
Nice comment Brett, particularly the very first sentence/paragraph.
I bet a lot of us (even us NBN supporters) never looked at it like that.
Cheers…
Sounds like a straw man argument to me. Compare apples to apples not (non-existent) oranges.
As noted, there is no liberal tech policy.
On the labour side notebooks in schools and Censorship Filters will have negligible impact in the long term (news flash, most kids these days already have access to a computer anyway)
The NBN is truly long term thinking. It could fail, but it could also have a staggering impact on Oz society in the 21st century. I for one want to take that risk.
My only question is once everyone’s downloading stupendous amounts of data, how are we going to get it into the country given the choke point of 1 or 2 fibre pipe connections between us and Europe/US?
Regards
I think part of the problem with the liberals is that they seem hell bent on scrapping the NBN because Labor scrapped the OPEL project.
At this rate, every 3 years we’ll be told about a wonderful new technology project to replace the uncompleted project from the previous government. Of course this project won’t be finished before it’s scrapped by the next government in 3 years. In 10 years or so we’ll realise how screwed we are and it’ll take another 5-10 years to fix and we’ll be right back where we are now with internet infrastructure that is passable for the times, but not state of the art and in need of upgrading.
While the filter is horrible, i’m hoping that labor will remain in power so at least something of the NBN will be completed by the time the following election comes around…
You guys actually want to give netbooks to primary/high school students?
Why are they needed? Who should they be purchased from? Who owns them? How many students are they expected to be passed through? Who pays when they break? Who pays if they get lost or sold? Who pays in the first place? Why should the government pay for netbooks when they don’t pay for calculators, books, uniforms, or stationary? What the hell are you thinking?
Please don’t link completely absurd brain-farts with “technological progress”
Also is it just me or is broadband getting better and better without government help?
I’m all for government stepping in when the private sector is failing and something needs to be done, but things seem to be going fine. (And don’t tell me it’s for people in the country who have no internet access; it doesn’t cost forty-something billion dollars to provide basic internet connectivity to the rural population.)
Kestas, Broadband isn’t getting better without gov help.
Where has it gone better in your view? Have the private sector be able to keep with international players?
Did private sector upgrade from 3G to 4G, across the entire country (with the claimed speeds)? Did Telstra actually separate at all, like everyone else is doing (including Telecom NZ who just announced they are doing it)?
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100524-700654.html?mod=WSJ_World_MIDDLEHeadlinesAsia
Anything at all you can point to us Kestas, that Private sector has done anything?
> Where has it gone better in your view?
I get 50GB/month (+70GB during weekends/night), at 12Mb/1Mb transfer rate, for $70/month. Recently upgraded from ~30GB/month (+50GB during Sunday/night) for everyone.
That seems pretty reasonable to me, even for the family of 6 it provides for.
> Have the private sector be able to keep with international players?
You tell me.. but if it hasn’t I don’t see the problem, we have an ample connection for a reasonable price. Also if the private sector hasn’t been keeping up with the private sector elsewhere why would that be?
> Did private sector upgrade from 3G to 4G, across the entire country (with the claimed speeds)?
Which country does have widely deployed 4G? (with or without the “claimed speeds”)
If there’s anyone out there who is gritting their teeth waiting for 4G due to the inadequacy of 3G I’ve yet to meet them.. If there’s a country where everyone is using 4G due to 3G’s horrible inferiority I’ve yet to hear of it.
I have to agree that Labour is just bad policy vs the Libs no policy. A loose-loose for Australia. When the next election comes around I will go with who ever will drop this stupid filter even if they are neither Libs or Labour. Aust Pirate Party maybe?
Kestas:
“Did private sector upgrade from 3G to 4G, across the entire country (with the claimed speeds)?”
Just about everyone else other than US?
Peter: I think you need to separate the ISP Filtering as it is a different subject, nothing to do with this article.
Aus Pirate Party won’t get massive votes, the best you can do is vote below the line for the Greens.
Daniel,
Read the article again. In particular whats under “We should now turn to other Labor policies” which specifically mentions the filter. This is an article questioning and comparing the policy of the current gov to that of the opposition hence the title “Labor hardly better than Opposition on tech policy”. Read my comment, I only state my opinion that out of all of what is compared, it is the only thing that will swing my vote. And at this point they are all horrible policies that havent been thought out. This country is run by the sales department, not the engineering dept.
Yes I know, Peter.
I did say that the Opposition on this subject said nothing about supporting it or not supporting it, and it should be separate from the NBN which is is clearly the main subject here.
“Everywhere other than the US”? That’s pretty dubious, can you give a citation with 4G adoption rates for a significantly sized country? (And not Japan/Taiwan or some other outlier)
@Kestas Download quotas may be going up, but overall broadband is not improving.
Broadband cannot get much faster on copper. 4G will suffer from the same issues that plague all wireless broadband technologies, namely only intermittent achievement of peak speeds and performance degradation under stress from large user numbers.
Fiber, by contrast, can already hit 1Gbps comfortably and can scale higher.
That kind of speed is needed for the next generation of broadband applications. The NSW Government, for example, wants Doctors to be able to access medical images from a central database and download them in 10 seconds. How many 10MB images download that fast now?
> @Kestas Download quotas may be going up, but overall broadband is not improving.
That sounds like “gas mileage may be increasing, but overall cars are not improving”; download quotas are an (important) metric of internet connection quality, and it is improving. My speed has also improved significantly; a few years ago only 1.5mbit/256kbit was available where I live, now 24mbit/1mbit is available.
Total bandwidth and transfer speed have both significantly increased w.r.t. cost; if that’s not improvement I don’t know what is.
> Broadband cannot get much faster on copper.
Something we can both agree on; copper does indeed have limits as does any sort of wireless technology, and fiber definitely carries far more bandwidth. But is it up to the government to push fiber to the home?
1. If people want fiber why can’t they pay for it themselves as their needs dictate? If Doctor Watson needs fiber that doesn’t mean Granny Smith does. If government pays that just means everyone pays, except through taxes instead of directly, and many of those people won’t want fiber.
2. Being able to connect to the local exchange with a 1000Gbps data rate because of your new fiber connection doesn’t mean you can connect to youtube.com with a 1000Gbps data rate. If everyone in Australia can download at 1000Gbps that doesn’t mean youtube.com, or the trunks connecting Australia and America, can carry 1000Gbps*australian-population; there’s no use trading one networkbottleneck for another.
3. Even hypothetically 1000Gbps doesn’t let you do very much more than 0.024Gbps; I don’t know what I’d do with such a high data rate, I wouldn’t notice any benefit. That may change somewhat over time, but it’s hardly a critical issue requiring government intervention
4. Data rate doesn’t affect latency, and won’t necessarily reduce bandwidth prices. With a higher data rate it’ll still take ~0.3 seconds to ping Google, just like now, and if you can download you entire quota in a few seconds that’s not a great thing.
Regarding these medical images, I think that’s just silly. 10MB on my measly connection (~800kB/s ~=8Mbits/s) would take less than half a minute. A 24mbit connection (the max copper data-rate) could get one in less than 5 seconds.)
And that doesn’t even factor in that 10MB represents an absurdly large image; unless the doctor needs to see every pore on a patient’s body simultaneously that’d be a waste. And decent software would recognize when a doctor is looking at a patients profile and begin downloading relevant images in advance (most modern web-browsers do this)
Plus I’m not even asking where this 10 second requirement is coming from, that doctors need images within 10 seconds; sounds pretty absurd to me, but even despite that copper is more than adequate.
Let me say finally I am a (last year) computer science student, who is a networking enthusiast, and I’m no free-market anti-government zealot, so I’m not speaking out of ignorance or bias; I really just don’t think a government push is necessary here.
An area of networking where I do think a government push would be good, and where the private sector really can’t move as quickly/readily, is in pushing IPv6, the next generation internet protocol, which would do much more to help new technology than just raising data-rates. But that’s another post and this one is long enough.
Kestas. if you are a computer science student, you should know that mass rollouts of fibre make it cheaper than say ringing up your local fibre wholesaler, as they will charge the normal rates (which is not cheap!).
NBNCo will need at least 200,000km of Fibre (and I don’t think this is including the backhaul that the government is rolling out in certain area’s).
The private sector hasn’t moved much because it relies on the incumbent telco to provide/update.
The same can be said on the Wireless front, spectrum is needed for that, to rollout nationwide.
Rolling out fibre network also removes a few restraints on the existing systems….
1. IPTV can be more successfully used, which is good news for providers like iiNet and Internode who signed up with FetchTV.
2. Free To Air Televisions can be moved onto the Fibre Network, under the law of “Must-carry”, which would give Wireless providers access to the 700Mhz spectrum that the TV signals use.
3. In the above point, Wireless can be provided eventual upgrade to 4G/LTE/Further WiMax rollouts across Australia.
Daniel.
> Kestas. if you are a computer science student, you should know that mass rollouts of fibre make it
> cheaper than say ringing up your local fibre wholesaler, as they will charge the normal rates (which is not
> cheap!).
Well we’re not taught about the economics of bulk buying in computer science, but let’s not get into that.
Your point here is that the people who sell fiber-optic cables would sell at higher prices to individuals than government; first off can you put a number on that or cite it? What was the name of that website the government paid millions for, about grocery prices, which flopped? They aren’t necessarily the best at getting the best prices historically, especially for IT services, and given the recent insulation drama I wouldn’t put too much faith in government providing the most efficient delivery of a nation-wide next-gen network.
Also if there are huge savings to be made by buying in bulk (so huge that it is cheaper to give everyone fiber than to provide fiber only to those who need it) surely any company which invests in bulk-buying the amount of fiber legitimately needed would make a fortune, and would be able to do it at least as cheap as the government?
I just find it dubious that it is actually cheaper to buy more fiber than is required.
>The private sector hasn’t moved much because it relies on the incumbent telco to provide/update.
That is just not true, and the connection I’m using now is proof. It uses copper originally laid down by Telstra, but from the exchange on it uses a privately owned DSLAM and link. Amcom has a network, Agile has a network (and those are the only two ISPs I’ve used).
Here in Perth if you want a decent ADSL2 connection you connect to a private network, Telstra’s is still backwards and expensive, but the private networks are improving all the time (a few years ago only Telstra was at our exchange, then there was an Internode DSLAM but no free spaces, then an Agile DSLAM too, etc, the private sector is not standing still)
> The same can be said on the Wireless front, spectrum is needed for that, to rollout nationwide.
Not sure how you roll out spectrum, but yes there is a requirement to set up towers, but it’s not like the government needs to make that happen. Mobile phones do fine without government help.
> Rolling out fibre network also removes a few restraints on the existing systems….
Such as? Vastly increasing the amount of bandwidth for every house can only increase load on the current systems. Increasing the fiber between exchanges and increasing backbone connections can relieve the load, but the private is already doing that where needed.
> 1. IPTV can be more successfully used, which is good news for providers like iiNet and Internode who
> signed up with FetchTV.
Here are some video data-rates: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate#Video (most of these are without modern compression too)
So unless its about getting blu-ray quality video there’s little need for it. Besides since when was TV something the government took care of? Surely that belongs in the private sector?
Also remember if you have 100 houses connected to an exchange with fiber you need 100 fiber cables to connect to the city’s exchange, and 100,000 cables to connect one city to another. To get around that you need to throttle connection speeds, or allow each home a fraction of the theoretical upper speed, both of which defeat the purpose.
(In reality it isn’t quite this bad because of multicasting; it’s more like cables*channels rather than cables*viewers, but that depends on whether it’s view-on-demand and whether IPv4 or IPv6 multicasting are used and other details.)
> 2. Free To Air Televisions can be moved onto the Fibre Network, under the law of “Must-carry”, which
> would give Wireless providers access to the 700Mhz spectrum that the TV signals use.
I doubt you’ll get all TV moved over to the internet any time soon, and I don’t think we’re literally out of bandwidth to the extent that we need to push all of television out of the way to make room.
Besiders aren’t TV frequencies used because they carry so far? Wouldn’t that be undesirable for WiMax/4G anyway?
It is crazy to nationally try and switch broadcasts to use point-to-point cable technology, and switch end-to-end data transmissions to use wireless broadcasting technology.
“Your point here is that the people who sell fiber-optic cables would sell at higher prices to individuals than government”
Yes, that is correct, because your one individual, wanting to pay for the fibre to whereever, commercial return rates, guaranteed uptime, SLA etc.
It can run into thousands if not more.
You cannot buy fibre from a ISP, as a residential service, you can only do it as a Business.
Other than that, you can only get Fibre at greenfield estates.
“What was the name of that website the government paid millions for, about grocery prices, which flopped? ”
Now your dragging the topic to something else, can we please stay on topic?
“They aren’t necessarily the best at getting the best prices historically, especially for IT services, and given the recent insulation drama I wouldn’t put too much faith in government providing the most efficient delivery of a nation-wide next-gen network.”
Unlike the Insulation drama, your not going to get your fibre installed by some shonky installer, fibre cannot be installed by a shonky installers, in places where Telstra Exchanges and Ducts, and say The Poles are pretty much restricted area’s.
You will have to be licenced, and on top of that 4 government agencies are already getting funding to oversea the NBN.
“surely any company which invests in bulk-buying the amount of fiber legitimately needed would make a fortune, and would be able to do it at least as cheap as the government?”
You’d think so, but no, again I can point out to a number of area’s and situations (such as greenfields) that can do this.
“but the private networks are improving all the time (a few years ago only Telstra was at our exchange, then there was an Internode DSLAM but no free spaces, then an Agile DSLAM too, etc, the private sector is not standing still)”
Private Networks still very much rely on Telstra and ACCC.
Agile are not that big enough to massively rollout like both TPG and iiNet can do, thats the problem, companies have to invest, so you can get the DSLAM benefits, with the NBN, you don’t have to worry about that, you just focus on product/service development.
“Not sure how you roll out spectrum, but yes there is a requirement to set up towers, but it’s not like the government needs to make that happen. Mobile phones do fine without government help.”
The government actually does fund alot of Wireless/Sat stuff, Mobile Phones is not entirely different area’s.
“Vastly increasing the amount of bandwidth for every house can only increase load on the current systems. Increasing the fiber between exchanges and increasing backbone connections can relieve the load, but the private is already doing that where needed.”
Yes, and the NBN has included the cost of the Backhaul(extra) in non-competitive areas, and the NBN will allow those private backhaul to reach the POI’s.
“unless its about getting blu-ray quality video there’s little need for it. Besides since when was TV something the government took care of? Surely that belongs in the private sector? ”
No, because again you still rely on Telstra DSLAM’s which the ISP’s do not have full control over the network, only Telstra does.
In reference to your link:
# 8 to 15 Mbit/s typ – HDTV quality (with bit-rate reduction from MPEG-4 AVC compression)
# 29.4 Mbit/s max – HD DVD
# 40 Mbit/s max – Blu-ray Disc
Now times that to the number of people the average house watches tv? Perhaps two do three people?
You see where I’m going with that now?
“I doubt you’ll get all TV moved over to the internet any time soon, and I don’t think we’re literally out of bandwidth to the extent that we need to push all of television out of the way to make room.”
I think you have to due to the Must Carry law, Foxtel has to do it, so does Optus Vision.
In regards to your comment about enough room, why not have the availability there, for the future use? The beauty of Fibre is that it remains stable, but you don’t have to choose the maximum speed, and other services that run off it, are not effected by it.
If you restrict the room to grow, there would be limited development and limited improvement.
“Besiders aren’t TV frequencies used because they carry so far? Wouldn’t that be undesirable for WiMax/4G anyway?”
Exactly, so why block the advancement in WiMax/4G? Allow it to be used as a Second addon to your existing main service?
> It can run into thousands if not more.
But not for government?
> You cannot buy fibre from a ISP, as a residential service, you can only do it as a Business.
> Other than that, you can only get Fibre at greenfield estates.
So it’s only for business, cannot be bought from an ISP, and is not available residentially, unless you live
somewhere where it isn’t only for business, it can be bought from an ISP, and it is available residentially?
That doesn’t exactly explain how the government will get it far cheaper than when individuals get it..
> Now your dragging the topic to something else, can we please stay on topic?
The point is the government have historically paid far more for technology than the private sector would pay,
which goes against your assumption that they’ll be able to get it much cheaper because they’re the government…
> Unlike the Insulation drama, your not going to get your fibre installed by some shonky installer
Oh good: Unlike the insulation drama, the insulation drama won’t happen.
> fibre cannot be installed by a shonky installers
Neither can insulation; the worry is that it will be.
> in places where Telstra Exchanges and Ducts, and say The Poles are pretty much restricted area’s.
And people’s roofs aren’t restricted areas?
> 4 government agencies are already getting funding to oversea[sic] the NBN.
Oh goody; we will be funding *4* agencies just to ensure no-one kills themself again, that’ll be cheap.
> You’d think so, but no
Errr.. good point? Why can a company not buy fiber in bulk? If it’s not possible why are you providing
examples of companies which have bought it?
> Private Networks still very much rely on Telstra and ACCC.
But they are improving, and becoming far less reliant on them. Other than the copper I may be connecting
to this server on entirely private equipment.
>Agile are not that big enough to massively rollout like both TPG and iiNet can do, thats the problem,
>companies have to invest, so you can get the DSLAM benefits, with the NBN, you don’t have to worry about
>that, you just focus on product/service development.
Why would I worry about companies having to invest? If people will pay for it companies will invest, if
they aren’t willing to pay for it why should they be forced to pay for it via the government?
>The government actually does fund alot of Wireless/Sat stuff, Mobile Phones is not entirely different area’s.
Is not or is an entirely different area? Huh? And what satellite TV service is government funded?…
>Yes, and the NBN has included the cost of the Backhaul(extra) in non-competitive areas, and the NBN will
>allow those private backhaul to reach the POI’s.
You said it would remove restraints on the current system; now you’re acknowledging it’ll increase demand
on it and will need even more govt funding.
Also “non-competitive” means people there wouldn’t pay for it, which makes you wonder why they should
have to pay for it by taxes. If it’s not worth the cost of setting it up to them, why do it?
>No, because again you still rely on Telstra DSLAM’s which the ISP’s do not have full control over the
>network, only Telstra does.
You realise private companies install their own DSLAMs right?
Either way my point was why should the government care about ensuring people can watch *three high
definition TV channels at a time*? Why not have a national rollout of ferraris?
>In regards to your comment about enough room, why not have the availability there, for the future use?
Because it’s much more expensive and there’s no demand/need for it….
>The beauty of Fibre is that it remains stable, but you don’t have to choose the maximum speed, and
>other services that run off it, are not effected by it.
Oh yeah, fibre-optic cable is super stable; as long as you don’t bend it or sever it in any way, in which
case it needs replacement or a retransmission unit…
>If you restrict the room to grow, there would be limited development and limited improvement.
No-one is restricting it; internet service is improving due to the private sector, and if/when
people want to watch 3 high-definition TV channels at one time they’ll be able to pay for it
>Exactly, so why block the advancement in WiMax/4G? Allow it to be used as a Second addon to
>your existing main service?
Who is blocking it? Not making it mandatory everywhere before there is demand for it is not
“blocking it”
My god Kestas listen to yourself!
Rolling out fibre to one person shouldnt cost less than rolling out fibre to 20 million people (on a per head basis).
Kestas, I am not going to explain it to you, I am going to ask you to read about Economies of Scale.
Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_scale
Basically, if you get past the Economics jargon, it says: “Buy more = Cost less per unit” ever heard of “Buying in Bulk”? Same thing.
If we buy fibre for everyone, everyone gets it cheaper than everyone buys fibre for themselves.
If you can’t understand that, you have a problem.
“The point is the government have historically paid far more for technology than the private sector would pay, which goes against your assumption that they’ll be able to get it much cheaper because they’re the government…”
You are saying that in response to a grocery watch website. Where did the private sector ever pay for a grocery watch website?
Something you need to understand Kestas, is the government is mandated by the people to do things in their interest. Sometimes “in peoples interest” costs money. Grocery watch (and whatever else) might have been a colossal failure. I’ll give you a point for that. But the *idea* that the government should make sure that there is competition in the market is *Exactly the reason the Government exists*.
There is NO money to be made in the private sector making sure everyone else is being honest.
That is why the Government spends money making sure everyone else is being honest (ACCC isn’t free! But I assume you’d agree we need it.)
“Other than the copper …” That’s the problem. You think the internet is magically not reliant on Telstra except for the copper? Telstra have the vast majority of backhaul in this country. Telstra have a primary stake in the vast majority of bandwidth into this country. (The ONLY reason you have seen your quota go up recently is because amazingly luckily another company managed to survive long enough to build a single cable into the country to compete with the Telstra/Optus owned international bandwidth). We were *lucky* (GFC almost killed PPC1, go look it up).
Oh, Earlier you said something like: “my internet has gone from 1.5 megabits to 12, then to 24!!!”. You are a naive fool if you think your internet changed significantly. the 1.5 megabits you quoted? an Arbitrary limit imposed by a Telstra monopoly. The 12? was Telstra finally lifting that arbitrary limit. And the 24? well, I live 300 meters from my exchange (as the cable runs) and I get 20 megabits.
No one gets 24 megabits. Most people get 12 megabits (on adsl2 equipment). Some people get barely 1.5 (on a link quoted as “Upto 24!!”).
So, when you say: “My internet is plenty fast!!” remember that you are in one half of the ADSL2 connected population that are lucky enough to be close enough to their exchange to get even near 12 megabits. 50% of the rest of the population connected to ADSL2 don’t get 12 megabits. They cant. ADSL speed decreases over distance. Stop pretending that your “24 megabits” (which is a lie) is what everyone gets.
They dont.
They cant with this technology.
You made a comment about latency on Fibre not being “significantly better”.
Wrong.
My latency at work:
Ping to Delimiter.com.au (Appears to be hosted in the USA)
Minimum = 176ms, Maximum = 179ms, Average = 176ms
thats a variation of 3ms (this was over 50 pings, not 4) (see the average! the average was the minimum!)
And is half what you get on ADSL.
Pings in Australia? 15ms. (I’d estimate about 1/3rd what you get on ADSL)
Latency is better on fibre. (as a test I tracert’d to a friend on ADSL, I am about 4ms inside optus, when I get out of optus it goes to about 15, then hits 40 to his ADSL modem.
Something you also don’t seem to understand is future demand.
“Lets not do it now, because there is no demand/need for it”
Thats not how the government works.
Do you think there was demand/need for an 6 lane highway between Melbourne and Sydney 30 years ago? Hell, when they first gave electricity to everyones home do you think there was a demand/need for it? (PSST they used to use oil lamps to light their homes, when they gave you electricity it wasn’t because you put electric bulbs in and then complained to the government that you didn’t have electricity).
No, the Government lays down infrastructure BEFORE demand gets too far. If people all over Australia had put electric bulbs in their houses and THEN complained, the government wouldn’t have been able to roll out power fast enough. No, we pay the government to think about our future as well as our present. Future planning is meant to safeguard us from playing a game of catchup. Catch-up is bad.
“If when people want to watch 3 HD channels on the internet they will pay for it”.
The product doesn’t exist!!! There are no plans to make such a product! (unless you count the NBN, do you count that?) If I want this in 3 years time, how will I get it if someone hasn’t started building the product!!! Magical rollout fairies will save the day! as soon as people want internet TV they will roll out an 8 YEAR PROJECT in 30 seconds!!!
“>No, because again you still rely on Telstra DSLAM’s which the ISP’s do not have full control over the
>network, only Telstra does.
You realise private companies install their own DSLAMs right?”
You realise Telstra doesn’t let them do it in every exchange right? (Ref: Beaumaris VIC, Surrounded by ADSL2 exchanges, but classed by Telstra as regional. Thus no Dslam from competitors!)
The private sector is failing to fulfil requirements.
We have had ADSL2 for 5 years, ADSL1 for more than that, and still beaumaris hasn’t got a competitor DSLAM. TPG have a DSLAM in every exchange in the surrounding suburbs. And that is the middle of the suburbs. Melbourne stretches another 45 minutes along the coast!
And just to make it worse, this is ADSL2 [at affordable prices] they can’t get! And you want to stop them building a BETTER technology?
I shudder to think what the cost of installation of fibre to a house in beaumaris will cost if someone did it alone. In the HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars. *Not including the subscription to the internet at the end of it all*.
“Oh yeah, fibre-optic cable is super stable; as long as you don’t bend it or sever it in any way, in which
case it needs replacement or a retransmission unit…”
Now you are just trolling. Heres a response in kind: “Copper is super stable too, unless you just cut it with scissors or connect it to the mains, then you need to get a new ADSL modem!”.
How many fibres IN THE GROUND are you going to be bending over?
God, I think I just fed the trolls.
— Kestas, I am not going to explain it to you, I am going to ask you to read about Economies of Scale.
— Please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_scale
That’s why the government needed to buy my ADSL modem for me right? Because private enterprise just hasn’t heard of this “economy of scale” thing (perhaps you should link them to the wikipedia article on it)
— If we buy fibre for everyone, everyone gets it cheaper than everyone buys fibre for themselves.
— If you can’t understand that, you have a problem.
And if we buy a gold rolls royce for everyone it’d be cheaper than if they bought it themselves individually; if they don’t need it what is the point?!
— You are saying that in response to a grocery watch website. Where did the private sector ever pay for
— a grocery watch website?
They didn’t because the whole idea was backwards.. Just like this one.
— But the *idea* that the government should make sure that there is competition in the market is
— *Exactly the reason the Government exists*.
Yeah that’s a great reason to go along with whatever nonsense the government thinks up. How about we discuss the merits of the idea itself rather than paint this as a for/against the whole notion of government debate?
— There is NO money to be made in the private sector making sure everyone else is being honest.
— That is why the Government spends money making sure everyone else is being honest (ACCC isn’t
— free! But I assume you’d agree we need it.)
Yes…. And this has what to do with this plan? If you’re basing this whole argument on the premise that I’m some sort of anarchist you’re wasting both of our time.
— “Other than the copper …” That’s the problem. You think the internet is magically not reliant on
— Telstra except for the copper? Telstra have the vast majority of backhaul in this country. Telstra have a
— primary stake in the vast majority of bandwidth into this country. (The ONLY reason you have seen
— your quota go up recently is because amazingly luckily another company managed to survive long
— enough to build a single cable into the country to compete with the Telstra/Optus owned
— international bandwidth). We were *lucky* (GFC almost killed PPC1, go look it up).
How about when I stop getting lucky (me and everyone I know, repeatedly, steadily, over months and months) *then* we can discuss sensible government measures? For now, with all the private network opening up based on true cost-effective consumer demand, I don’t see the need.
— Oh, Earlier you said something like: “my internet has gone from 1.5 megabits to 12, then to 24!!!”. You
— are a naive fool if you think your internet changed significantly. the 1.5 megabits you quoted? an
— Arbitrary limit imposed by a Telstra monopoly.
Which no longer applies thanks to the private sector.
— The 12? was Telstra finally lifting that arbitrary limit. And the 24? well, I live 300 meters from my
— exchange (as the cable runs) and I get 20 megabits.
It was a limit on the tech which Telstra weren’t prepared to invest, but private companies did, not some beaurocrat flipping some switch to give more bandwidth just for the hell of it.
— No one gets 24 megabits. Most people get 12 megabits (on adsl2 equipment). Some people get barely
— 1.5 (on a link quoted as “Upto 24!!”).
Nice try, I actually said earlier “a few years ago only 1.5mbit/256kbit was available where I live, now 24mbit/1mbit is available.”
I realize 24mbit is the theoretical maximum for ADSL2+, that’s why I said I buy a 12mbit plan, of which I get ~10mbit/sec.
If someone is getting 1.5mbit on a 24mbit plan then they need to investigate their line, figure out their attentuation and SNR stats and call their ISP and Telstra, or at the very least downgrade their plan. That’s not the sort of justification to go on a crusade to force everyone to buy a fiber-optic line, that’s something the ACCC should investigate and fix.
— So, when you say: “My internet is plenty fast!!” remember that you are in one half of the ADSL2
— connected population that are lucky enough to be close enough to their exchange to get even near 12
— megabits. 50% of the rest of the population connected to ADSL2 don’t get 12 megabits. They cant.
— ADSL speed decreases over distance. Stop pretending that your “24 megabits” (which is a lie) is what
— everyone gets.
The lie is that I ever said I got 24mbit.
Besides which if you actually look at the *progress* in increased coverage, not just current coverage, it’s clear that this isn’t a stagnating market requiring government intervention. Private companies are investing all over the place, and as a result people like you and me who were previously limited to Telstra’s 1.5mbit max can now go as high as our copper and private ISPs allow.
— You made a comment about latency on Fibre not being “significantly better”.
— Wrong.
— My latency at work:
— Ping to Delimiter.com.au (Appears to be hosted in the USA)
— Minimum = 176ms, Maximum = 179ms, Average = 176ms
— thats a variation of 3ms (this was over 50 pings, not 4) (see the average! the average was the
— minimum!)
— And is half what you get on ADSL.
— Pings in Australia? 15ms. (I’d estimate about 1/3rd what you get on ADSL)
That is cute..
First off the basic laws of physics place limits on how fast info travels from A to B. EM waves going down copper and going down fiber is really no different. Compared to the differences in the number of nodes businesses connect to the net through compared to residential connections the actually difference between this and that cable is negligable. Without a traceroute, where an ASDL and fiber connection are the only variables, your results are meaningless
As for myself in Perth it takes me 300ms or so to ping delimiter.com.au. The traceroute shows that the latency between me and my ISP is ~23ms, so I’m not sure how massive the difference in latency will be by investing fiber into taking out those 23ms. (Which, incidentally, it won’t; as I said before a cable transmitting EM/light waves at the speed of light isn’t going to affect latency)
–Latency is better on fibre. (as a test I tracert’d to a friend on ADSL, I am about 4ms inside optus, when I
–get out of optus it goes to about 15, then hits 40 to his ADSL modem.
Written by someone who has no idea how to read traceroute output, or a clue about the countless other factors that will be affecting the time other than the type of cable you are using.
Don’t take my word for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Comparison_with_electrical_transmission
If you enjoy the placebo affect fiber gives you great, but don’t try and shove that nonsense down the throats of people who have a grip on reality.
— Something you also don’t seem to understand is future demand.
— “Lets not do it now, because there is no demand/need for it”
— Thats not how the government works.
— [… comparing initial electricity infrastructure development, with no developing industry, to wildly
— over-the-top media delivery, with private industry moving rapidly.. Not worth pursuing]
— No, we pay the government to think about our future as well as our present. Future planning is meant
— to safeguard us from playing a game of catchup. Catch-up is bad.
And if the industry wasn’t developing already without help you might have a point, but it is readily meeting the people’s demands as they develop. Fiber, as was mentioned above, is being rolled out by private companies for new houses, you are apparently using it in your business; it is being integrated as required. I don’t need fiber, if/when I do I’ll get it (and since everyone will want it and want to pay for it private companies will continue to develop net technology).
Of all things, where the great new tech of today is eclipsed by the tech of tomorrow, do we want to push expensive, cutting edge technology down the throats of people who have no use for it??
— “If when people want to watch 3 HD channels on the internet they will pay for it”.
–The product doesn’t exist!!! There are no plans to make such a product! (unless you count the NBN, do
–you count that?) If I want this in 3 years time, how will I get it if someone hasn’t started building the
–product!!! Magical rollout fairies will save the day! as soon as people want internet TV they will roll out
–an 8 YEAR PROJECT in 30 seconds!!!
First off using end-to-end data transfer for television broadcasts is ridiculous. Why not have people listen to the radio over the phone too?
Second if there is consumer demand for something so pointless then yes there will be investment in it, yes it will be rolled out to those who want it as quickly as they want to pay for it. Not everyone suddenly needs to be able to watch 3 HD channels over the internet at the same time; those who want it can pay for it, but I sure don’t want to pay for that.
•
• If there isn’t consumer demand for it; well damn, I guess not so many people want to watch absurd amounts of high-def content streamed from end-to-end as the government thought. But no harm no foul right?
• But if the government does launch ahead with this and no-one gives a crap about it, or suddenly asks for a national rollout of three HDTVs to watch the new content on, then what? (Who is going to roll out three HDTVs to everyone in australia? THE MAGICAL ROLLOUT FARIES?!?! HAHA better buy those too)
— You realise Telstra doesn’t let them do it in every exchange right? (Ref: Beaumaris VIC, Surrounded by
— ADSL2 exchanges, but classed by Telstra as regional. Thus no Dslam from competitors!)
You realize that problem is slowly decreasing over time, and that you were talking about fiber at work and ADSL2 at home, and all the people I know who have it, right? Why does the government need to totally redo the whole lot? Why not just get out of the way and let the market continue what it’s doing?
— The private sector is failing to fulfil requirements.
— We have had ADSL2 for 5 years, ADSL1 for more than that, and still beaumaris hasn’t got a competitor
— DSLAM. TPG have a DSLAM in every exchange in the surrounding suburbs. And that is the middle of
— the suburbs. Melbourne stretches another 45 minutes along the coast!
— And just to make it worse, this is ADSL2 [at affordable prices] they can’t get! And you want to stop
— them building a BETTER technology?
And why do you think that is? Are the people of Beaumaris just dying to pay up for broadband and private companies are refusing good money, or has a private company done polls and crunched the numbers and figured they don’t really actually want it that bad and/or can’t afford it?
— I shudder to think what the cost of installation of fibre to a house in beaumaris will cost if someone
— did it alone. In the HUNDREDS of thousands of dollars. *Not including the subscription to the internet
— at the end of it all*.
Yeah, same goes for Calcutta. So what? Maybe they can’t afford it, maybe they don’t want it. What good will forcing them all to buy at the same time do? Why do that nationally and not locally?
— Now you are just trolling. Heres a response in kind: “Copper is super stable too, unless you just cut it
— with scissors or connect it to the mains, then you need to get a new ADSL modem!”.
— How many fibres IN THE GROUND are you going to be bending over?
If you really think fiber is as strong as copper cable (which they connect to telegraph poles) you’re deluding yourself
— God, I think I just fed the trolls.
Nope, I am legitimately interested in figuring out where you’re getting all these crackpot ideas from, because this level of ignorance is truly disturbing.
Epic posts are epic!
Australian politics are being skewed by a low birth rate & demographic bulge of aging baby boomers. These people who have lived through an era of unprecedented prosperity unknown to generations before or after them simply dont care about the future only their Tel$tra shares.
The conservatives, with good reason, are representing this powerful but selfish out of touch generation.
I travel overseas in our region a lot & Im appalled at how fast we are being left behind by our ultra competitive far sighted neighbours.
Thank god the current government is trying desperately trying to tear the choke hold of Tel$tra from our communications infrastrucure before its too late.
Shame on you conservatives! Shame on you!
Comments are closed.