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FormulaNova said..

When have we had any governments that are really good at infrastructure?

About 1960's I think

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Kamikuza said..
I love Japan. We're on the gigabit fiber optic plan . . . .

That was (still is?) Labor's plan; "Do it right once, the first time."

Liberal's plan was/is "Save a dollar, pay twice".

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FormulaNova said..
So, is it NBN versus hospitals? Nah.

We threw $5.5 billion at higher education last year alone, namely the VET-FEE HELP scheme where private colleges recruit students that are going to fail with free laptops and then take the government's money.

~$70,000 per student and a 13% pass rate.

Can we all at least *consider* the idea that the LNP do not actually know what they are doing, and it is all marketing, theory, drama and rhetoric? Just for a moment?

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evlPanda said..

Kamikuza said..
I love Japan. We're on the gigabit fiber optic plan . . . .

That was (still is?) Labor's plan; "Do it right once, the first time."

Liberal's plan was/is "Save a dollar, pay twice".

Pretty sure it's private enterprise here. Some things shouldn't be government run . . .

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evlPanda said..

FormulaNova said..
So, is it NBN versus hospitals? Nah.

We threw $5.5 billion at higher education last year alone, namely the VET-FEE HELP scheme where private colleges recruit students that are going to fail with free laptops and then take the government's money.

~$70,000 per student and a 13% pass rate.

Can we all at least *consider* the idea that the LNP do not actually know what they are doing, and it is all marketing, theory, drama and rhetoric? Just for a moment?

I think I can add to that that the pass rate was increased by some places doing the right thing, and some (most) others doing the wrong thing and getting shockingly low pass rates. Not only were the pass rates really really low, but attendance at the courses were almost non-existent. This is the result of a policy that wanted to out-source to make it competitive and resulted in the minimum it required to meet the stated objectives. It seems the objectives were to sign people up, the rest was open to interpretation. A huge incentive to charge as much as they could get away with as the targeted students would never have to pay it back. Free laptops to encourage them to sign up and suddenly some training organisations were minting it.

This is the reality of privatisation without adequate control and measures. Some people made fortunes for arguably wasted courses.

It seems a shame that at the same time they are taking away from TAFE and trying to push for more private training companies.

I wonder if anyone will ever ask the question of the people that formed the policy and ask why there were so many holes in it it allowed the misuse of it?

At least the NBN in whatever final form, will be something, which is better than the investigation committees that would have happened year after year if Labor hadn't made it happen.

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Kamikuza said..

evlPanda said..

Kamikuza said..
I love Japan. We're on the gigabit fiber optic plan . . . .

That was (still is?) Labor's plan; "Do it right once, the first time."

Liberal's plan was/is "Save a dollar, pay twice".

Pretty sure it's private enterprise here. Some things shouldn't be government run . . .

I suspect in Japan that the population density makes it more attractive to private companies to go after the easy stuff. We don't have the same density to make it as worthwhile.

I can imagine that you could cable a building there and capture hundreds of subcribers instead of cabling a whole street here for nowhere near the same number of users. As it was, areas that were money spinners did get good internet, but some places got nothing.

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Kamikuza said...

Skid said..

At work we get the speeds below, but, it is a science research facility, so I would expect a decent service is required...

LOL mines more than double that download, 4 times upload. Residential, miles from the substation. Better ping too

Personally, I'm amazed this lot care at all, given that faxes are still very much a thing

Crikey, I didn't even know speeds like that were available, I thought 100mbt was the ceiling, and you are getting double that

Seems everyone is downloading movies.

Ever picked up a book?

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Rex said..

Kamikuza said...

Skid said..

At work we get the speeds below, but, it is a science research facility, so I would expect a decent service is required...

LOL mines more than double that download, 4 times upload. Residential, miles from the substation. Better ping too

Personally, I'm amazed this lot care at all, given that faxes are still very much a thing

Crikey, I didn't even know speeds like that were available, I thought 100mbt was the ceiling, and you are getting double that

And it's still half the max I could get if we didn't live in the boonies

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RockyDude said..
Seems everyone is downloading movies.

Ever picked up a book?

i tried picking up a movie but it kept getting away

(for the dads out there)

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RockyDude said..
Seems everyone is downloading movies.

Ever picked up a book?

Yeh tried to download an ebook the other day....took bloody ages... Useles speeds..??

I had fi fibre to my house for 8 years. It is a Telstra Smart Smart Comunity network. I had 2 drop out on 8 years and the speed is great most of thr time I do a movie in 15 minutes and have no lag while streaming...... I hope tjhey will not connect me to NBN.

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felixdcat said..
I had fi fibre to my house for 8 years. It is a Telstra Smart Smart Comunity network. I had 2 drop out on 8 years and the speed is great most of thr time I do a movie in 15 minutes and have no lag while streaming...... I hope tjhey will not connect me to NBN.

In general, that becomes the NBN. Here's hoping that it doesn't ruin something for you.

Elon Musk, the Tesla guy, is planning to build a global internet using satellites (as well as many other companies)

The biggest problem is space junk, and as it happens, an Australian company is at the forefront of space junk detection and obliteration.

Anyways, the costings for this "global internet" are less than that for the Australian NBN.

Maybe the NBN will become obsolete before it is finally built! (and at a potentially lower cost to connect the whole world)

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albers said..

Maybe the NBN will become obsolete before it is finally built!

Thats my belief as well. Adding to my frustration its that our Optus provides our region with mobile coverage that is getting worse and out Telstra coverage (internet) is getting slower by the week with continuious outages. I believe that our systems are failing and that no one wants to fix systems that are fast becoming obsolete.

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RockyDude said..
Seems everyone is downloading movies.

Ever picked up a book?

Books kill trees

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CrossStep said..

albers said..

Maybe the NBN will become obsolete before it is finally built!

Thats my belief as well. Adding to my frustration its that our Optus provides our region with mobile coverage that is getting worse and out Telstra coverage (internet) is getting slower by the week with continuious outages. I believe that our systems are failing and that no one wants to fix systems that are fast becoming obsolete.

Fast becoming obsolete? I am not sure there's any technology at the moment that is doing that. If anything it seems like things are reaching a point where we can deliver what most people want in a lot more areas than we used to.

I went to a speed sailing fortnight in Sandy Point in 2008 and I think I was one of two people that had mobile broadband, even if it was using an external modem. Being able to check the internet at a decent speed over mobile then was unusual.

Fast forward a few years to 2010 and everyone has 3G on their phones. Fast forward a bit further again and 4G is available.

The backend infrastructure is not that different, and you take it for granted now that you can get good 4G reception in some areas you used to struggle with for voice calls.

There is a change though. As some things gets migrated to the NBN, the carriers spend less on alternatives, but only in areas where they see the NBN as being more cost effective.

For all these methods of "delivering" internet over balloons, satellites or some other novel method, there are limitations. Here, we have a way of delivering it over fiber that is known to work, work well, work fast, it will just take a little time to roll out the network. Talking of its obsolescence now is a bit premature.

I wonder if people said that telegraph poles were obsolete when they first started using them to deliver electricity?

im thinking of shifting house so i can run my business with a fibre optic internet connection. current copper connection is a total joke. totally overloaded.
chance of streaming media for recreational purposes, very low. I will need to stick to Foxtel satelite dish to get my TV fix, so not a lot of choice without the fibre.

a subbi installing pits for nbn, they charge around $50 per pit to supply and install. Big multi national then charges $150 for the same pit to the NBN . C*ckhead pollies have no idea of organising infrastructure works

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Kamikuza said..

evlPanda said..

Kamikuza said..
I love Japan. We're on the gigabit fiber optic plan . . . .

That was (still is?) Labor's plan; "Do it right once, the first time."

Liberal's plan was/is "Save a dollar, pay twice".

Pretty sure it's private enterprise here. Some things shouldn't be government run . . .

The company responsible for setting up Fibre To The Home (FTTH) in Japan is pretty much the equivalent of Telstra over here. Once a completely government owned entity, now only 1/3 owned by the government. I suspect they are still bound by a lot of regulations, and as such still bow to the government, but I'm not familiar with Japan enough to say any further.

Telstra did not do anything even remotely similar in Australia. It is 2016 and they still haven't done anything even remotely similar. They don't plan to. Why should they? They have a monopoly. All they've done is (somehow) sell an aging copper network to the NBN (thanks Malcolm).

The lack of any action by private enterprise in Australia is what drove the original NBN.

The plan was to sell the infrastructure once it was completed. Not sure how much it is worth in its current state though.

FTTH is the gold standard. Do it right once the first time.

@ Mark: If you think $60B is a lot wait until you see the upgrade/repair bills over the coming decades. The Libs have set up decades of expense and loss. That, or it is a write-off. Coming from a technical background the new NBN is an unbelievable farce, staggering in both its impotence and audacity. There's a part of me that's impressed they pulled it off, and blamed it on Labor, and people believe that.

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evlPanda said..
@ Mark: If you think $60B is a lot wait until you see the upgrade/repair bills over the coming decades. The Libs have set up decades of expense and loss. That, or it is a write-off. Coming from a technical background the new NBN is an unbelievable farce, staggering in both its impotence and audacity. There's a part of me that's impressed they pulled it off, and blamed it on Labor, and people believe that.

Indeed.
But not impressed......... I don't need any faster than ADSL2 and I doubt any normal user does. If private enterprise want better, let them pay for it, just like how they have different sized water connections / meters.
The NBN is like giving everyone a 50mm pipe and meter even if they don't need it and will sign up for a trickle.

A mammoth expense, for the average user to notice fvk-all difference so they can download movies and FB to their heart's content whilst power bills skyrocket (due to neglected infrastructure), people starve, and our mental health system overflows.

Enjoy fiddling with your 5% faster Netflix whilst Rome burns, vapid consumerist technoheads. Look out, the Joneses have 30mbps now OMG catch up...

So you got lucky and had a very fast adsl2 connection so don't notice much difference.

But everyone one else who lives further away from an exchange can go and get f***ed!
Doesn't sound like you really care about the rest of the world, despite your ranting.

indeed Rome is burning...from the inside out, the majority on the surface don't see it...yet. And most are too stupid to notice anyway.

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Mark _australia said..


A mammoth expense, for the average user to notice fvk-all difference so they can download movies and FB to their heart's content whilst power bills skyrocket (due to neglected infrastructure), people starve, and our mental health system overflows.

.

I don't know what its like over there, but in the east the gold-plating of the electrical infrastructure over the last few years was to get it ready to sell off. So, under the guise of improving the network, we have paid higher bills, to have the state government then sell it off.

Great at infrastructure aren't we? At least the selling of it, not so much the building it.

Which is why the NBN is at least something good when it comes to infrastructure. Our road system here seems to be a random interconnection of roads, and then the private enterprise toll-ways, with not much inbetween.

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stoff said..
So you got lucky and had a very fast adsl2 connection so don't notice much difference.

But everyone one else who lives further away from an exchange can go and get f***ed!
Doesn't sound like you really care about the rest of the world, despite your ranting.

Wasn't aware it was a rant, all I said was the Govt spent a heap and I don't see the benefit for most folks. And I do care.

I care about the fact there is zero refuges for domestic violence victims in my state unless they are females over 18 with kids. What of the abused 17 y/o?

I care about lack of mental health facilities and how some disabled / brain injured have to live in old people's homes as there is nothing for them.

I care about the Govt's crying poor on all sorts of issues they apparently can't afford like lack of water or powerstations, and then we score the NBN.

Yeah I love infrastructure spending but 60 bil gets you a lot of stuff and we have humanitarian needs - and guess what FB or Netflix is not one of them. I find the NBN a bit of a luxury that we could ill afford. But many people love it cos they can't see past their need to be connected IMHO.

So if we did need something cos copper is dead, then surely wireless would have been a sh!tload cheaper if only because you don't spend so much on labour to run fibre underground. Paris has tunnels all over the place under every single road yet they chose wireless.

BTW only about 6yrs ago when I was a bit bush, but only 100km from capital city, the only internet I could get was 3G with a hi gain aerial on my modem, and it was $90 a month for about 20gig so yeah I know.

I think that there needs to be a new way to charge for the NBN.

Most of the traffic that it carries will be video, games etc being supplied by offshore companies like Facebook, Netflix etc. While they aren't broadcasters, a lot of what they do is much the same. ie Attract eyeballs to deliver advertising content. Television stations have to pay a licence fee for the right to do that.

Facebook made $2Bill quarterly profit. Some of that came from ads served up to Australian users.

If providers were charged for the data that they send over the NBN, it would keep some of those advertising profits in the country.

And I go from slow ADSL to NBN next week. Current speed is 0.75 down and 1.5 up. I will be interested in how much it speeds up.

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Mark _australia said..

stoff said..
So you got lucky and had a very fast adsl2 connection so don't notice much difference.

But everyone one else who lives further away from an exchange can go and get f***ed!
Doesn't sound like you really care about the rest of the world, despite your ranting.

So if we did need something cos copper is dead, then surely wireless would have been a sh!tload cheaper if only because you don't spend so much on labour to run fibre underground. Paris has tunnels all over the place under every single road yet they chose wireless.

BTW only about 6yrs ago when I was a bit bush, but only 100km from capital city, the only internet I could get was 3G with a hi gain aerial on my modem, and it was $90 a month for about 20gig so yeah I know.

Where did you read that bit about Paris and wireless? I would be surprised if they used it for normal customer's other than mobile/moving customers. You have to deliver the bandwidth to the radio towers anyway, and that generally uses fiber, or copper. Have you got any pointers to the article, it would be an interesting read.

I don't know why you are comparing a dense part of a city with tunnels with a place like Perth, let alone somewhere more remote.

I think an important point is that governments do not spend money on infrastructure much. It wasn't or isn't an argument about NBN or hospitals. Without the NBN, we would still not have more hospitals. We would still have the same problems you talked about.

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Mark _australia said..

stoff said..
So you got lucky and had a very fast adsl2 connection so don't notice much difference.

But everyone one else who lives further away from an exchange can go and get f***ed!
Doesn't sound like you really care about the rest of the world, despite your ranting.

Wasn't aware it was a rant, all I said was the Govt spent a heap and I don't see the benefit for most folks. And I do care.

I care about the fact there is zero refuges for domestic violence victims in my state unless they are females over 18 with kids. What of the abused 17 y/o?

I care about lack of mental health facilities and how some disabled / brain injured have to live in old people's homes as there is nothing for them.

I care about the Govt's crying poor on all sorts of issues they apparently can't afford like lack of water or powerstations, and then we score the NBN.

Yeah I love infrastructure spending but 60 bil gets you a lot of stuff and we have humanitarian needs - and guess what FB or Netflix is not one of them. I find the NBN a bit of a luxury that we could ill afford. But many people love it cos they can't see past their need to be connected IMHO.

So if we did need something cos copper is dead, then surely wireless would have been a sh!tload cheaper if only because you don't spend so much on labour to run fibre underground. Paris has tunnels all over the place under every single road yet they chose wireless.

BTW only about 6yrs ago when I was a bit bush, but only 100km from capital city, the only internet I could get was 3G with a hi gain aerial on my modem, and it was $90 a month for about 20gig so yeah I know.

I think you are mixing up a wireless network provided in the city for users in public areas, versus a method to deliver it to regular subscribers in houses and apartments. We can deliver the same type of networks in Sydney and Melbourne, but if the councils don't want to pay for them, it doesn't happen. Its not cheap.

From a Wiki entry that I found:

"On 3 December 2008, France had 16.3 million broadband connections, of which 94% are ADSL subscribers.[2] This makes France the second largest ADSL market in Europe. At the end of 2005, 30% of those DSL lines were unbundled, and 37% of those unbundled lines were totally unbundled without any direct invoicing of the historical operator and a greater progression rate than partial unbundling.[3] At the end of September 2005, more than 95% of the population can have a DSL connection, albeit some of them only 512/128."

Its quite old information, but there is nothing on all the subscribers being connected via wireless. Unless you can point me to a more contemporary article, I think you have been mislead or have misunderstood what their wireless network is in Paris.

^^^ I just saw a doco that showed they are installing overlapping wireless towers over all of Paris. That's it. I know nothing else.

My NBN fibre to the premises got switched on on Thursday. I signed up for 12/1 basic package and I'm getting very close to the speed I'm paying for.ie about 11.5 Mbps down and 0.95 up.
On ADSL I had 1.5/0.75, so my download is about 7 times faster. Price for phone/net is the same as NBN, but phone calls should be cheaper on VOIP, so my bill should be lower.
$60Billion for about 10 000 000 households is $6000/house. Double the number of connections to allow for business premises and it's $3000 per connection. That's about the cost of a new board.
Looking at it as a network for sale, that $3000 for my connection returns a minimum $60/month ie $720pa. Close to 25% gross.There will be plenty of buyers wanting to take it off the government's hands when it is complete and ready for sale