Going Postal over Bandwidth

Arrrrrrrrgggghhhhhh!

I work online. I live online.

I am a customer of Internode (home ADSL, VoIP, via Telstra copper-wire) and Telstra NextG (USB card for remote working). There are two Foxtel digital units in my house. Hosting for this web site is somewhere in the US with Dreamhost. My superannuation fund is a minor Telstra round 3 shareholder. My corporate mobile phone is Telstra NextG; both voice and data services. 

The current arguments back and forth between Telstra and the “group-of-9“, the politicians who have “solved the bandwidth” problem, ACCC and everyone else who is involved in this high-asset, high-customer-volume, highly competitive business; are starting to really piss me off. 

There I said it. Piss me off. Really piss me off. I am almost postal.

Today, I spent 4 hours uploading a video into the corporate cloud. I am attempting to save some carbon atoms from escaping into the atmosphere by doing what was once a potential panacea: tele-commuting. Working online. Earning tax dollars by living in Australia.

Really, it shouldn’t take that long.

What is this FTTN (Fibre to the Node) thing anyway? I see no benefit to the end customer as noone is actually putting a piece of fibre into each house. It seems to be a large charade to divert attention.

Where is the competition? Where is my choice? Do any politicians actually use the internet apart from watching Youtubes of our little Prime Minister? Less regulation, more competition.

I once wanted politicians involved in ICT. Having spoken to some in the Liberal Party on this matter a few years ago, their response was “join the line of issues regarding policy”

Now that they have become involved; only as there is a balancing act between the votes in the bush vs. the investors in Telstra: recent policies and investments seem to have slowed innovation and competition rather than improve services.

So, I regret my thoughts on wanting politicians involved. Stay out of it. Let the market decide. Do something useful and fix the hospitals. KTHXBAI.

In the 19th and 20th Century railways moved our gold, silver, lead, wool and wheat from the productive farms and mines to our overseas markets.

In the 21st Century, the two lines are not the iron lines 5ft 3in apart: they are the twisted copper pairs that connect our brains to the world. Brains, politicians. Not atoms. What is in our head is already more important than atoms.

Instead of our brightest minds taking their brains and ideas to other parts of the world, we need to harness them here – and connect them to the world.

I don’t really care too much about the to-and-fro and political shenangians anymore.

Just open it up. Be brave. Let us all rise, including those rebadged PMGs, to a new world where the tyranny of distance is slain.

Personal Rant Over.

10 thoughts on “Going Postal over Bandwidth”

  1. Hear, hear! I hear you!
    I have a choice of one provider, and they refuse to apologise or compensate for incorrectly shaping my service several times now.
    Give me competition or give me… the crap I’m stuck with.

  2. (Personal Disclaimer – These views are not those of my employer)

    Hey Nick,

    The FTTN concept is that you’re bringing the DSLAM closer to the user. Therefore you’re more likely to get that ideal 24Mbit downstream from your ADSL2+ connection. Once you’ve got the DSLAM that close, you can also look at using VDSL2 in the future for much higher bandwidth (100Mbit @ 500m, 50Mbit @ 1000m). It’s also a stepping stone to providing Fibre to the Home even further down the track (replace DSLAMs with DWDM Optical Routers and splitters).

    The approach being proposed by Telstra would have made it very difficult and expensive for competitors to provide their own DSLAMs using Telstra’s copper network.
    Depending upon your point of view, that’s either a good thing (“Competitors should build their own network!”) or a terrible thing (“The Australian people owned the network until recently, we should be able to use whatever provider we like”)

    I’m of the opinion that regardless of how the network debate turns out – the hidden issue is the cost of data.

    Even if we all magically had 100Mbit ethernet connections at home tomorrow, and only paid for data transferred; Very few of us could afford to use it for those promised high-bandwidth applications – HD Video on Demand and such.

  3. Will

    Thanks for the clarification. Certainly made the FTTN debate a little more understandable.

    My thinking is that competition in the consumer end of the market should drive the price to the market price for bandwidth. Australia, due to its location in comparison to “the world” will probably make our bandwidth costs higher than comparative markets.

    However, we’re stalled at the gate.

    My rant isn’t aimed at any one party: government, Telstra, G-9 or the vibe.

    It’s just an emotional rant.

  4. You’re right – the state of broadband is akin to owning my now deceased 1985 Subaru Leone.

    I could no longer afford the risk to business of owning an unreliable piece of junk, so I upgraded to what I have now – a 2002 Mini Cooper S 🙂

    However in regards to connectivity we have no such option; we’re stuck with the 1985 Subaru Leone.

    Don’t get me started on iBurst – that has caused me some major grief in the past … it shouldn’t be legal to charge for that service it’s that unreliable. Don’t give me your crap about service range, weather conditions … I paid for ******* wifi and I want ******* wifi; not this nonsense where I have to stand on the roof of my car and perch the laptop on my head to get dial-up speeds.

    Oh and don’t get my started on Telstra GPRS either – that’s even worse!

  5. I have just returned from living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands where I had a fibre optic connection and unlimited bandwidth. Price differentation in NL was on speed not MB’s. Interesting alternative approach to broadband.

    I see internet as a necessary part of life and do not see how throttling or shaping is a necessary evil. Why not just buy some extra MB for the month rather than having to convert to a higher priced plan. I have seen the UNWIRED wireless providor has this facility. It is only pricing and what the customer and the suppliers think they can get away with.

  6. Richard

    The lack of suppliers, and lack of a true free market due to political pressure has resulted in poor service for all Australians. To our detriment in this online century.

    It is little wonder that with the lack of VC funding, server farms and bandwidth in this country that the key startups leave.

    Nick

  7. Yeah..broadband sux…we have Telstra Cable, and Internode ASDL2 cause John and I have a virtual office and we can’t reliable both be on skype..or have one on the VOIP engin phone and the other on skype or downloading a big file. So we need internet each..and they have to be different companies cause noone supports having 2 connections at the same address!

    Need cable for the download (as exchange is so far away we get slow download from adsl2) and have the adsl2 so i can upload my pics etc at something faster than 128k

    We also have nextg phones…but the data prices are stupidly expensive.

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