My take: Living in Australia, the best thing that we can do to increase the perceived quality of web services in Australia is to subsidise the local hosting of international web companies. It's latency that is killing our experience right now.<p>The latency between Australia and the internet (hear AWS data centre in Virginia where most startups live, or rely on an API that exists this region) is crazy! It's especially so as companies are starting to push "regular traffic" over to https (even HN is https now). The 4+ requests required to establish an encrypted connection adds up.<p><i>Whenever I'm in the Bay Area it feels like the internet is on localhost!</i><p>The cost of hosting in Australia is 5-10x that of the states[1].<p>Whilst it's fun to bash the Coalition’s NBN policy, the Labour party's plan topped out at only 100Mbps (which I'm already getting on Telstra Cable). What really annoys me is that<p>Australia's cable network is Fibre to the node already[2], and it is already capable of 1Gbps speeds. I hear that Telstra is not offering 1Gbps per second as part of an agreement with NBN Co.<p>[1] My friends over at orionvm.com gave me a lesson in hosting economics when I wanted to white label their service.<p>[2] My next door neighbour designed and sold the underlying hardware used on Telstra's coaxial network.
> The results of the strategic review announced that not only will the Coalition’s plan cost almost as much as the originally announced NBN plan<p>That isn't because it is more expensive, it is because the estimate on the original plan was wrong.<p>The old peak funding requirement on the original plan was $43.6 Billion with 3.5 million households passed by June 2016. There was supposed to be an update of those figures published this July but they sat on the report until after the election. We now know that those figures are now $73 billion peak funding and 1.7 million residences passed [0].<p>> The Coalition’s NBN is a joke. It will not arrive faster, cheaper, or better.<p>It will be faster (as in, rolled out faster) and cheaper. Despite the political vitriol surrounding this topic in Australia, you can't bend the technical and economic reality that rolling out a fiber to the node solution (FTTN) is both cheaper and faster than rolling out fiber to the premises (FTTP) with existing households:<p><a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6381672&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D6381672" rel="nofollow">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=638167...</a><p>You rollout fiber to the home where it is more economical (dense areas, new developments) you roll fiber to the curb where it is more economical and faster (apartment buildings) and you roll the fiber to a cabinet where it is more economical and faster (existing suburban areas).<p>Attaching each plan to a rollout strategy was a mistake in the first place, as a national network requires a mix of technology (this isn't FTTN v FTTH, its about where to apply each).<p>[0] Here is a nice table the lays out the old/new estimates: <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/au/nbn-strategic-review-by-the-numbers-7000024217/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/au/nbn-strategic-review-by-the-numbers-...</a>
Everyone already knows the NBN is now going to 1) take forever to build (~10 years), and 2) deliver terribly retarded service that will be obsolete once it exists.<p>I can't wait for them to pull a Telstra as well, and try to sell it off to the public in shares to 'mum and dad investors'.<p>Its embarrassing to watch the farce unfold.<p>(and will, I predict, continue to be, for years to come...)<p>(the irony is, there is NBN fiber <i>in the ground</i> outside my apartment <i>right now</i>, up and down all over. ...but we're still on the '2-3 years' waiting list, and so is everyone else here, because maybe 40% of the homes in this area are apartments. Stupid doesn't even begin to cover it.)
I just got the NBN installed the other day(insane speeds, at a very high monthly price). The technician was at my house several times and his opinion as a contractor on the ground level is that no one at the top is aware of the impracticality of scaling the home installation in the time frame they are proposing. Furthermore, many people do not yet require such high speeds but are having it installed just because they are not required to pay for the installation, especially older folk who don’t understand what they are being ask to sign up for. There is a massive disconnect between who need such services (and what type of services at what cost) and what sounds good on a policy paper and in a press briefing.
It sounds almost as bad as what's going on in the UK. The current "superfast broadband" contracts have been offered to BT (former state run telecoms monopoly) across England and Wales and local projects for innovation have been turned away. [0]<p>[0] <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24919148" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24919148</a>