For those who don't know the story about the Australian internet industry, Telstra plays a pivotal and depressingly stupid role.<p>Telstra was a government monopoly in the past and owned + owns almost all the copper network in Australia. From 1997, Telstra was progressively privatized without separating the telecommunications business (phones) with the telecommunications infrastructure (cables). This was an idiotic idea.<p>There were some regulations that forced the infrastructure to be offered wholesale to competitors but they're still the gateway that the majority of the population get onto the internet. It's also problematic as Telstra are doing worse and worse at maintaining the copper network that is relied upon. If you are an ISP using their network, you need to go through their maintenance fees to improve the line quality for any of your customers. The cost of wholesaling through the Telstra network is also fairly high. Regardless, we've got reasonable competition at the ADSL/ADSL2+ level thanks to this.<p>Forward to the National Broadband Network (NBN), the government plan to connect the majority of Australian homes to fiber to the node (FTTP). Telstra submit the equivalent of a joke tender for the project -- 12 pages connecting only ~90% of the population when the tender requests 98% -- and then suffer their biggest one day stock fall in history when it's rejected.<p>Construction of the NBN rolls on without them, promising to replace the copper network with a fiber network that will be the new telecommunications infrastructure used by the majority of ISPs.<p>However... a new government came to power in Australia. One of their election falsehoods was that FTTP was too expensive and too slow and instead a ridiculous hodge podge (sorry: "hybrid") network of failing technologies would be preferred. Instead of building a complete FTTP network for $73 billion, they're instead going to spend $41 billion on a hybrid network that will need to be replaced only five years after completion according to the chairman of the NBN[1].<p>This hybrid network relies on the old copper network owned by Telstra. Telstra have previously stated that it is ready to die and will have billions of dollars of maintenance issues.<p>This is also only a very brief discussion of the ridiculousness.<p>tldr; Telstra played an important role in screwing up the previous generation of Australia's internet. Telstra is continuing to play an important role in screwing up the current generation.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/its-time-for-turnbull-to-swallow-his-nbn-pride-7000024263/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zdnet.com/its-time-for-turnbull-to-swallow-his-nb...</a>
I think there are a few huge gaps. Russia, they got as many people as Japan. And another even larger hole is Africa, there's well over one billion people in Africa. Compared to ridiculous 22 million in Australia, that's a lot more. And in India, there's even more people than there is in Africa. Roughly US, Europe and Australia combined got same population as India or Africa which is in same ball park with China.
Just as a note, Cloudflare is not alone in struggling with this. I'm very surprised that the status quo has been maintained for so long. I suggest that Cloudflare should look under the process of transit becoming 'Declared', within the Australian Trade Practices Act. More here: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_and_Consumer_Act_2010#Part_IIIA:_Access_to_Services" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_and_Consumer_Act_20...</a>
Australian here: can confirm Telstra as one of the most 'evil' companies I've dealt with and it's very clear to those of us in the Australian IT sector that they're holding us back.
At my place of work our 50:50 Unlimited (not Telstra) is in the low to mid four figures a month.<p>For a company with offices worldwide, we have by far the most expensive and have the worst performing connection to our regional datacenter.<p>The standard response from any supplier is to blame Telstra.<p>Recently I was porting some ISDN phone lines from an old provider to a new SIP provider. Not only did the two need to arrange and agree the porting with each other, but Telstra needed to work on both of their behalf to facilitate the port. One number took 3 months.
Is this the thread where everyone is sharing how much they are paying?<p>All of my companies are bootstrapped (and bandwidth is the largest expense item), so some of the rates quoted got me excited.<p>It sounds like there are a lot of knowledgeable folks here (on the buy side), would you mind sharing some info?<p>I typically buy between 2..5 Gbps per POP in the US and Europe.<p>What's the best rate I should be able to get, you think? Tend to buy L3 or premium blend (no Cogent or HE). Any insights would be appreciated.
Note that CloudFlare never states that they use Telstra for transit, nor what the blended cost would be for transit with the other transit providers, so this is actually, somewhat misrepresenting Australia.
No mention of New Zealand. New Zealand is an amazing country, but goddamn, they have some pricey internet access. Wasn't Kim Dotcom planning to finance a new pipe to New Zealand at one point?
I'm confused. AAPT, Optus, PipeNetworks, etc all offer transit at significantly lower prices than this for anything I've been quoted with (circa $20-30/Mbps for 100Mbps+).<p>Is this just because they're offering blended traffic?
I'm not sure why Africa and the Middle East specifically aren't really mentioned in that article since the prices would be on par with Australia if not more, also due to having only 1 or 2 ISPs and no competition.
The TL;DR of the article.<p>>If Australians wonder why Internet and many other services are more expensive in their country than anywhere else in the world they need only look to Telstra (Note: ~50% of all internet is from Telstra in Australia).<p>>What's interesting is that Telstra maintains their high pricing even if only delivering traffic inside the country.<p>>Given that Australia is one large land mass with relatively concentrated population centers, it's difficult to justify the pricing based on anything other than Telstra's market power.<p>>In regions like North America where there is increasing consolidation of networks, Australia's experience with Telstra provides a cautionary tale.
<i>In regions like North America where there is increasing consolidation of networks, Australia's experience with Telstra provides a cautionary tale.</i><p>But, but, the market is <i>magic</i>! Regulation is <i>evil</i>. Does not compute!?!!