Well we have seen massive decreases in cellular prices over the years, about 50% a year. Meanwhile, the NBN keeps getting more expensive and is legislated to keep going up. In fairness, people are using more NBN data but cellular has still been going in a better direction.
This is because:
And yet in South Korea you can get 500Mbps speeds for around $30pm.
they have more high density city while australia has wider cities…
That old argument? The NBN network started in 2009 so we've had 11 years to get it right. My parents just got connected last month and it's already outdated.
What a joke.
@Emerald Owl: We had dial up before we got fibre to our street last year. Of course no one here used dial up, we had to rely on the Telstra phone tower 5 klms away for a service considered anything useful. We love having the NBN and a big down vote to the pampered city slickers who already had ADSL+ and ADSL+100 or whatever. Most developed countries went with the original Kevin Rudd plan he took to the 2007 election - Fibre To The Node and tendered the work to existing Telco's with penalties for failing to get the job done within the contracted timeline. Countries like NZ, Canada and in Europe were done and dusted 5 years ago and private Telco's have since taken fibre to many homes and businesses.
The bottom line is this has been one stupidly handled issue since 2007. It's easy to blame those who "became" responsible for launching a network forecast to be saleable for more than it cost, but delivering something valued at only $8b which is two thirds what Rudd/Gillard paid Telstra just for the use of their infrastructure.
We just have to accept it's a piece of national infrastructure and move on and let internet develop naturally and not try force it's course.
@Ryanek: I am with Telstra on the Nbn 50 standard package… was pushed over from the cable connection I have had for 20 years. The speeds I get are less than half of what I used to get :(
@dandosr: I’m getting 45-47Mbps on Vodafone NBN. My Optus adsl was always less than 10Mbps. NBN is costing me $5 more, only because the price went up just before I swapped over. So for me the NBN is so much better. Optus adsl dropped out a lot of the time as well.
@Jono05: Yeah I'm lucky too. Could get around 8mbit on ADSL2. Now getting 52 constant. Previously was on 4g broadband which was great for download speeds (sometimes up to 170mbit) bit had low download limits and poor latency for gaming
@dandosr: That's a pricing/cap issue: you went for the '50' package instead of the '100'. My nbn with Telstra is now slightly faster for DL at 110 compared to the old cable plan, UL is much better than what cable was ever giving us. The ridiculous part is that it was next to impossible for most customers to keep their cable DL speed without paying significantly more on nbn.
@Ryanek: Price per km way higher here than comparing to small countries. Do the math on a similar sized roll-out with labour costs the same as Australia there is one out there if you look.
But we needed it so that farmers could sell their their harvest online real time like they are going to be internet moguls.
NBN is a joke on the tax payers expense. Only ones laughing are the network suppliers / installers. Hope they didn't spend it all at once.
@netjock: Don’t get me started with farmers! They are a prime example of ‘Privatise profits, socialise losses’.
@netjock: IIRC, Howard Liberals were very skeptical of internet taking off until he was voted out. I remember that Telstra roll out was much worse than NBN. My area at the time was in the rollout phase for ADSL, when Liberals sold off rest of Telstra, they basically canned it. I was on 56k until 2007, youtube was taking off and web 2.0 was happening back then.
I was very disappointed and turned me off Liberals for life.
@Yotta00: You know Australia is basically a country which is making money off agricultural, basic commodities, tourism and universities trading off their historical reputation. China hits our barley, tourism, education and wine sector and Australia is basically half gone.
Nobody has any idea of how internet works or make money off it (our FinTech aka Afterpay / ZIP pay is basically BNPL from 2000 with a working app in 2020).
Sorry to deflate your bubble.
@squall3031: The problem isn't the LNP. It's the other parties. They either can't win a majority or can but don't know how to hold on to it.
The density of the Backhaul network doesn't impact the cost per user, it is chiefly driven by the number and speed of Fibre Hubs and Nodes, which are similar in number/population in Australia/South Korea/Singapore/etc. The additional cost of the low density network is worn by NBNCo, in turn paid for by taxpayer funds, not the RSPs costs.
Most overseas countries didn't skimp on the Fibre equipment, so they can carry higher traffic volumes at higher speeds, without overloading, unlike our LibNat white elephant.
@SlartiBartFozz: What Krzytofferz said.
The NBN is essentially all those points of interconnect (POIs). We already had the backhaul.
Getting the NBN to Farmer Joe living in outback WA (or even people in new H&L estates in the outer fringes of Melbourne - Pakenham, Narre, Melton, etc) is 'the NBN'.
Just can't compare to Korea.
Having said that, yes, I agree, happy for government ('the people') to OWN businesses but stop TRYING TO RUN them.
@MementoMori: That was part of the point of the NBN.
Lots of metro areas already had fibre, mainly for businesses that wanted/needed it (and generally paid for it to be run).
NBN was to "make money" connecting the rest of the metro areas to subsidise the massive cost of connecting the back of Bourke - which you never saw any ISPs putting their hands up to do on their own, as it was a large capital expense for little to no income - no sense for a business to do.
@Chandler: I'm happy the government started the NBN to 'bridge the digital divide'.
I'm not happy they fiddled around with it and micro managed it.
They should have just implemented some kind of incentive for private companies to do it.
Incentive for private companies to do it.
How do you incentivize a for-profit business to make a massive capital expense on country-wide infrastructure?
Hell, there was nothing stopping the private companies from rolling out fibre wherever they wanted. But it was generally only done at the request and expense of their customers.
You don't. You do the infrastructure yourself, and charge the private companies to use it. Ergo, NBN.
Was it a success? No, not in all parts.
Can you imagine what our electricity grid would look like if it was private?
@MementoMori: Building it as a govt wholesale service was the best idea. Crippling it with FTTN, satellites & fixed wireless took that best idea, stomped on it, fed it to a goat and rolled out the excrement under the misleadingly titled banner of NBN.
Murdoch wouldn't have let it be any other way. He was fortunate to find a clown in Abbott who was so obsessively contrary he couldn't just take credit for successfully rolling out an ALP idea.
I doubt Turnbull would have gone down the mixed technology route if he hadn't been given his marching orders. He got better at the end but in the beginning, whenever he tried to spruik MTM, he seemed to throw up in his mouth.
The NBN is a really, really good example of how & why govts are supposed to run only non-profit services, like healthcare, education, housing, etc…
The NBN co has huge private loans from the rollout ($7b or so from memory)
It's trying to get the company into a profitable state.
Telstra will likely kill NBN with their 5G mobile broadband in most areas. Should be cheaper and faster in the medium term and much better for renters as they can take the service with them.
More like Facebook, Amazon or SpaceX will kill Telstra with their global internet connectivity… Just wait… 10 years from now we'll all be connecting via a combo of 5G + satellite…. fixed line internet will die the same death as fixed line voice, just a mater of time. 20 years from now we'll think how naff it was to have cables running from all our houses through soggy pits in the streets to connect to the internet, kinda like how we look back on dial up now… ah those sweet sweet handshake connection sounds…
@financialminimalism: Yeah, nah. Fixed line fibre optic is one of the most future proof technologies. You're basically only limited by the pulses on the hardware either side. And if the libs had done it right the first time, it would have been a once and done job. Instead its a Frankenstein sh1tshow of epic proportions.
@ProlapsedHeinous: Who’s building that for the country? I was commenting on what I think is going to happen, not what should have happened from the start!
5G has limited bandwidth bud.
500Mb/s is amazing when you're the only one using it but once 50 of your neighbours are using the same tower you are looking at less than ADSL speeds.
You could put 5G towers on every power pole, but you will still need a fibre network like the NBN as a backbone.
@This Guy: Everything needs a backbone… even 4G. But it’s not going to be NBN!
5G has 10 times the capacity as 4G. Don’t think 50 neighbours is going to be an issue.
5G will be on a tone more poles - it doesn’t have the range that 4G does.
@financialminimalism: Depends which technology you're looking at. 5G has mmWave, Sub-6ghz and NR - all with varying speeds and characteristics (some good, some bad). mmWave isnt going to cover every home because it stops when you put a tree in the way, much less a house or 10.
@financialminimalism: I don't think you understand what 5G is.
10Gbps 5G is line of sight. It is mostly useless for home internet as we have these things called trees and buildings. If you put a picocell on each power pole you would want the home's receiver to follow the power line (to prevent obstruction). This will cost more to install than FTTP.
As 10Gbps 5G is line of sight, you would need an antenna on each side of a power pole.
10Gbps 5G is completely useless in medium density and above suburbs, and premium suburbs, as most homes won't have line of site to the power poles. A new trench would need to be dug from the receiver to the property boarder. In apartment buildings 10Gbps 5G would need to be run to each apartment.
And this is ignoring all the noise that will destroy 10Gbps 5G speed and stability unless a massive amount of spectrum is allocated to it.
5G on 6GHz frequencies and below is were the real improvement is, but it is not 10x. It is a large group of innovations that telecom engineers have been holding out on for the last decade while waiting for suitable processors to become cheap enough to warrant an upgrade.
You would be wasting billions if you build out a second fiber to the node network to support 5G picocells. Any deployment would be smart to use either NBN fiber or dark fiber in the NBN pits in regional and rural Australia.
5G is not the miracle it is sold as. 5G is amazing, but replacing the NBN with 5G is not realistic.
@This Guy: Don't tell optus or Telstra that… they are doing just that.
I've got a 5G antenna on my TV antenna pole… it's not that hard to get line of sight in suburbs to the nearest mobile tower. Not that expensive either.
But as I started saying, for where 5G isn't possible, Satellite will be offered instead.
@financialminimalism: Fibre is so fast because it can use all the available bandwidth for that one connection. You can't use a tower for fast 5G because of bandwidth limitations. You need pole top.
Of cause connecting to a traditional tower works for you now, you are probably the only one using it.
Replacing copper with fibre is pretty cheap too if the hardware is in place.
Satellite sucks. Last I read Starlink was at upto 91mbps per 50km squared block (for all users to share). You would be better off using low speed 5G.
@This Guy: Yup it's the same with all wireless technology. The average NBN user is burning 5GB data daily, it'd render internet from phone towers to dial up speed. It's already the case in some places on some networks.
Hey, public transport is slow and expensive. Lets just expand our highways, then public transport can be killed off. Should be cheaper and faster.
We get 300-500 and pay $39.99 pm so I guess we’re pretty close to that? (Not on NBN)
What on?
@WoodYouLikeSomeCash: Damn, not available where I am. We do have Telstra Cable and Optus Cable available, but the powers that be decided FTTC NBN was going to be rolled out rather than HFC. As of today, I’m testing Superloop 100/20 NBN v Telstra 100/5 Cable. Not impressed so far, think we will stick with Cable until forced off it next year. Will try a different router first, just in case that makes a difference.
Need to mention that it’s $39.99 for the first 12 months then it’s $79.99 pm. Plus it’s also only available in limited areas, so not accessible to a lot of people.
@Jono05: It’s basically $39.99 permanently, we’ve just been ringing up every 12 months and they’ve applied the discount for us.
@[Deactivated]: Yeah, some users on whirlpool have said they’ve gotten a new modem (released just recently) and their speeds have increased to 700-1000mbps.
@WoodYouLikeSomeCash: You’re on a good deal then. It’s only in limited areas though, so you’re one of the lucky ones. For me, 45 Mbps is magic compared to <10 on adsl.
Don't think that's a fair comparison, since most South Koreans live in an apartment and South Korea had a huge push towards fast internet service since late 1990s. And I don't mean like small apartments either, like 10 storeys tall ones with many many households. And the cities are so bloody close to one another too.
I completely agree that Australian internet service leaves lots and lots of rooms for improvement to say the least.
It definitely got better than where it used to be, but the fact that my parents get faster internet than me (they live in Korea, and I think they are not even on the fastest one available to them) annoys me to no ends. And they are using the dodgy as router from the telcos that they gave out for free, which can't even get through two walls. Ugh.
Is it a plash speed router?
And yet here I am in an apartment block 4km from Brisbane's CBD where the NBN put brand new HFC cable down the street and installed it into the block (last year) for the first time so that the max speed I can still get would be 100mbps…. It likely would have been cheaper to do that as fibre, but that wouldn't have suited the political narative.
I don't think the complaint is that remote and rural areas are worse than South Korea… It's the urban areas…
@[Deactivated]: Well, where my parents live is considered to be middle of nowhere. Even then it is bigger than Townsville (about x1.25 the population and two thirds in area).
Anyway, I guess the point I was trying to make is, comparing South Korea to Australia is unfair at best. Even remote and rural areas tend to be denser in population than a lot of cities in Australia.
Just checked, 49th place among the cities in terms of population in Korea.
@iridiumstem: How's it an unfair comparison?
Everyone says we have crap internet because of low densities, yet in the example above we have the NBN newly installing ancient technology into a high density residential building in a capital city.
Yeah fair enough regional towns and maybe even outer suburbs of the capital cities might be excusable for lower speeds due to lower densities, but that excuse doesn't fly right in the middle of our capital cities.
By the time they wrap up the NBN roll out, it'll be time to start already planning on replacing the FTTN installs.
@stewy: Because it is. What Australians think is high density is nowhere as dense as what South Korea has. My parents live in a place which is famous for rice and it has around the same population density as Canberra and Sydney (4 times as much as Brisbane) at least according to Google. It's 49th place in cities in Korea in terms of population.
An apartment building can be as high as 10~12 storeys, and you have blocks of it in Korea. That's fairly normal. It's not just one building but you see apartment buildings in a block. And the cities are so close too. Not towns, but cities.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Australian internet. It is abysmal that I have to pay around 3 times as much as what my parents do to get around 2/3 the speed that they get I think? It might be worse actually. That said, it's like comparing apples to oranges. Australian internet is crap, the government messed up big time (to put it politely), but we don't need to use something that cannot be compared to make a point.
@iridiumstem: And when you have that throughout the country, you get what South Korea has. Just checked South Korea population density as a country, it's greater than Sydney population density… so imagine a country more packed than Sydney (and this probably isn't counting in the fact that half the land in Korea is mountain).
India has 1 Gbps for $100 (FTTP)
That is pretty expensive considering 50% of their workers earn <30k INR per month.
@whooah1979: but that's the highest plan mostly opted by Businesses. plans start from $10 (100 MBPS FTTP).
Is this an achievement? Russia has 1 Gbps fibre to the apartment for AU$20. They also give a free fibre-optic Wi-Fi router on all plans, even the cheapest ones.
@beesider: Russia is almost a third world country their GDP per person is about US$12000, Australia's is about US$60,000.
My school maths tells me that by simple arithmetic their $20 is as expensive to a Russian as $100 internet is here.
Not many in Asian Russia would have 1GBps plans available to them.
@philart: True, but my comparison was to India which, as mentioned above, has 1 Gbps for $100. Its GDP per capita is US$2000, yet the internet is 5 times more expensive than of a country with GDP 6 times larger.
Speaking of Russia, the metropolitan parts of Asian Russia have pretty much the same low internet prices. They just let capitalism do its job with no over regulation in that area, so the competition drove prices down.
Australia is a 3rd world county and a banana republic in many aspects. We're moving backwards, whereas 3rd world countries are actively developing.
@philart: Haha third world. With google not being able to compete with yandex, same as Uber. Facebook losing to vkontakte and odnoklassniki. The level of innovation in Russia is stunning, admittedly not in all areas but that’s fine.
Cost of labor is not what makes a country first world.
How does usage effect anything once a connection is made?
Then the argument is how do other countries do it so cheap?
How does usage effect anything once a connection is made?
Imagine a 27 billion dollar freeway, 3 lanes in each direction, elevated roadways, no crossroads, beautiful on-ramps, 110km/h speed limit.
With 100 cars per day, it's a dream to drive on.
What happens when you put 800 million cars per hour onto it?
A friend got cable NBN put in, 10Mbs cheapest plan, and marveled that his 4G was faster on Speedtest than the NBN. Even though he was getting the speed he paid for. People's phones will feel faster than even fibre NBN, if they are only paying for the 10Mbs plan for NBN and are getting the full 4G/5G speed on their phones. Maybe ISPS should make all their plans get the first month at full speed, then they put you back down to whatever you chose after. So you can at least experience what your line is capable of before rubbishing it on social media.
We should all have unlimited gigabit nbn for $60 a month right now, compared to what was promised there was alot of mismanagement.
You know what… yeah, you're right about the time-frame, price, and performance.
Some persons have really been stealing from the tax-payers.
From Jan 1 next year non-NBN broadband users will be taxed $7.90 per month to support the NBN.
The legislation was designed to hurt TPG and iiNet who ran their own fibre or HFC networks, but it will be extended to non-mobile 4G/5G routers.
You mean a $7.90 per month speeding ticket for being faster. Please don't mention the fraction of people who can get 100Mbps+
Who would’ve thought the Libs were communists
:D
They may not be communists, but just as corrupt
I think cellular will eventually be the end game before Skynet takes over.
crabbott screwed over the NBN when they moved away from FTTP. The cost blow out on this mix mode pile of crap has been more than FTTP was planned to cost!
If NBN was a car, we the tax payers could have got a new car for $40k…….. Instead we purchased a 10 year old car for $20k! YAY! $20k saving?
But oh no, we found out the engine was borked, so spent $10k on fixing that, and it needed new tyres, another $5k, and the steering wheel was worn out and the brakes borked. we ended up spending $50k on our car all up….. and its still 10 years and can't do 100kms down most freeways, on some freeways its stuck at 25km, something about the road needing to be replaced, but other cars are doing 100!?
Welcome to how the government works. It is an inefficient wealth transfer mechanism from private sector the public then back to private. Follow the money.
Yea that’s kinda what I’m asking, is the problem that it is a government infrastructure project in itself or that the current government is corrupt.
government
I think you mean the LNP/Nationals.
The single biggest privatization of public assets in Australia's history has occurred under Victorian Labor government through asset recycling models.
Hahah. More like a 100 year old copper car made from scrap parts that we sold to the Telstra monopoly and then bought back from Telstra at massive a loss, to now try and sell to them as a monopoly again.
Maybe the government will nationalise Telstra when the share price is in the dumps. Telstra pretty much pays out all its profits and it is a shrinking company.
Not likely, Telstra will be a formidable opponent to the NBN once they have fully rolled out 5G.
My idea would have been nationalise Telstra, spin off the retail side, and use the wholesale profits to build out the nbn
To be fair, I know someone that may or may not have worked on the NBN project and its pretty well known that the original cost of FTTP was no where near enough. The whole NBN is a shit show and the Liberals absolutely set the country back with their vision. If you think the cost blow outs were bad with what we currently have, as a completely anonymous internet stranger it would have been horrendous with the original FTTP rollout. Anyways expect NBN to be probably owned by Telstra in the near future. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-17/nbn-failure-infrastru…
I agree and don't see why your being negged. Governments go over budget all the time.
+1
Finally someone whos talks sence and is on a wavelength offset not too far from me. Well said mate.
I LuLZ'd at the comment made by jimmyF…..
'The cost blow out on this mix mode pile of crap has been more than FTTP was planned to cost!'
Comparing actual of cost mtm with forecast cost for fttp….. Like… LuLZ?
yep I think this is something a lot of people seem to miss. FTTP was massively hugely gigantically under estimated cost wise. Had it continued the prices would be far far worse or we would be looking at a massive taxpayer funded money pit in NBN Co.
If money pit means the huge amount of innovation we could have in AU with good networking and the net economic benefit that brings then sure
@Scantu: no money pit is a massive debt saddling generations to come with tax burdens making the current mess look cheap and never coming close to recovering cost through innovation. FTTP was never ever going to pay for itself in any manner, that doesn't necessarily mean it shouldn't be done, but going in with some BS idea that somehow mythical innovation will happen here that hasn't happened elsewhere in the world to recover this mammoth debt is moronic.
If it was a car it would be a nearly new car with tyres gone flat, stale fuel and a few dinted panels.
"New car" 25% of the cost is "new car" payouts to Telstra and Optus.
"New car" POIs
"New car" backhaul
"New car" fibre/Fans etc running to street distributions
"New car" NBN offices, mapping, planning scoping etc
"New car" fixed wireless
"New car" satellites
"New car" fttp for a portion of the NBN
Most of fttc is "new car" to driveway
HFC is old car
FTTN is old car from copper on
Replacing the "$5000" tyres (fttn and hfc street level infrastructure) and replacing the fuel/fixing the fonts (fttc upgrade) won't be cheap, but they don't have to replace the whole car as most of it is new.
You have to admit that the original plan was better but that it now has been corrupted by vested interests. A combination of the NBN board being Telstra stooges and Murdoch trying to protect Foxtel/Newspapers/Channel 10.
Do you really have faith in Telstra to deliver Australia cheap and fast internet?
The best plan was do nothing.
Do you really have faith in Telstra to deliver Australia cheap and fast internet?
Let's put it this way … I had Telstra broadband for years before the NBN came along. Got forced onto NBN (remaining with Telstra) and now have a service that is more expensive and slower than I had before. YMMV.
I can't speak for everyone, but I was more than happy with the ways things were before NBN came along and would have preferred that the profligate waste of the NBN went to something that actually makes the country better … or just give it back to the taxpayer and let them decide how to spend their money.
NBN 50mbs+ annihilates the Broadband 2+ I had before. Broadband should be called Snailband. Your great idea of do nothing is actually a turd of an idea.
With NBN My speed went from 4 Down and 1 Up to 40 Down and 7 Up. The fastest internet I've seen on ADSL2+ was 15 Down 2 Up. NBN Isn't good but it was needed, the issue was how it was implemented.
Or simply that NBN resellers have low margins on their current prices and with increased usage and speeds available, they need to increase prices. Not everything is a major political conspiracy.
https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/blog/price-increase-annou…