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Phillip Dampier
While North American ISP’s call 3Mbps DSL “revolutionary” for rural America and dream of Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing everywhere else, Australia is poised to take broadband to a level North America can only imagine. Watch this documentary on Australia’s fiber-based National Broadband Network future and how it will transform their economy and culture, and then ponder what your Internet Service Provider is doing these days.
While we scratch our heads wondering how to wire West Virginia for slow speed DSL, Australia is planning to rip out copper wire networks everywhere. While we fight over communities trying to get their citizens 21st century broadband speeds from community-owned providers private companies want to ban, Australia will deliver the same fiber speeds to 90 percent of the country, whether it’s ‘economically viable’ (to investors) or not. As we watch a handful of giant telecom companies try to mess with broadband pricing to further increase their profits without delivering any improvements in service, Australia is going to rid itself of artificial limits on broadband usage.
But Australia’s NBN goes much farther than just delivering fast broadband. It builds a foundation to transform virtually every aspect of Australian life:
- Rural Australia’s economic viability is guaranteed a future with the availability of fast and reliable broadband for businesses large and small;
- Telemedicine means patients seeking routine care and follow-ups can conduct them from the comfort of their own homes;
- Telecommuting means less energy consumption, less traffic, and reduced costs in roadway maintenance as workers do their jobs away from the office without wasting precious time in traffic;
- Telelearning provides rural students with access to the same high quality education city students receive, and ongoing education can be managed anytime, anywhere, even for those with existing jobs and families;
- Australian businesses can reach new customers across the world, increasing sales, whether they sell a digital product or one that leverages online shipping and tracking tools to complete delivery anywhere;
- Millions of Australians will have access to the same high speed broadband, delivering a platform for the development of large-scale, next generation applications that don’t make sense in countries where broadband is a patchwork of speeds, service, and basic availability.
- It means a broadband network so far advanced above that found across North America, it could change Australia’s standing in global commerce, and impact our own.
Embarrassed yet? Worried about America and Canada becoming broadband followers instead of leaders?
You should be.
[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Australia’s NBN June 2011.flv[/flv]
Australia’s National Broadband Network (38 minutes)
Didn’t Australia have severe bandwidth caps until recently? Anyway, here’s to hoping that the US will follow suit.
Let’s disperse some facts on this deal: 1. Australia is nationalizing the broadband infrastructure of the country. How would today’s more tech-savvy internet user react to the USofA nationalizing essentially 100% of the access to the internet (ie. owning the pipe)? In Australia that is what is happening – gov’t owns the pipe and ISP’s lease access on the pipe. Telstra saves HUGE because they no longer have to support the infrastructure of the network, all the way down to the line running into the home. Cut your line? Knocked down in a storm? Who you gonna call? Yep, the… Read more »
#1 You obviously haven’t worked for or been a customer of any major telephone or cable company and have had to argue with them for a service visit to repair your line or install. If anything the Government run backbone might be an improvement. #2 I don’t doubt TELSTRA is getting a sweetheart deal in order to incentivise them to agree to turn over their lines. The Governments hands would otherwise be tied here, either laying their own redundant lines (which may have been better or even cost less but would have been percieved as anti-competitive since they’d be destroying… Read more »
Scott – thanks for taking the time to read, consider and comment on my post. #1 – You are incorrect on both of your assumptions. My experiences in both areas give me qualification to render my opinion in a dispassionate and logical manner. We tend to mute our reactions to great experiences and amplify the negative. My experiences with government’s version of ‘customer service’ has been primarily a display of baseline competence on their part with the occasional flourish of gross incompetence. However, in the telco/cable/satellite realm they have displayed regular levels of competence and efficiency with spells of outstanding… Read more »
#2 – The point I was less-than-clear in making is that the approach Australia took here was extremely over-arching. It would have been far less expensive and far more expedient for them to fund and build the last mile – not purchase the first 50,000 miles. The networks are all interconnected and the need for redundant plant by provider is a misconception here. Australia could have built the last mile to the most rural areas and leased access to whatever carrier would like to use them – just like their current plan. Then they could have provided Telstra with tax… Read more »
I think the greatest challenge is always the last mile. In the USA, we have a significant number of backbone and middle-mile providers delivering institutional broadband, but either due to cost or regulation those networks are unavailable to end residences. My suspicion is this may have been one of the points in contention with Telstra, et al., and it appears Telstra will continue to invest a few billion in beefing up its existing infrastructure. From reviewing the detail work done by NBN, I believe the reason for the single network approach was to ensure national traffic would be consistent from… Read more »
#3 – You have misconstrued my comments on government-backed infrastructure. In each of the cases you have cited, 99.9% (my BS figure, no facts here) of these (water, sewer, roads, etc.) were not acquired from private concerns. In fact, the opposite is far more true, where municipalities are looking to private enterprise to manage and maintain their infrastructure because they are typically poorly suited to do this as one-off’s. It is far more likely that a city has sold their water system to private firms to own and run than a city has purchased a private water company to provide… Read more »
I do not dispute that the internet is vital for future growth and opportunity. What I challenge is that the solution that Australia has chosen is not the correct one. And secondly, to frame this solution as a shining example of how it should be done is a far greater error. You stated: However I disagree that there’s any problem with nationalization of a infrastructure that’s proven vital to a country. I humbly ask you to reference the history of the Soviet Union and Italy under Mussolini. The rub here is in who proves what ‘vital’? Beyond politics, putting all… Read more »