Australia’s current Labor government has refused to compromise on its goal of delivering super-fast broadband service to nearly every Australian, declaring they will get the job done no matter what it takes.

“This government is determined to build a national broadband network and will not let anything get in its way,” declared Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Rudd was responding to critics from opposition political parties and some private providers who had been trying to throw up roadblocks to stop the government effort, which many private providers felt ceded too much control to the government.

Rudd’s plans to construct the network were bolstered with the release of a new study showing the construction and operating costs to be lower than previously thought.

Stephen Conroy

Lindsay Tanner, Australia’s Finance Minister, told colleagues, “The government would get its investment back and also, over the course of the investment, earn a modest return.”

Stephen Conroy, Communications Minister, promised wholesale pricing for the unlimited fiber-based service would range between $17.50-26.30US per month.  Retail pricing for entry-level ADSL broadband service from Telstra currently runs $35US per month, with a 2 GB monthly usage allowance.

Conroy previously threatened Telstra that if it didn’t want to help build the national network at a reasonable price, the government would do it themselves.

Tony Smith, opposition Shadow Communications Minister called Rudd’s insistence on a national fiber network reckless, irresponsible, and risky.

But for Australian consumers long subjected to expensive monthly prices for heavily usage limited service, 100Mbps service — or even slower, unlimited service — represents a major improvement.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Network 10 Aus Cheap Broadband 6-21-10.flv[/flv]

The Ten Network in Australia ran this report on the current Australian government’s unwillingness to compromise away its goal for a national fiber network.  (2 minutes)

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Australia National Broadband Plan Study 5-6-10.flv[/flv]

Channel Nine reports on the release of the broadband study showing Australia would save money building their own national broadband network instead of letting Telstra build it.  (1 minute)

Australia is set to leapfrog over the United States and Canada, declaring its intent to deliver fiber broadband service to the vast majority of its citizens within eight years.  The country embarked on a National Broadband Plan more than a year before the United States, declaring the current state of usage-limited, slow, expensive, and incomplete broadband coverage to be unacceptable.

Australia discarded an earlier plan to work with private providers to build the network when government officials faced opposition from private providers who did not want to lose control of the broadband market.  In a surprising decision last September, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the government would commence construction of a fiber to the home network itself, excluding private providers from participation.

NBN Company, a government-owned entity, will construct the $43 billion network over eight years, delivering 100Mbps speeds on a fiber network.  The infrastructure will be designed for an easy upgrade to 1 Gigabit service as bandwidth demand intensifies.

A separate deal concluded today with Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, will retire the nation’s copper wire landline network and cable systems, to be replaced by NBN fiber.

Up to 37,000 jobs will be created to build the network across the country, supplemented with wireless broadband for Australia’s most rural areas.

But some are complaining the network is too extravagant and expensive, adding their displeasure with the Rudd government’s strong-arming of Telstra to give up its network.

Opposition finance spokesman Andrew Robb said taxpayers would be on the hook for the project.

“It’ll come with a multi-billion dollar taxpayer debt that will have to be paid off over decades,” Robb said, adding if elected, the opposition promises to scrap the plan.

[flv width=”424″ height=”260″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Network New National Broadband Plan 4-6-09.flv[/flv]

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd originally introduced his nationwide fiber network proposal in April 2009.  Channel Nine provides this roundup of the original announcement, media reaction, and a few insults from the opposition.  Just a day after the plan was introduced, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy warned Telstra to “back off,” referring to the company’s immediate lobbying effort to block the proposal.  (11 minutes)

Prime Minister Rudd announcing the deal between Telstra and the federal government.

Australia has taken the first step towards 100Mbps unlimited broadband service this weekend as an agreement was reached to decommission the country’s copper wire phone network, replacing it with fiber connections to 90 percent of Australian homes.

After months of heated negotiations between Telstra and the federal government, Telstra CEO David Thodey this morning joined Prime Minister Kevin Rudd at the podium to announce the $11 billion deal.  Telstra will agree to scrap its copper-wire phone system and make way for the federal government’s new fiber network.

Rudd claimed the deal would benefit everyone because it would permanently retire an obsolete network with easily-upgradable fiber, connected right to the home.  Under Rudd’s previously announced National Broadband Plan, the government would finance the construction of the fiber network and lease access to any provider, including Telstra, at wholesale pricing.

In addition to an $11 billion offer, Telstra is expected to keep the estimated $580 million the company could earn from recycling more than 70 million kilometers of copper phone wiring no longer needed.  Another $1 billion will be earned from real estate sales.  At least 3,000 telephone exchange offices are expected to be declared redundant after switching to the fiber network, bringing Telstra plenty of additional earnings as those properties are sold off.

“I can’t stress enough just how complex this certain negotiation has been, because we’ve had to look at commercial issues, what the future of the business would be, what the structure of the industry would be, but we have got to this position and we are pleased to have done so, because it does give us clarity, and that’s what this company needs,” Thodey said. “Firstly we’ve got to grow our share of the market, we’ve got to simplify this business to take the unnecessary complexity [out], and we are going to continue now to build and invest in building new products and services to work in an NBN world.”

The agreement gives NBN Company, the government-owned entity building the fiber network, access to Telstra’s outdoor facilities to house the fiber network, saving the government billions in construction costs.  Telstra has also agreed to purchase wholesale access to the new network and will also decommission its coaxial cable-based systems, moving customers to the new fiber facilities as built.

Telstra will continue to operate its wireless mobile network and satellite TV business independent of the government broadband project.  For Telstra, in return for giving up control of broadband, the company is also freed from its universal phone service obligations which required it to provide service to any Australian that asked.

Telstra shareholders liked what they saw as the stock soared in value earlier this morning, but Thodey urged some caution.

“We believe that this is an important milestone towards getting [the deal done], but I want to stress it’s only a milestone, because it’s a non-binding financial heads of agreement that sets us on a road to get to a definitive agreement over the next period,” Thodey said.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Network 10 Aus Broadband Deal 6-21-10.flv[/flv]

Network 10 covered the deal between Telstra and the federal government in its weekend news report.  (4 minutes)

The Beaumont Enterprise has an online poll up to accompany its report on the end of AT&T’s Internet Overcharging scheme.  The poll is not well-written — I’ll write about that later.  In the meantime, let’s deliver a message to Beaumont that usage caps and other overcharging schemes are -not acceptable!-

The poll:

Should companies charge you based on the bandwidth you use?

• Yes.  You pay more for larger and faster in everything else.
• No.  Volume purchases should yield a discount.  <– Vote for this one.
  
• Hold on while I download this movie.

The first option is nonsense.  If you buy unlimited long distance plans from AT&T (assuming they bill you correctly), do you pay more for making 10 vs. 100 calls?  No you don’t.  The second choice is the one we recommend you choose, even though it’s poorly worded — it assumes you should still be capped, just not as extremely.  We’ll have to re-educate them on that.  The third option is simply insulting — playing into the stereotype that “heavy downloaders” are simply pilfering movies from the web.  That’s garbage.  We’ll educate them about that as well.

Thus far, with 75 votes in, the noes have it.  Let’s make that overwhelmingly so — here is the link.

TV Everywhere isn’t just for the United States.  Canadian cable operators are also threatened by cable cord-cutters, although their pervasive Internet Overcharging schemes have kept TV addicts from watching too much video online.

Both Shaw Cable (serving western Canada) and Vidéotron (best known in Quebec) have this week introduced their own online video portals providing “authenticated” cable subscribers with access to on-demand movies and television programming as an extension of their cable package.  But neither company is willing to exempt its customers from Internet Overcharging schemes which apply data caps and overlimit fees to broadband accounts.

Of the two services, Shaw Cable’s is bare bones, offering a relative handful of TV shows and a movie library.  No live video is provided, and many titles carry per-viewing fees, even for cable subscribers.  Non-subscribers face even higher fees to view programming.  Vidéotron takes a different approach, offering a video portal called Illico Web that offers on-demand and live streaming feeds of a wide range of cable networks, mostly in French for its Quebec subscriber base.

Shaw positioned its video-on-demand service as an extension of its cable service.  It hopes its announced acquisition of Canwest Global, which runs the Global television network in Canada and 18 cable networks will vastly expand its offerings in the future.

Vidéotron warns its subscribers watching its service eats into monthly broadband usage allowances.

“Technology continues to evolve with the ability to watch content on multi-platforms,” said Peter Bissonnette, President, Shaw Communications. “That’s why Shaw is investing in bringing exceptional content delivered in various ways. Our new broadband VOD Player provides our customers the convenience of watching their favorite movies and television shows when and where they want to.”

Pierre Karl Péladeau, the president and chief executive officer of Vidéotron’s parent Quebecor was more abrupt when he said on Wednesday that its TV Everywhere service would offer “an alternative to piracy.”

But in Canada, there is a catch.  Neither cable provider offers subscribers unlimited broadband service.  Both employ Internet Overcharging schemes ranging from usage caps to consumption billing schemes with overlimit penalties.  Vidéotron reminds its subscribers to “keep an eye on your Internet usage.”  That’s because they don’t exempt their online viewing service from their usage limits.  Vidéotron’s video portal does eat its way through subscriber allowances.  The company provides these estimates to help guess by how much:

[flv width=”432″ height=”263″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Welcome to illico web 6-10.flv[/flv]

Illico Web produced this video introduction to its TV Everywhere service. (French with English subtitles — 3 minutes)