[bootload]

"I guarantee most of the people burning fuel, creating congestion and stopping themselves (and everyone else) from getting home to their families on time have jobs that could easily be done from home."

Bandwidth.

No NBN and what you have is copper by default, maybe cable then a sat connection. This is the price paid for poor leadership. NBN should be thought of as the rail of the 21st century. Instead we get a few main lines, some branch lines, everyone else gets donkey carts. [0]

[0] Aus, Melbourne perspective.

[assocguilt]

Hahaha, obligatory NBN complaint :-D

I agree, NBN has been turned into a joke, however, I would be surprised if most people around Sydney and its suburbs don't have access to fast enough broadband to use email and other online services they require - but yes, bad internet infrastructure would prove to be an issue and would need to be addressed.

[stonith]

The upstream on cable is not fast enough for screen sharing anything requiring visual detail. It maxes out at 2Mbps or some garbage which means collaborating on something visual is a pain in the ass. ADSL is even worse. For code you can use screen or tmux, but working together on a CAD model or whatnot isn't a great experience.

(I say this as someone happily working from home in the East)

[assocguilt]

Most office workers need email. Your needs are niche, I'm not saying that you should not go to the office or have awesome internet, I'm saying your needs are not the same as the average.

However, I do anticipate that a culture shift to working from home will require higher bandwidth as more services move to the cloud and as workers start to require video conferencing.

[karmelapple]

How is cell internet in Australia? I will be remote working there soon, and I've seen the 2 Mbps upload speeds from at least one of the cable internet providers, and am kind of... shocked. That won't do for a decent google hangout.

Are there good internet providers? If so, which ones should I look for at an Airbnb I will stay at?

[Tsagadai]

Mobile internet is reasonably fast (around 25MB up and down with my provider) but very expensive. About the cheapest data rate I have found is $15AUD/GB (measuring uploads and downloads). Performance is also patchy, there are blackspots with limited EDGE level connections in most capital cities and you are lucky if you have any reception in rural areas.

[assocguilt]

I've got fibre in my area so tend to do really well. I also have 4G on my phone which reports upload to be over 25MB