[ctphipps]

Can't agree with this sentiment more. I've been involved directly in two separate decisions over the last 5 years where US companies decided not to invest in product and operations launches Australia specifically because of the cost of bandwidth to residential users. This is not just about home users wanting to streaming movies, Australia is losing jobs because of this short-sighted, political farce over the NBN.

The clincher is that my mother, who lives in the nation's capital, has only two options for Internet connectivity at her home, both are ADSL1, neither offers downlink speeds in excess of 8Mbps and uplink is capped at 256kbps, with actual speeds more like 2Mbps down/128kbps up.

Why? Because Telstra, the national telco decided to implement micro-exchanges in the form of roadside cabinets (RIMs) in the 1990s, thus locking out all other players from offering ADSL access, and themselves from being upgraded to ASDL2/2+.

Almost 30 years later, these RIMs are still a key part of their landline infrastructure and due to lack of competition and the delays in the NBN, they're able to charge the poor customers that are connected to them top dollar (~AUD$70/month) for third world Internet speeds.

[nikcub]

> I've been involved directly in two separate decisions over the last 5 years where US companies decided not to invest in product and operations launches Australia specifically because of the cost of bandwidth to residential users

Cost of bandwidth and last mile network are completely unrelated. Australian bandwidth is the most expensive in the world because it is poorly peered mostly one-way expensive transit.

You could install gigabit to every home tomorrow and you'd still have 100GB download caps because an international link is $25/Mbps+

I find a lot of people confuse these issues, which is unfortunate because all of this NBN energy directed towards the price of Australian bandwidth could actually fix something tangible.

[deadlyllama]

Really? NZ is in a similar situation and I can buy an unlimited 1Gbps residential fibre connection in a town of 43,000 people for NZD115/month.

NBN handover charges are excessive, and interconnecting with Telstra is crazy expensive, and you need to for good domestic connectivity. The NZ UFB fibre network has much lower handover costs, and the incumbent telco here is marginally more reasonable.

[ctphipps]

I'd take good domestic bandwidth as a good (albeit primitive) first start. Overseas bandwidth/peering can be a commercial next step - if the last mile and domestic bandwidth is the bottleneck then there's no catalyst to kick-start international connectivity negotiations.

Let me run a stable FaceTime chat from Canberra to Sydney. Then let's worry about Canberra to Los Angeles...

[kid0m4n]

At my third world home, I get a 125 Mbps fiber to home connection for around USD 74 per month.