[monochr]

Fix the internet. It doesn't matter how much it costs.

I have to wait a month to get our office connected to Optus, Telstra, iiNet et al were just as bad, and as a small business that is killing our profit for this year. I called them on the 10th this month and they will not have any capacity until the 6th next month to connect anyone new. And this is in the Melbourne CBD.

[jfoster]

I've heard people suggest that internet access within AU is important for startups, but could you explain why?

I think most AU startups would be targeting a global market, so the internet in Australia is irrelevant for all but a small percentage of their customers.

On the other side, most startups now use cloud hosting with Amazon or Google. So again the quality of internet access in Australia isn't very relevant.

In terms of getting work done, I think it's difficult to make an argument that current internet speed is insufficient.

Don't get me wrong - faster internet would be lovely and I know that there are other groups that would benefit, just not convinced that AU startups specifically would benefit.

[c23gooey]

First of all, its hard to build an internet business when you dont actually have internet access.

Also, the vast majority of internet plans in Australia, provide very little upstream bandwidth.

Your right, the market being targeted is irrelevant to the speed of internet.

With regards Amazon / Google, they need to get their files onto those services in the first place. This ties into your point of getting work done.

When it takes a day to upload 1GB of data - business starts to suffer.

Faster internet, especially upstream would not change the quality of ideas coming out of Australia, but it would remove a significant bottleneck in terms of getting things done.

[jfoster]

Everywhere urban in Australia does already have internet access. For that reason, I don't understand your first point.

The upstream bandwidth isn't hampering any businesses that I am aware of, but I agree that businesses uploading large amounts of data may struggle with it. (sidenote: would it be worth spending so much on infrastructure to support those few businesses?) That said, my understanding is that the upstream bandwidth is intentionally capped by ISPs rather than being a result of the infrastructure. Even with the most amazing infrastructure, you would need to convince ISPs to drop the artificial limitation.

There is also an emerging behaviour where all data crunching is being done on machines in the cloud. In that case, not much of the data would ever even enter Australia unless you wanted it to.

[jbarham]

Bingo. I'm in Melbourne and have founded/co-founded three online businesses, and have exactly zero servers in Australia. Even if I could have 1 Gb fiber with the NBN tomorrow, that wouldn't change.

IMHO the Australian government would be better off expanding international network capacity to Australia across the Pacific and up to Asia. It's absurd to hear non-technical politicians arguing over which NBN architecture is better. That shouldn't be their job any more than deciding whether I use Python or PHP.

[gregsq]

Agreed. My servers are in the UK where the market I'm dealing with is, and where I live usually. Even setting up edge servers for an Australian company starts in the US or UK for me, and comes back over the sea pipes to Australia. When I'm in Australia my Netflix comes over fine through a server I proxy through. The vast majority of consumers will never need the maximum bandwidth, many will hit cap limits earlier, and for latency reasons there's good reasons for keeping servers close to viable markets.

I really don't think Australian politicians know enough about this subject, and that may include the PM's Mr Internet, Malcolm Turnball.

[quink]

> Fix the internet. It doesn't matter how much it costs.

I care how much it costs, which is why it's utterly insane to go with the coalition's VDSL2 at $40+ billion. GPON on the other hand is a bargain at any price below $100 billion - not least of all because of the higher revenues, but also because of the lower maintenance, higher speeds, higher reliability, lower latency and the future upgrade potential.

But Labor failed to get that message out there, didn't they...

[thmcmahon]

Well this is an area where I can safely say we're going to have a more attractive policy than our opponents. Our office in Braddon ACT is one block away from the NBN, it's frustrating.

[venus]

> we're going to have a more attractive policy than our opponents

Going to have? In 2 1/2 years it's going to be much, much too late.

I am astonished at how little scrutiny the coalition are getting as they take a wrecking ball to the most important infrastructure program in the country. Labor is giving them a free pass, as are the media, even the ABC! I am beginning to feel like a lone nutcase raving on a street corner that hey, maybe we shouldn't take $40B, give half to Telstra, then set the other half on fire, which we can watch in shuddering low-res on our 25mbps connections.

I had 100Mbps VDSL2 in japan seven years ago.

[thmcmahon]

I'm frustrated too, that's why we're working hard to win the next election.

[confusedandlost]

Damn I miss Julia G. You better find someone to spearhead your party that has balls at least as big as hers. I hope you, too don't become Gina & Murdock's partners.

How did this honestly happen? Was this poor marketing? A PR assassination? Is this even legal? The fact that every person I know is mortified with what happened in such a short time is mindbogglingly confusing. Nobody who cares about Australia (not their boss' pay check), who is informed, wants what is happening.

How are the government legally getting away with lying about the state our economy & butchering the most important parts of our gov expenditures. How in gods name are they getting away with bloody murder when it comes to disgracing nature's Sistine Chapel AKA the GB Reef. Pointlessly undoing the good preservation work defending linchpin predators in our environment.

What happened?

I feel like our voting system is completely flawed when such injustices can happen. Again, nobody I know voted (at least knowingly) for Tony Abbott or the Liberals. They sure didn't vote for this NBN VDSL deformed monster. When they don't even have to be accountable to their promises. There should be measures be put in place to prevent exploitation of not only politicians but citizens. Which are equally exploited through misinformation and overly emotional, sensational drivel.

Something like voting for national objectives instead of job hoppers working the revolving doors. Accountability would be central to national motives. Instead of registering for mandatory voting, there should be a knowledge and expertise tests that grants you a vote for certain objectives to assure educated outcomes through democracy instead of happy go lucky "democratic" republics. Not condemning republics, but we're in trouble when people are electing nothing but lawyers who find safe energy "offensive" and kids soccer coaches.

[monochr]

>we're going to have a more attractive policy

"Going to" isn't good enough. If the situation doesn't improve by next year we will be relocating to Eastern Europe.

Yes, you heard that right, the post Soviet Kleptocracy my parents left behind to start a new life in Australia now has better digital infrastructure than Australia and looks more business friendly than what we have to deal with here.

[dublinben]

Are there any WISPs in your area? They should be able to hook you up in a single day with a direct connection to their network.

[elithrar]

> Are there any WISPs in your area? They should be able to hook you up in a single day with a direct connection to their network.

The parent could certainly get a 4G connection with Telstra or Optus, and it'd probably even outperform DSL in terms of raw bandwidth. But the costs are monstrous and typically cap out at ~10GB/quota a month - not really tenable to operate a business on that.

(I'm assuming his issues are due to a lack of DSL ports at the exchange, borne from a lack of rack capacity in the exchange for ISPs to install new DSLAMs into)

[tacticus]

or just a stupidly long installation process for ULL lines

If the previous ULL connection wasn't canceled and removed correctly it's 15+ business days till you will get anything connected. (for my last change ULL to ULL it was a 24 day process)

[monochr]

That is what we were using.

But the plans are either ripoffs, 100GB cap with 10c per MB over quota - which resulted in a $500 over charge and a cancellation right away - or the service is terrible when the university students get out of classes.

On our current plan during 3pm-1am we are lucky to get 50 _kilobytes_ per second. This is utterly unacceptable as that is when our clients in Europe need us to be responsive. Getting an email with attachments send is an uphill battle, forget video conferencing. We have to do ridiculous things like plan do major deployments on cloud servers between 2am and 10am because that is the only times we actually get broadband speeds. And we are stuck like this for another two weeks because of "problems with infrastructure".