
How Australia Bungled Its $36B High-Speed Internet Rollout - bootload
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/world/australia/australia-slow-internet-broadband.html?_r=0
======
andrewstuart
If you posed the question "Who in the world would be the worst possible person
to decide on how to construct a nationwide high speed computer network?", the
you might come up with a list that included Tony Abbott.

I genuinely believe that Tony Abbott really didn't even understand what
purpose the Internet serves, apart from email and playing games - he saw it as
some sort of frivolous discretionary spend - definitely not anywhere near as
important as roads and mines and coal.

It's an absolute tragedy for the nation that the original plan was changed by
such ignorant luddites as Tony Abbott.

They made such an incredibly huge fuss about the cost, but only a month or two
back they handed a $23 billion corporate tax cut over to companies and it
barely made the newspaper.

I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I have not an atom of respect for
any of our politicians.

Off topic, to me all part of the same story is my absolute quivering rage that
we are literally giving away our natural resources for nothing or close to
nothing whilst every litre of natural gas that can be sucked out of the ground
is shipped to other countries.

Meanwhile the politicians ride around in helicopters, leech the taxpayer blind
with their kingly entitlements and are genuinely surprised when there is
outrage about it.

Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country
back from these idiots.

~~~
fit2rule
>Seriously it is time for a citizens revolution. We need to take the country
back from these idiots.

Nothing can be done until Australians demand Constitution reform. This is the
crux of the problems with Australian politics - its Constitution is absolutely
atrocious.

~~~
cyphar
The fact we don't have a Bill of Rights (or even an equivalent to the First
Amendment) is ridiculous. But on the plus side we stopped with the ridiculous
gun-toting crap 20 years ago, so some parts of our constitution are more
reasonable than other countries.

One of the more worrying issues is that the Governor-General (and thus by
proxy the Queen of fucking England) has vito power over our laws.

~~~
Khaine
We don't need a bill of rights. I have never had anyone give me a convincing
argument on why a bill of rights is needed.

Also, its veto, not vito and the Governor General's reserve powers are a check
on the Government. In the history of the Commonwealth of Australia these
powers have been used twice: 1) On 13 May 1932, when the Governor of New South
Wales Sir Philip Game dismissed the Government of New South Wales. 2) On 11
November 1975, when the Governor-General of Australia Sir John Kerr dismissed
the Commonwealth Government.

In both cases an election was held very soon afterwards and, again in both
cases, the dismissed government was massively defeated by popular vote.

I really wish they would teach better civics in schools.

~~~
cyphar
> We don't need a bill of rights. I have never had anyone give me a convincing
> argument on why a bill of rights is needed.

We don't have any legal (let alone constitutional) right to freedom of
expression, freedom of assembly and a few other freedoms that are present in
the US bill of rights. There are some laws that provide protections for
certain kinds of political speech, but those are incredibly narrow compared to
the First Amendment in the US. In fact the only people in Australia who have
freedom of speech (even surpassing the US because libel laws don't apply to
them) is politicians in the House of Reps and Senate -- ordinary citizens
don't have those freedoms.

> I really wish they would teach better civics in schools.

To be frank we have more serious issues in our school system.

~~~
Khaine
The Australian Constitution does not explicitly protect freedom of expression.
However, the High Court has held that an implied freedom of political
communication exists as an indispensible part of the system of representative
and responsible government created by the Constitution. It operates as a
freedom from government restraint, rather than a right conferred directly on
individuals.

In Nationwide News Pty Ltd v Wills (1992) 177 CLR 1 and Australian Capital
Television Pty Ltd v the Commonwealth (1992) 177 CLR 106, the majority of the
High Court held that an implied freedom of political communication exists as
an incident of the system of representative government established by the
Constitution. This was reaffirmed in Unions NSW v New South Wales [2013] HCA
58.

This right is limited by certain laws a.k.a Section 18C of the Racial
Discrimination Act.

------
pserwylo
The government who changed away from FTTP is the more conservative (and pro
small government) of the two major parties. As such, although I disagree, I
can see why they may argue that it is not the governments responsibility to
deliver broadband infrastructure and that private industry should pick up any
slack.

However they didn't argue this.

They stuck with the concept of a nationally funded broadband network, but one
which was sub-par on almost every metric except cost. This just doesn't make
any sense to me, especially because they tried to sell it to the public by
suggesting that things like "Why invest so much in fibre when it may be
surpassed by another technology in the near future". There was also a lot of
clever wording around how their version would be "delivered cheaper, faster,
etc than the alternative" \- I have no doubt these words were chosen because
it sounds like the data rates themselves would be faster, whereas they
actually meant it the build could be completed faster.

~~~
ccakes
FTTP or FTTN aside, aiming for 93% coverage in a country as sparsely populated
as AU was a terrible idea to start with.

I understand the need to support rural areas but the the majority of the
initial budget was to cover non-metropolitan areas and while the govt has been
messing this up, private industry (TPG, First Path etc) managed to cover huge
swaths of the population with little-to-no government assistance.

~~~
spangry
This gets repeated a lot, but people seem to forget that a large part of the
continent/island [?] is inhospitable desert. Our population distribution looks
like this: [https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-
qimg-4afe2e7cc5078f81d6a999...](https://qph.ec.quoracdn.net/main-
qimg-4afe2e7cc5078f81d6a9993b21724bb6)

About 60% of the population is clustered in 4 cities [0] and we're one of the
most urbanised countries in the world [1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#Cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_Australia#Cities)

[1]
[https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/](https://infrastructure.gov.au/infrastructure/pab/soac/)
& [http://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-
austral...](http://theconversation.com/density-sprawl-growth-how-australian-
cities-have-changed-in-the-last-30-years-65870)

------
stirlo
The biggest issue with the whole project wasn't the abandoning of FTTP and
move to MTM but the locking in of 2010 prices for the foreseeable future via a
ridiculous CVC charge that only existed to turn a profit.

The founder of one of Australia's largest independent ISP's Internode (and
later NBNco board member) Simon Hackett put it very well in 2011 where he
showed locking in a arbitrary $20 charge per megabit hobbled the network.The
whole profitability revolved around charging more for faster speeds/more data
in the future.

Every other technological advance gave users faster for cheaper whereas this
network would only work if people paid more. Cut to the future and now you've
got competition from 4G cellular data at the low end and private companies
providing private fibre/wireless networks at the top end. The whole pyramid is
coming crashing down so much that the government has had to introduce a new
broadband tax ($7.10 per month) to subsidize it.

And even the tax won't solve the problems because the CVC usage charge still
exists and the business case still resolves around charging more in the
future. In about 5 years when they realize what a stuff up it's been we can
only help they write it all off and we can go back having affordable fast
internet like the rest of the world.

[https://simonhackett.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/commsday-w-...](https://simonhackett.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/commsday-
w-and-dc-hackett-2013.pdf)

[https://blog.internode.on.net/2011/07/21/nbn-retail-
pricing-...](https://blog.internode.on.net/2011/07/21/nbn-retail-pricing-
pressure-points/)

~~~
spangry
Yep Hackett called it right. He put his money where his mouth was too: he sold
his ISP to iiNet/iiBorg (who were subsequently consumed by TPG) and got the
fuck outta dodge. It's a pity; Internode was possibly the best ISP in the
country.

~~~
voltagex_
Internode's sort of okay still. TPG routes are slower though. I have unlimited
FTTP NBN, static IPv4 and a v6 /56 for $110 a month.

~~~
spangry
Man, that's pretty nice. Looking at the TPG plan page I'm guessing that's at
100/40? What's bandwidth contention like? I know TPG cop a bit of flak on
whirlpool, but for the 2 or so years I had ADSL with them I never had a
problem...

When you say v6 /56, does that mean you can have 4,722,366,482,869,645,213,696
addressable hosts? [I don't CIDR gud...]

~~~
girvo
Ive got TPG FTTB, 100/50 that actually runs at 100/100, which is awesome. I
had their ADSL2, that ran at 23 down. Of course I live in the middle of
Brisanes tech hub (ish), so I'm lucky.

"Whingepool" have their nickname for a reason ;)

------
grizzles
I have a personal perspective on this. Around 2014 or so, I + some of
Australia's top physicists designed and quickly prototyped some tech to lower
the cost of the NBN rollout bigtime. Our approach revolved around self install
fibre + a far greater use of wireless.

I contacted 15+ people in senior leadership at NBNco, all of whom are still on
my LinkedIn. No matter how hard I tried, we couldn't get a meeting with NBNco
execs to demo our tech.

I took it to the local tech press here to get some positive coverage and they
told us repeatedly how "stupid" we were. We wrote comments on the now PM (then
Communications Minister)'s blog and chatted to his people. Zero interest. At
that point they'd been at it for ~7 years, spent billions and had pretty much
nothing to show for it. Nada.

Last year, an academic completely unaffiliated with us testified at a
parliamentary committee into why the existing approach has been such a
boondoggle. As a remedy, he suggested our exact approach. He also copped it
from the tech press.

Here are a couple tweets from that period between me and an online tech
pundit. This Renai LeMay fellow runs Australia's most influential tech site,
it's very very popular with Australia's politicians:

[https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705523306699423744](https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705523306699423744)
[https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705528311330385920](https://twitter.com/renailemay/status/705528311330385920)

Such is the life of the serial entrepreneur. This is the typical bs that we
have to put up with. I folded that company up pretty fast. Idea tested. NEXT.

~~~
nl
I'm sure your technology is great, but I suspect you aren't seeing it through
your (potential) customer's eyes.

If you seriously don't understand why that solution could never have been
politically feasible then to be honest it isn't surprising you were ignored.

Additionally, did you really suggest that people should be able to dig their
own trenches and plug fibre in themselves? You do realize that does nothing to
make you seem credible, right?

~~~
grizzles
We suggested and could show that the tech can be completely plug and play, and
support any logical network topology. There is no installer risk because power
doesn't run over optical fiber. It's a big misconception that you need
specialized installers. You don't. And it's the labor cost that is responsible
for biggest chunk of the expense in building a country wide broadband network.

As I said in the linked tweet, you could hire the handyman down the street to
do it, or you could pay the major contractor Ericsson 100X as much per
property to do it. If they somehow screw up plugging something into something
else, it just doesn't work - it doesn't affect the integrity of the network at
all.

In my opinion, it's the existing approach that lacks credibility. It's
corporate welfare. That's why Australia's broadband lags behind Turkey,
Poland, Mexico, and many others even though it's a much richer country per
capita than all of those.

The funny thing was when we came onto the scene the most interest we got was
from Ericsson, with some email discussions and heaps of their people showing
up on my profiles, etc. That was flattering but apparently they needn't have
worried about us spoiling their cash cow. I can understand their paranoia.
Life must be sweet when you own 100% of the purported supply.

------
marak830
I was born and raised in Australia, I left for Japan just as the NBN was
beginning to roll out.

It's an absolute disgrace how much it has been butchered. I have thoughts
about returning occasionally, but going from 2 GB/s unlimited for Aus$ 40 ish
a month, back to those speeds and prices is a major factor for me staying
here.

It is a massive quality of life difference to have amazing internet.

~~~
Smerity
As an Australian now living in San Francisco paying $55 per month for 100/100
(WebPass, which would be the same price but 500/500 or 1000/1000 if I moved to
a newer building), I have the exact same feeling.

When I journey back home and stay with my parents, it is impossible to get
work done. Latency is the first killer - it'll never properly be solved if
you're working with remote systems in the US or Europe - but then upload
speeds slowly rip at your soul. Download speeds and quotas are no picnic
either of course.

That Australia didn't end up with a future proof fibre to the home system
given the amount of money spent is an absolute disgrace. I get angry every
time I have to discuss it.

I wanted to move back to Australia sooner than later - and the FTTH NBN
promised interesting start-up and other opportunities - but given it has been
relegated to a copper backwater those plans are on indefinite hold :(

I usually point people to the Australian government debate regarding copper
wire over iron wire from 1910 as an anachronistic comparison.

[https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/06/parliament-arguing-
about-...](https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2013/06/parliament-arguing-about-copper-
wires-in-1910-makes-for-some-amazing-reading/)

~~~
gaelian
> but then upload speeds slowly rip at your soul

I know the feeling. I'm relatively lucky in that I live somewhere that has had
VDSL for some time and my download speed is adequate, if not ideal. But my
upload speed is atrocious, in fact actually _slower now_ than it was in past
years (before my ISP got bought out by a bigger ISP) and my ISP will not
guarantee any particular upload speed for my connection. I make use of a
cloud-based backup service to mitigate the possibility of local disk failure
and it's just painful.

You hardly hear anyone talking about upload speeds in Australia. It's as if
cloud-based services aren't really a thing and we're back in the early 2000s.

> That Australia didn't end up with a future proof fibre to the home system
> given the amount of money spent is an absolute disgrace. I get angry every
> time I have to discuss it.

I know this feeling as well. :) It is a massive lost opportunity that the
country will be paying for in more ways than one for decades to come.

------
craigvn
As an Australian, I think it can be summed up by two reasons.

1\. All large scale infrastructure rollouts are difficult and subject to
problems and blowouts.

2\. It was made a political issue. New government decided to make major
revamps for no reason other than it was different to the previous government
so they could use it as an election issue.

~~~
flukus
> New government decided to make major revamps for no reason other than it was
> different to the previous government so they could use it as an election
> issue.

The worst part was the nationals. In 2007 they were bitching that it needed to
be fiber, by 2010 they were saying copper is the future.

~~~
beedogs
Not just copper. 100-year-old waterlogged copper. We prefer our transmission
lines to be well-aged down here.

------
ajdlinux
I'm lucky enough to live in an area where I can get ~70-80Mb/s down and
~30-50Mbps up VDSL2 for a (by Australian standards) reasonable price.

My suburb, unfortunately, hasn't been NBN-ified - but we still have a VDSL
network courtesy of TransACT, the broadband provider that was created when the
ACT Government decided to start laying FTTC fibre around Canberra back in the
1990s.

There's a lot of talk of locally-driven "municipal broadband" in the US, but
very little in Australia. I expect that's mostly because local governments in
Australia are far less powerful than in the United States (which, for the most
part, I'm actually okay with) and wouldn't be able to raise taxes and spend
them on broadband projects. The Australian Capital Territory, of course, is a
special case - a local government with state-level powers, who already owned
an electricity network when they decided to go into FTTN as well.

------
bootload
The NBN is a tale of geography. If you live in the CBD mainland capital city
you will get good coverage. Even that it's patchy. If you live more than 30km
out access get mostly worse. If you live in the bush, the best you'll get is
crappy satellite or your own jury rigged antenna to the nearest town.

If you were lucky enough to a) live close to the city b) have telephone poles
c) live near a telephone exchange and were chosen by Telstra to get FTTN
before the change of government you can get 100Mb+ access. [0] Otherwise you
are out of luck.

This is largely a political issue that could be fixed by leadership. Australia
has weak leaders of both sides of the political spectrum.

Market forces are supposed to fix this problem according to our learned
leaders, but it won't. Australia is big, really big and we needed a federally
funded optic fibre solution to the country even if it cost a lot.

    
    
       Here's my version of NBN... Exchange->fibre->POTS 
       https://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/pots
    

Using technology developed during the early 1900s.

[0] Relative has NBN fibre to the node.

~~~
simonrobb
I live five minutes' walk from the Melbourne CBD, and we have no indication
NBN is going to be rolled out here any time soon.

~~~
bootload
I did say patchy.

------
botbot
Australian here.

I was recently forced from my ADSL2+ service over to the shiny new HFC system.
My quality actually degraded - although my bandwidth increased, my latency is
off the charts, especially in peak time. I contacted my ISP to see if I could
go back to my ADSL2+ service and they flat out said no.

The future is bleak.

~~~
Veratyr
Which ISP and where is the latency though? It could be that your ISP has
congestion on NBN but not on ADSL2+? Not necessarily the NBN's fault.

~~~
botbot
This is true, but cable networks tend to degrade because of the way bandwidth
is shared compared to DSL connections, and actually gets worse with higher
adoption rates. It has to do with where the connection is actually
multiplexed.

Check out the section 'Shared Bandwidth' on wiki:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Internet_access](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_Internet_access)

Check out this comparison: [http://www.bestbuy.com/site/tech-tips/compare-
cable-dsl/pcmc...](http://www.bestbuy.com/site/tech-tips/compare-cable-
dsl/pcmcat748301881084.c?id=pcmcat748301881084)

And check out the post by Net_Sharing in this forum:
[http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28980221-Speed-Does-
cable-b...](http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r28980221-Speed-Does-cable-
broadband-really-get-shared-with-the-neighborhood)

------
cyphar
Yeah, shit's fucked. To be fair though, it's not like Labor would've delivered
on their promises either.

Honestly the whole thing smells very strongly of a money-making racket on the
part of Telstra (how much money did the CEOs profit from the privatisation
only to sell their 100-year-old waterlogged copper back to the government?).

------
shusson
> Average speeds have more than doubled since 2013, according to Akamai, but
> other countries are connecting their populations faster, meaning Australia’s
> lag with the rest of the world has grown.

The article is very light on numbers. It would be nice to actually see solid
metrics around speeds and costs across the whole of Australia.

------
davidgerard
The actual answer: it was directly sabotaged by the Liberal National Party
(the conservatives), at the bidding of Rupert Murdoch, who _really_ doesn't
want Australian internet not to suck.

Basically, Tony Abbott got in in 2013 and the shitty version of the scheme was
put into place.

------
runeks
Do we have any examples of successful, nation-wide, high-speed Internet
rollouts by governments (for countries roughly size-wise comparable to
Australia)?

It's an honest question, because I'm not familiar with any.

------
znedw
Currently I pay AUD$79 per month for the privilege of 1.4mbp/s down and
100kp/s up. My area is slated for the NBN, albiet HFC (using old coaxial) to
commence building in 2019. Bloody bonza, mate.

~~~
fliptables
I'd take HFC over FTTN. Last time I lived with DSL I enjoyed the same kind of
speeds you're getting and three visits from Telstra minions came out to
"sorry, nothing we can do". I'm in no hurry to play that phone-line lottery
again.

------
i336_
For people actually sad about the NBN: this mentions that people who want
1Gbps "will have an upgrade option" (I think they said it something like
that). This was from Feb 12 this year.

[http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthissho...](http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthisshow/nbn/8276824)

~~~
boyter
Unless you are on FTTN which will comprise more than 60% of the network and
are only guaranteed up-to 12 mbit for the coexistence period and 25 mbit
after. Unless you happen to be connected to a node less than 50m away (most
will be over 400m) there is no chance your connection will support that
option.

~~~
i336_
-_-

Wow :(

This is insane. We're getting laser beams, and they're literally going to be
worse than cable!

I wonder if NBN Co would agree to do a FTTH setup if I covered the fiber and
installation.

Hmm. They might, but then I could be stuck with a $200+/mo Internet bill...

 _Shakes head_ ...this is just infuriating, how completely this has been mis-
sold and bungled.

~~~
boyter
There is a technology choice program to upgrade to FTTP which was promised to
cost less than $5000. A quote costs a non refundable $600 and the estimates I
have seen have all been in the tens of thousands of dollars. About 20 people
have taken the option so far.

~~~
i336_
Aaand now I'm even more depressed and kind of infuriated.

I'm just looking for personal-use Internet, and I wanted to join all the cool
people with their 1Gbps for $40/mo or whatever they have.

I don't even need a guaranteed SLA, I'm fine with consumer-grade "fair share"
bandwidth QoS and stuff.

Seems to me that the NBN Co is merely a sort of centralized rebranding that
doesn't really create a competitive advantage.

Can someone help me understand why Australia seems to be so unbelievably
backward in terms of advanced technology? I mean, I know there are some decent
tech projects here: the CSIRO's antenna array is fairly crazy, I remember
seeing SuSE when the news was doing a thing on NOAA about a decade ago, if you
ever see a tram's info dashboard reboot you'll see it's based on Ubuntu, the
rail transport project being built near where I live is completely driverless,
and NSW's existing/legacy rail network is so heavily fiber based, if you look
carefully at stations you can see there are fiber drops where you'd usually
expect RJ45 (!). That's just what I've seen, but it shows that competent
installations exist here.

But the thing is, I reiterate the above because I need reassurance that
Australians actually have brains (I say that as one), because the "IT tax" and
the Internet situation here and related issues are all just monumentally
_stupid_ and frankly an embarassment.

The government doesn't isn't making the bold changes needed to get a Silicon
Valley in here fast enough, if you ask me.

(PS. With the fiber drops w/ Transport for NSW - this was easy because the
fiber can run alongside the tracks; and I figured out fiber is being done to
get infrastructural latency to zero.)

~~~
boyter
Politics is the answer with regards to communications. I suspect that may also
be the case for other technology in Australia.

The only reason Australia needed a NBN was because of the sale of Telstra as a
vertically integrated monopoly. It should have been split from the start into
wholesale and retail as happened in New Zealand. Apparently they were starting
to roll out fibre when the sale was announced. It was politically good to sell
it as a single unit at the time.

Then when the NBN was announced the opposition and specifically Tony Abbot
lacked the vision to see the value and believed that it was just an advanced
video game system. Given the power I believe he would have stopped the build
entirely. Instead he handed it over to Malcom to "fix". Malcom in order to
remain on the cabinet and hopefully push to become prime minister did as
ordered and "destroyed" the NBN. The result is what we currently have. The
present government cannot fix it because Malcom hung his entire political
career on the NBN and to admit that it isn't working would be political
suicide for the present government.

This issue seems to occur all over the world where you have fixed terms in
politics and politicians who lack the guts to do what is right because they
only need to do enough to get re-elected and long term plans are off the
table.

~~~
buyx
_This issue seems to occur all over the world where you have fixed terms in
politics and politicians who lack the guts to do what is right because they
only need to do enough to get re-elected and long term plans are off the
table_

I thought Australia doesn't have fixed terms federally?

~~~
boyter
You are correct. What I meant is that they have only a short amount of time
around 3 years which is generally not enough to pull off large infrastructure
projects as most governments only last 2 terms and the opposition claims
credit if it was successful.

------
verytrivial
An entirely predictable shambles. This money should have been spent on
Australian skills and content, not on installing damn cables and routers. Let
the market decide how to meet demand for content delivery -- education and
social investment are far better places for governments to place these sorts
of long bets. I saw this coming a mile away and have a long list of poo-pooed
complaints on social media to this effect.

------
suspectdoubloon
At least the South Australian goverment is doing something to alleviate issues
of the NBN in Adelaide. Launching 10 gigabit internet across key areas in the
CBD.

[http://gigcity.com.au/](http://gigcity.com.au/)

------
antihero
In the UK we mostly have FTTC and copper to our property. I'm in London
admittedly, but I get 220Mbps/20Mpbs solidly, so copper isn't all bad _if_ you
have fibre running to a cabinet that's close to you.

~~~
noir_lord
Up in Hull they went FTTP instead FTTC, I can have gig internet at home, they
finally did something right, its not cheap but it's not expensive for what it
is either.

------
mingabunga
Related: Hosting in Aus is ridiculously expensive too
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10985137)

------
spangry
Hilariously, the conservative government currently in power made the following
election campaign promises [0] [1] in 2013 (the election where they won
government):

\- _Every household and business to have access to broadband with a download
data rate of between 25 and 100 megabits per second by late 2016._ [We're
currently trailing Kenya]

\- _Key prices for a Coalition NBN will be capped nationally, ensuring
Australians in metropolitan and regional areas alike can obtain services at
fair prices._ [For the low low price of $80 a month, on a 24 month contract,
you can get 25Mbps/5Mbps from our two largest telcos: Telstra & Optus] [2] [3]

\- _"...unshackle the competitive telecom market that Labor tried to stamp
out, and reduce the cost of the NBN to prudent levels."_ [Because of the NBN
wholesale cost structure and network inter-connect structure, our retail ISPs
are rapidly consolidating. We're likely to have three left standing by the
end. To be fair, the latter wasn't the current government's fault.]

\- _They would complete the network roll-out at 2 /3 the cost of the previous
plan._ [The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated in December 2016 that the
total network cost will be $49 billion. However, the current government did
make the _entirely unsubstantiated and unquestioned_ claim that the $44B plan
for FTTP was actually going to cost $90B.] [4]

So, things seem to be going to plan so far. The worst part about all this is
that everyone seemed to eat this shit right up at the time. Even Australia's
tech so-called 'journalists' were all going on about how the Coalition had
presented a 'credible alternative'.

We deserve this, because we're stupid.

[0] PDF of election document:
[https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download?token=8O...](https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download?token=8OjaNaNc)

[1] HTML cached version:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ih8ycW...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Ih8ycWOkmRkJ:https://www.communications.gov.au/file/315/download%3Ftoken%3D8OjaNaNc+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)

[2] [https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/nbn/nbn-
plans](https://www.telstra.com.au/broadband/nbn/nbn-plans)

[3] [http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-
broadband/plans?...](http://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/home-
broadband/plans?bt=FBB&tl=FTEL#Plans)

[4] [http://www.news.com.au/national/nbn-cost-blowout-to-
impact-b...](http://www.news.com.au/national/nbn-cost-blowout-to-impact-
budget/news-story/2db99cc39d5f9b337e9c8cdba64671eb)

------
swrobel
Can anyone from New Zealand comment on whether the same problems exist there?
It's even more geographically isolated so I'd expect that to be the case, but
who knows.

------
Khaine
The NBN was almost always going to end in failure, as the biggest impediment
to Australian internet is the lack of overseas links, and the cost of using
these links.

------
ParadisoShlee
[http://isthenbnfastyet.com/](http://isthenbnfastyet.com/)

------
Frogolocalypse
So they promoted the guy who screwed up the project, Malcolm Turnbull, to be
Prime Minister.

~~~
i336_
The lead singer in Midnight Oil sung "How do we sleep / While our beds are
burning" in 1987... and in 2009 the same person (Peter Garret), in his
position as Minister for Environment Protection (among other things), was the
driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be the cause
of 224 house fires.

You basically have to have a humorectomy to be able to follow Australian
politics. Otherwise you go crazy from too much cracking up.

\--

Some qualifying info to add some substance so this isn't just hyperbole and
commentary:

\- IIRC, what was happening is that the installers weren't being paid enough,
and they were nailing the insulation haphazardly without identifying where the
240V lines ran underneath the batts so they could dodge those areas with their
staple guns. Said insulation batts had foil on them. So sparks flew where wood
met aluminium and exposed/partially-shorted wiring. Even more tragically, four
installers were also electrocuted (AFAIK/IIUC) by live foil on the batts
during installation.

\- Mr Garret was actually really mature about the situation and took full
responsibility, stated that he wasn't fully informed about various risks, and
did raise issues about safety multiple times that were not listened to. So
there's that.

Some random sources/articles I found:

[http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/peter-
garre...](http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/peter-garrett-
tells-royal-commission-he-was-responsible-for-batts-rollout/news-
story/6045bce27f3fbd63ecd5fd5537bc93e4)

[http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-
news/peter-...](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/peter-
garrett-was-in-charge-of-home-insulation-program-mark-
arbib-20140512-zr9zr.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garrett](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Garrett)

~~~
flukus
> was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be
> the cause of 224 house fires.

House fires went down statistically. The absolute number of fires was higher
because more homes were getting insulation, but fires per insulated home went
down.

The real cause is business efficiency, hiring cheaper workers and not training
them properly. You can't hold the government responsible for every grunt a
private business hires. You don't hear the current lot taking direct
responsibility for the recent shooting in our offshore detention facilities.

Edit - in hindsight it's a perfect example of how "fake news" isn't a recent
problem.

~~~
i336_
>> was the driving force behind a home-insulation scheme that was found to be
the cause of 224 house fires.

> _House fires went down statistically. The absolute number of fires was
> higher because more homes were getting insulation, but fires per insulated
> home went down._

Oh. I didn't know that. So you mean this occurred after the installation...?

> _The real cause is business efficiency, hiring cheaper workers and not
> training them properly. You can 't hold the government responsible for every
> grunt a private business hires._

Absolutely, yeah. I was trying to get at that idea but didn't quite articulate
it. (Thanks.)

> _You don 't hear the current lot taking direct responsibility for the recent
> shooting in our offshore detention facilities._

Indeed :/

(I have to admit I honestly just don't understand why the offshore detention
system has to be the way that it is. But this is largely due to my ignorance
of the various variables and difficulties of the situation.)

~~~
flukus
The fires occur after the installation, 50% occur within 10 days of
installation, here is a very long and detailed analysis (with some CSIRO
analysis as well): [https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/04/24/the-
csiro-g...](https://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/04/24/the-csiro-gets-
hip-to-debunking-media-hysteria/)

~~~
i336_
Wow, this is great. Thanks for the link!

------
d_t_w
Country is a basket case politically, lowest calibre of politician I have ever
encountered. A profound paucity of talent across the board and absolutely no
end in sight to the endless stupidity.

You can think of the shit infrastructure, crap attitude in general, and
intellectually bankrupt waste that make up the political class as the many
layers of tax on any high cognitive business in Australia.

Coal is the future apparently. Don't even get me started on the racists.

~~~
dang
Please don't post nationalistic rants here. I get that this one is probably
the clean-up-our-own-house kind, but that subtlety doesn't work on the
internet.

~~~
d_t_w
This is the place to comment on the article about how political incompetency
hobbled Australia's broadband, right?

I understand if you are Australian and find the criticism uncomfortable, but
it's a fair reflection of my experience.

My intent wasn't to suggest X is better than Australia, rather to inform the
readership of HN that the political paralysis and ineptitude in this country
is in no way limited to a single broadband project.

~~~
dang
Right, and I get that your intention was positive, but "basket
case...shit...crap" doesn't count as "inform", and it's only by chance that
you didn't provoke aggrieved responses, a.k.a. flamewars. The thread went far
off-topic as it was.

~~~
d_t_w
I'm sorry to inform you that the internet is not an anodyne safe-place.
Consider your emotional reaction and continued need to engage, down this off-
topic path.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Um, dang is one of the moderators here. Trying to shut town off-topic rants
that lead to flamewars is part of his job. He's engaging because he's trying
to educate _you_ on how people are expected to behave on HN. (And it's good
that he tries, rather than just banning you. And it's good that he keeps
calling out and shutting down garbage; HN is trying to hold on as a place
where you can have an intelligent conversation rather than drowning in
insanity.)

~~~
d_t_w
If he's a moderator, he can shut this thread down if he likes.

In my opinion my experience adds some context. On reflection I'd be happy to
change 'crap' for terrible and so on, but I can't edit that (historical time-
out I guess).

Now, if you'll excuse me, my comment has actually spawned a really
interesting, intelligent conversation with an Australian about the conduct of
the main protagonist of this article, and I don't have any more commentary to
add on this point.

------
cylinder
It'll be fine.

~~~
beedogs
Yeah, nah.

------
dibbsonline
It's about $5000 in tax per household to fund a $38B rollout, and you don't
get a choice. That's the unfunded half-ass costed guesstimate which was
largely skewed by politicians to make it look better. Why not let people
choose to spend $5k on fibre if they want?

The majority of connections opt for 12 or 25mbit anyway, sorry couldn't find
url for nbnco statistic.

Technically, dropping billions on fibre in this day and age is stupid given
that so much (vast majority) of the population is already in areas that can
get faster IP (over 100mbit) from LTE, wireless technology is the future,
imagine if it was spent on LTE sites.

Many people use the argument only fibre can do it, when that's just
intellectual dishonesty about different types of layer 1.

4 million of Australia's households (roughly half) already have HFC that when
upgraded will do gigabit.

It is illegal to compete with NBN.

The NBN was unfunded in its commitment. The same party implemented a $20b/year
national disability insurance scheme which was also not funded. All these
arguments saying it was bungled, but only the hollow commitments of the
unionist/socialist party that implemented this were bungled. A lot of the
angry people also don't pay a lot of net tax either which is the usual
narrative of the ALP.

So it wasn't properly costed or funded, all these great things that party
promised in power, but they still lost the next election anyway, so the people
spoke.

Also NYT is fake news. :)

