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.