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.
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-...
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.
The whole NBN project just irritates me at how it has been mis-managed, by both of the political parties.
Yes, Labor included since they could have sped things up by having Fibre to the basement for most apartment buildings in the cities, and then upgraded those lines once the other build out had been completed. Also for having the rollout happen along political lines (as has been alleged).
Still most of the blame I assign to the Liberals, since it seems they want to make a shambles out of this for political reasons, and also so they can sell it to some other company in the near future.
Also Polish by birth and wanted an easier way to travel around Europe.
I'm actually looking into a new system atm(due for a full upgrade) and am trying to see how I can fully utilise that on my PC.
Edit: typos, fat thumbs again