Hacker News Reader

The most cost effective thing the Australian government can do to better the experience of Australians is to subsidise hosting in Australia. The cost of hosting a server in a data centre is 2-3x the US. If you've ever been in San Francisco you'd have experienced how all the web services feel like they're running on localhost!

View on HN

Last I checked, Australia only has a few international pipes operated by a cost duopoly. All traffic is charged at high rates because it can go over those very expensive lines to the US, Guam or Singapore.

All it means is that the NBN will be expensive unless and until a third player enters the market ... and doesn't get immediately bought out.

Duopoly? Who, besides Telstra, owns pipes? Optus?

There's PIPE Pacific Cable (PPC-1), independent of Telstra[1].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_Pacific_Cable

Looks like I've misread the current state of supply:

http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/net-capacity-down...

Looks more like an oligopoly of 5 companies. Australian bandwidth charges are well above international benchmarks.

> Australian bandwidth charges are well above international benchmarks.

Along with costs of mobile phone service, housing, electronics, appliances, beer, and damn near everything else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com