Australia’s Broadband History | Hacker News Reader

Australia’s Broadband History

reckoner.com.au

70 pointssjtrny7 comments

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More info:

http://www.reddit.com/r/savethenbn/

http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/ always has something on the NBN.

http://delimiter.com.au/

http://iwantthenbn.com/

http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/

http://nbnmyths.wordpress.com/

http://www.netindex.com/upload/allcountries/

http://www.weneedthenbn.com/

One of the most interesting reads was Internode's submission [1] under the "Take 2" heading. Even a layman like myself can see that Telstra's behaviour was anti-competitive and bullying. I can't imagine the headaches that competitors must have gone through to try and get their services to end customers!

[1]http://www.archive.dbcde.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/...

Both John Lindsay and Mark Newton [1] have, in the past, set wonderful examples of how to deal with bullying from both monopolistic competitors and over-reaching governments. I like Internode.

1. http://users.on.net/~newton/ellis-2008-10-20.pdf (Letter to Minister for Youth and Sport regarding the so called "clean feed" filter proposition)

Hopefully the NBN won't become the same as the other great Australian infrastructure project, the High Speed Rail Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Australia).

"The second phase of the study was released on 11 April 2013, finding that the project would cost $114 billion, and be fully operational by 2065."

___

Perhaps too much "apples and oranges" but when vs. Hyperloop...

"The "Alpha" proposal estimates a US$6 billion budget for a passenger-only version of the system"

"He guesses it would take an additional four or five years to build the line between San Francisco and Los Angeles, putting its opening date at an ambitious seven to 10 years from now."

> fully operational by 2065

That's with a late-2020s start, presumably to avoid having to make any decisions within anyone's political lifetime.

I view Hyperloop as an extremely optimistic, naive and totally unproven idea. Wake me when someone actually implements it. Preferably Mr Musk - if the idea's such a winner he should have no trouble at all raising the necessary capital.

Meanwhile, Japan has been building its shinkansen network for 40 years this year, a long term project the likes of which we can not even conceive of in western politics, to our very great loss.

While not "broadband" Australia was also big into packet radio, not just the amateur ham, but a national network for distance education in the outback was planned back in the late 80s/early 90s.

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