Australia's Labor Party Wins, FTTH Build Greenlighted 100 Mbps to 93% of the Australian public within a decade Tipped by sonicmerlin 
We've explored how Australia is planning to build a nationwide fiber to the home network providing 100 Mbps speeds to 93% of the population, with the other 7% getting 12 Mbps service via satellite or wireless (it even required paying $11 billion for an incumbent opponent). Ars Technica explores how this network was a key debate topic during the recent Australian elections, and helped the Labor Party to a 76-74 win. In other words, Australia's national FTTH network has been greenlighted: The move means that the government will proceed with its plan to pay incumbent telephone company Telstra AU$11 billion to hand over most of its infrastructure and to dismantle its legacy copper network as fiber goes online. When the project is complete, NBN will not become an ISP; instead, it will administer a basic GPON-based, layer 2 bitstream service that will be wholesaled out to competitive ISPs. The (hoped-for) end result: numerous ISPs competing on price and services, all offering fiber speeds. The Australian government says they'll sell their ownership stake in the company five years after the network is completed, which should take up to seven years. Meanwhile, here in the States, we continue to bicker over whether investing taxpayer funds in our telecom infrastructure is a good idea.
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  mix
join:2002-03-19
Utica, MI
1 edit | Is 100 Mbps really enough? Or is it assumed that you can just upgrade the same network to higher speeds sometime in the future? I mean, a new fiber network built today for an entire country... seems like you would want to overbuild and future proof it as much as possible... | |
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1 edit | Re: Is 100 Mbps really enough? said by mix:Or is it assumed that you can just upgrade the same network to higher speeds sometime in the future? I mean, a new fiber network built today for an entire country... seems like you would want to overbuild and future proof it as much as possible... Bulk of the cost is for construction costs of deploying the actual fiber. Change the equipment around a bit on the ends (maybe just one end) and you can do 1gb. Cant say the same thing about copper. They are going the future proof route. | |
| | | | | | They recently decided to increase the initial speeds from 100 Mb/s to 1000 Mb/s.
'»www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010···0752.htm'
This was always part of the plan, they just accelerated it based talks with retail ISPs (NBN's customers), and the success of trial/initial deployment in Tasmania.
As commenters above noted, the cost of the network is the actual deployment of fiber, it costs very little to maintain (self supporting), and it's future proof. It can be continually upgraded to 10 Gb/s, 40 Gb/s, 100 Gb/s, and beyond.
Here's a choice quote from someone who doesn't understand this:
quote:
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he doubts the Government's claim of super-fast speeds.
"This idea that, hey presto, we are suddenly going to get 10 times the speed from something that isn't even built yet, I find utterly implausible," he said.
If he got 2 more parliamentary seats, he'd be the one in power, and NBN would be dead just after it got going. | |
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| DaveO
join:2001-09-05
Easley, SC | The USA Needs to Do This We need a nationwide fiber to the home/business network project here in the USA or we will continue to fall further and further behind the rest of the world. Even if you're lucky enough to live in the right area the best you can hope for is picking between slow DSL or faster but overpriced cable that will slow to crawl during peak usage times.
I don't know if we'll ever get it done here. Too many people think the "free market" works in every situation. | |
| | | % of Population vs % of Geography It is fairly easy getting to high %'s of "population" in places like Australia. The challenge happens when the expectation is to build to remote locations with costs to build that far exceed any revenue expectations.
Population density is something people tend to forget when quoting stats around "areas poorly served" in geographies like the US
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"Too often we... enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy | |
| |  BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | Re: % of Population vs % of Geography said by yt:It is fairly easy getting to high %'s of "population" in places like Australia. The challenge happens when the expectation is to build to remote locations with costs to build that far exceed any revenue expectations. Population density is something people tend to forget when quoting stats around "areas poorly served" in geographies like the US Australia is the same size of he US with 1/10 the population. | |
| | |  MrMoodyFree range slavePremium
join:2002-09-03
Smithfield, NC | Re: % of Population vs % of Geography said by BF69:Australia is the same size of he US with 1/10 the population. With most of it concentrated in relatively small areas along the coast.
I'd like to know the minimum number of square miles it takes to cover 93% of the population. I bet Australia's number is much smaller than the US.
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Real estate taxes are a violation of property rights. | |
| | | | | | Re: % of Population vs % of Geography said by MrMoody:said by BF69:Australia is the same size of he US with 1/10 the population. With most of it concentrated in relatively small areas along the coast. I'd like to know the minimum number of square miles it takes to cover 93% of the population. I bet Australia's number is much smaller than the US. Uhh...no. Australia's spending upwards of $5000/household to roll fiber out to 93% of its population. Compare that with Verizon's sub $1500/household FIOS project. The AU fiber is crisscrossing the entire country and reaching even remote areas, which was key to Labor gaining voter support for the project.
Your cynicism is misplaced, and your arrogance is a bit annoying. | |
| | | | | MrMoodyFree range slavePremium
join:2002-09-03
Smithfield, NC | Re: % of Population vs % of Geography said by sonicmerlin:Uhh...no. Australia's spending upwards of $5000/household to roll fiber out to 93% of its population. Compare that with Verizon's sub $1500/household FIOS project. The AU fiber is crisscrossing the entire country and reaching even remote areas, which was key to Labor gaining voter support for the project. Your cynicism is misplaced, and your arrogance is a bit annoying. Who pissed in your cornflakes? I said nothing about the project and your attribution of arrogance is mistaken. I merely made a guess about population distribution and stated it as such.
Verizon hasn't covered anywhere near 93% of the customers in their territory, despite much of it (i.e. the northeast corridor) being relatively high density. $5000 per household is still not that bad, I would pay $5000 to get fiber service to my door. You can easily spend that remodeling a bathroom.
You might be surprised to hear that I actually think that building infrastructure for commerce is one of the few things the government should be doing, as opposed to corruption and stupidity like occupying foreign countries, warring on victimless crimes and bailing out or giving legislative advantage to crony banks, insurance companies and casino markets.
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Real estate taxes are a violation of property rights. | |
| | | | | JPLPremium
join:2007-04-04
Downingtown, PA
kudos:1
1 edit | said by sonicmerlin:said by MrMoody:said by BF69:Australia is the same size of he US with 1/10 the population. With most of it concentrated in relatively small areas along the coast. I'd like to know the minimum number of square miles it takes to cover 93% of the population. I bet Australia's number is much smaller than the US. Uhh...no. Australia's spending upwards of $5000/household to roll fiber out to 93% of its population. Compare that with Verizon's sub $1500/household FIOS project. The AU fiber is crisscrossing the entire country and reaching even remote areas, which was key to Labor gaining voter support for the project. Your cynicism is misplaced, and your arrogance is a bit annoying. Actually his cynicism is very well placed. The numbers you're quoting indicate that this would be attrociously expensive for the US. Let's ignore the fact that the US population centers are all over the place, vs. Australia. Let's assume they're equal. At $5000/household, Australia can do this (and let's assume that there will be no cost overruns, because Lord knows NO government program EVER overruns its cost) for a total expenditure of $11Billion. They can do it becaues they have a population of about 22Million. Which is roughly 7.5% of the US population.
Assuming that the cost per household of doing that here in the US is the same, it would cost us $1,500,000,000,000. BTW, your comparison with FiOS is very misplaced. The reason that Verizon can get it down to $1500/household is because they can afford to be selective about WHERE they run their fiber. There are some Verizon markets that will never get FiOS because it's too sparsely populated. Verizon keeps the cost down precisely because they only fiber up areas that are densely populated to begin with, with no fiber stringing across vast swaths of the fruited plains.
If you did this type of thing here in the US, you couldn't be selective like that. And there is no way in hell you keep the cost down to $1500/household if you have to run fiber to every small town in the country. Heck, in my mind $5000/household is unreasonable in light of that. | |
| | | | | | | | Re: % of Population vs % of Geography said by JPL:Actually his cynicism is very well placed. The numbers you're quoting indicate that this would be attrociously expensive for the US. Let's ignore the fact that the US population centers are all over the place, vs. Australia. Let's assume they're equal. At $5000/household, Australia can do this (and let's assume that there will be no cost overruns, because Lord knows NO government program EVER overruns its cost) for a total expenditure of $11Billion. They can do it becaues they have a population of about 22Million. Which is roughly 7.5% of the US population. Assuming that the cost per household of doing that here in the US is the same, it would cost us $1,500,000,000,000. BTW, your comparison with FiOS is very misplaced. The reason that Verizon can get it down to $1500/household is because they can afford to be selective about WHERE they run their fiber. There are some Verizon markets that will never get FiOS because it's too sparsely populated. Verizon keeps the cost down precisely because they only fiber up areas that are densely populated to begin with, with no fiber stringing across vast swaths of the fruited plains. If you did this type of thing here in the US, you couldn't be selective like that. And there is no way in hell you keep the cost down to $1500/household if you have to run fiber to every small town in the country. Heck, in my mind $5000/household is unreasonable in light of that. FCC estimates put a fiber network at $300 billion. There are about 112 million households. Unlike Australia most rural households are directly adjacent to a main road. Only a very tiny % (5 or less) of homes are truly out in the middle of nowhere, and they could easily be serviced by wireless or satellite. | |
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1 edit | Re: % of Population vs % of Geography I remember when I first heard about NBN 2-3 years ago, I did some paper napkin math on what it would take to do it here. And those numbers feel pretty accurate.
VZ FiOS showed a lot about large scale fiber deployments in the US. Particularly that it isn't as expensive as pundits would have you believe, and that costs come down.
If take into account the economies of scale that a country wide deployment would have, costs come down even further.
Also when you have a single piece of infrastructure, with everyone investing into, and competing on top of it, costs come down dramatically. There's good reason why there's only one electric, gas, water, sewer line into your home or business. It follows that there should be one, publicly owned, fiber line as well. | |
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|  ThrowDemsOutIf you can't convince 'em, confuse 'emPremium
join:2002-03-03
Mullica Hill, NJ
kudos:4 | This NBN may not be completed because to get approval, the Labor Gov't had to cut a deal with 2 rural independent MPs in order to form a gov't.
That deal reversed the rollout plan from metro areas first & the rural areas next in order to finance the costs of the rollout.
Under the deal, the rural areas now go 1st and the metro areas last. Besides throwing the financing plan on its head, it will also erode voter support(who mostly live in metro areas) due to higher broadband costs in metro areas in order to subsidize rural costs. The Labor Gov't is a minority gov't that may not last very long. Some think less than 1 yr. Not long enough to see the NBN rollout to conclusion.
»www.news.com.au/features/federal···16158760 | |
| | | | | Re: % of Population vs % of Geography said by ThrowDemsOut:This NBN may not be completed because to get approval, the Labor Gov't had to cut a deal with 2 rural independent MPs in order to form a gov't. That deal reversed the rollout plan from metro areas first & the rural areas next in order to finance the costs of the rollout. Under the deal, the rural areas now go 1st and the metro areas last. Besides throwing the financing plan on its head, it will also erode voter support(who mostly live in metro areas) due to higher broadband costs in metro areas in order to subsidize rural costs. The Labor Gov't is a minority gov't that may not last very long. Some think less than 1 yr. Not long enough to see the NBN rollout to conclusion. » www.news.com.au/features/federal···16158760 In my reading of AU politics, Andrew Robb is an absolute nutcase. But why feed the troll? | |
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|  mocyclerPremium
join:2001-01-22
Naperville, IL
 ·AT&T U-Verse
| And what excuse will be tossed up ten or twelve years from now, when half the network isn't built, the half that is complete doesn't work right, and the whole deal is billions over budget?
Much like the USA, the more the government screws with something, the worse it gets. Sit back and watch the implosion.
I guess they can always blame George Bush.
mocycler | |
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| BF69Premium
join:2004-07-28
Camden, TN | But will they still ban porn? 100 Mbps is useless without porn. | |
| |  MysticGogetaThe Robot DevilPremium
join:2005-03-14
League City, TX |  Re: But will they still ban porn?
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Team Discovery-Join the fight | |
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| | | | |  japPremium
join:2003-08-10
038xx | Re: upper tech limits of Satellite? Thanks, David. Much obliged. No where near 12mbit. | |
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 rv65Happy EndPremium
join:2008-08-02
USA!!!!
kudos:1 | New Fiber cable A new Fiber cable is being built that will connect Australia to the US, and it could allow for unlimited bandwidth. The guy who is operating this project said that if carriers don't take advantage of it, by using metered broadband, then the bandwidth will go unsold. | |
| | | |  kdwycha
join:2003-01-30
Riverview, FL
 ·Bright House
·Verizon FiOS
| Re: New Fiber cable said by rv65:A new Fiber cable is being built that will connect Australia to the US, and it could allow for unlimited bandwidth. The guy who is operating this project said that if carriers don't take advantage of it, by using metered broadband, then the bandwidth will go unsold. The guy that is building that sounds like a real jerkoff with too much money on his hands. | |
| | | | said by rv65:A new Fiber cable is being built that will connect Australia to the US, and it could allow for unlimited bandwidth. The guy who is operating this project said that if carriers don't take advantage of it, by using metered broadband, then the bandwidth will go unsold. Metered broadband would cause the bandwidth to go unused. Australia already has a significant amount of dark international fiber. | |
| | | | | Re: New Fiber cable said by sonicmerlin:Metered broadband would cause the bandwidth to go unused. Australia already has a significant amount of dark international fiber. This is exactly the case right now.
Australia has plenty of international fiber capacity. The problem is it's controlled by a handful of companies, and combined with the fact that Australia's last mile internet infrastructure has been so lacking, that the business case for more international fiber hasn't been there.
With NBN, bandwidth demand should skyrocket, and the international fiber operators will have to increase capacity and bring down prices. If they don't, there'll be a market for more cables. Which can be met by the private sector, or failing that by NBN itself. | |
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upper tech limits of Satellite?