Australian users, is your internet connection really that slow?

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

I just found this on Reddit:

 

 

Ok so really, what's the deal. Why is getting 1-6mb speeds accepted? How is this not cause for revolution already? Is there anything we can do to make it better?

I play with a few Australian mates and they're in populated areas and we still have to wait for them to buffer all the time... It just seems unacceptable to me.

 

Telco engineer working in the space for the past 10 years.

We used to have dialup running over twisted-pair phone...was alight I guess.

Government owned national telco (Telecom Networks) was sold off privately a few years before ADSL1 came out (renamed themselves Telstra).

Telstra, the incumbent, private monopoly which owned every single phone line in the country, installed ADSL. But...they artificially capped the highest possible speeds at 1.5mbps.

Other ISP's wanted to join the game, but could not get onto the phone lines, and couldn't afford to run their own ones....so they politely asked the govt. competition regulator (the ACCC) to generate a new service definition which allowed other ISP's to use the Telstra phone lines (as a rental service to the 3rd parties), so we could all get a different ISP.

When that happened, a company came online called Internode...they installed their own ADSL1 equipment in the telephone exchanges, but they ran theirs at full speed (8mbps).

Huzzah!! Competition!!

Did not last long. Telstra started to price people out of the market by selling services below cost, AND they tried to up the rental price on other ISP's in order to maintain their monopoly.

The ACCC slapped them on the wrist and said they were bad for doing that, and they shouldn't do it again.

At the same time this network was running, Telstra was also running a cable TV network (HFC technology), and around the late 90's Telstra installed some Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification equipment (DOCSIS), so that those who were receiving a TV service from Telstra, could also receive an internet plan as well!

Another large ISP in the country wanted to run their own DOCSIS HFC network (a company called Optus), and they started running cables down streets, and stringing fibre, installing equipment in high density areas.

Well Telstra wanted no part in allowing that to continue, and so they chased Optus down every street, installing their own HFC network, overbuilding the entire lot of Optus's stuff....and...you guessed it....sold their ISP plans at below the operating cost of Optus plans.

The ACCC slapped Telstra on the wrist again for anti-competitive behavior. But not before Optus could not sustain this business model, and they bowed out entirely.

There was a period of around 10-15 years where Telstra was single handedly working against the best interests of the nation, wherever competition sprang up to disrupt Telstra's business model, that would increase service value and competition...Telstra would stomp on it, and the regulator in charge with keeping Telstra under control, was incredibly powerless for much of this time, as the government of the day put a leash on them (for political reasons....they sold Telstra to several hundred thousand mum/dad investors, and they needed to win elections, so Telstra's private success translated in-part into their political success).

Fast forward to 2007, Kevin Rudd and his Labor Party were elected on promises of breaking up the Telstra monopoly, and separating the entity into two distinct companies.

1 for wholesale, one for retail. With entirely separate budgets, and privacy laws preventing the sharing of customer demographic information, in theory, their monopoly position and ability to attack its competitors, could have been seriously weakened.

Second part of this plan, was that the government promised to have Telstra shut down the data side of the wholesale aspect of their network (all of the physical infrastructure), and create a new government entity, titled the National Broadband Network (NBN Co.) with plans to install a brand new one to the ENTIRE NATION to 95% Fibre to the home, ubiquitous gigabit capable everywhere, with fixed wireless and satellite filling in everywhere else.

This plan was fully costed out to around 48 billion dollars (this did not include the purchase of any of the old infrastructure).

As you might have guessed, those in the (now) opposition party, and the head honchos at Telstra, were none to thrilled about this plan, and started to make a whole lot of noise about how it would cost OVER 100 BILLION DOLLARS, and take 15 YEARS LONGER THAN PLANNED to complete.

This scared the living daylights out of the electorate...and just as NBN started their ramp-up in the FTTH rollout....the government of the day lost the following election (it was helped along by in-fighting and our prime-ministed being ousted by their own party 2 times within one sitting term..).

The old govt. got back in, the ones who were mates with Telstra, and drastically changed the NBNCo direction, to one from ubiquitous FTTH, to just a mere upgrade of the ADSL and HFC networks.

A shambles, a massive corruption to be sure, and a loss of 10 years of everyones life

TLDR; Telstra is shitty Australian Comcast (only if they were working closely with the government to direct policy direction to their benefit, at the expense of everyone else ever) - as per /u/NeverEdger (the parenthetical I added)

Imagine if the USPS when they were first created way back when....adopted as part of their services, the telegraph, as well as telegram and package delivery. Then imagine them building out a phone network, and operating phones through the entire nation. Then imagine them building out data networks with dialup capability, and eventually DSL and Cable internet.

Now imagine if USPS was sold to private market.

This is how Telstra came to be. Now all the USPS executives are ex-gov people who are in-the-know, in the boys clubs and whatnot, so they still hold political clout.

Imagine what policy direction can be had.

Australia.

 

So, australian internet users: Can you confirm having bad speeds or high latency? Can you maybe even confirm the speeds you get are not what your ISP advertised?

[CultureVulture 30]

Seems like this Aussie telco engee has pretty much summed things up. Telstra -"affectionately" known as "Hellstra" by locals- is the monkey on everyone's back.

As for speeds, I can confirm that the speeds I note other people achieving make my eyes water....I could only achieve them in dreams.

Admittedly, it is always going to be tricky providing infrastructure and competitive services to a country of 24 odd million, spread out over a territory the size of Western Europe.

[BullockBob 1]

I'm not exactly living in a populated area (in Oz) but connect at 20mb over copper, always. Have just returned from spending 12 months in the UK and there are plenty of black spots there as well.

 

I think it's a case of there are too many black spots in Oz, even in the bigger cities. But, generally speaking, internet speeds are reasonable overall.

[mr.Rhee 16]

I use Internode & live ~12K's out of a small (~3000 people) country town; 6K's from the local exchange; when using AirVPN I usually have a speed of between 550 - 670K's, when not using the VPN I pick up ~50K.

 

Hat's off to you giganerd, you have nailed the internet situation in Oz with your OP, you've done better than any of description that I've previously read over the years.

 

If only they had of left the NBN plan alone. What a cursed government it was that took over from Julia. So much good work (not all good I know) was trashed by Abbott.

[OpenSourcerer 1435]

you have nailed the internet situation in Oz with your OP, you've done better than any of description that I've previously read over the years

 

Thank you, but it was the Telco engineer who posted this Go to the comment and give him Gold if you can.