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174 Comments
- jster6, on 09/29/2008, -0/+93Of course, the Australians have solved the 'would be' net neutrality problem at the expense of its users by charging pay-as-you-go. Meanwhile you can now get symmetrical 1 Gbps in Japan for US$51.40 a month. Comcast would be more than delighted to follow the Australian method.
- inactive, on 09/29/2008, -1/+82As an aussie with a 12GB monthly limit I tell you now I value all my megabytes literally. And you can see why they still stick the latest game demo's and linux CD's on computer magazines here. Telstra (Bigpond) are a total ***** monopoly here and should be broken up. That's a story in itself.
- Slagtits, on 09/29/2008, -2/+59You can't take Australian net providers seriously when they throttle you down when you go over their arbitrary limits and still charge for both u/loads and d/loads. We are still in the dark ages.
- mastazed, on 09/29/2008, -0/+42I am in Australia and i really cant believe how badly we get screwed with our net, i must admit i got a bit annoyed when i saw people complaining about 250GB download limit when i am stuck on a 25GB limit and my uploads count in that also. Advice for anyone that is in Australia stay away from Telstra go for iinet
- Nephersir7, on 09/29/2008, -0/+37If you live in Canada, never choose Bell as your ISP
- covic, on 09/29/2008, -5/+39It sounds like Australia's input isn't really being appreciated... And that they should be looking at their own systems before commenting on the US'...
- mickstephenson, on 09/29/2008, -0/+34If you have to pay for your bandwidth per megabyte advertising is theft.
- nightsweat, on 09/29/2008, -3/+33That's corporatist nonsense. Most of the population of Australia is concentrated in five areas. Sure, if you want to get 15Mbps downloads to Ayers Rock it's gonna be expensive, but Melbourne-Canberra-Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth should be no brainers.
- majoris, on 09/29/2008, -0/+27Of course, the US has numerous areas with equal or greater population densities than Japan. Funny, the FASTEST speed you can get in these areas is rarely even as fast as the AVERAGE speed you can get all over Japan.
- theaceoffire, on 09/29/2008, -1/+22And their cap is 250GB per day.
*sigh* - MrViklund, on 09/29/2008, -1/+21In my opinion the problem with Net Neutrality is the discussion about it itself. It became a problem first when it was brought up. Networks needs to be managed but at the same time I think that operators shouldn't discriminate. It's a hard problem.
- inactive, on 09/29/2008, -0/+18you gotta understand here in Oz Telstra own that last bit of cable, not your ISP, ("The last mile") that goes into your computers here (unless your with optus or something) and this goes for almost all copper phone lines as well. It's a joke here and they plan on fixing it with a more expensive joke. Our internet is a sad tale indeed. One company owns most of the infrastructure here, they just 'share' it for a price with the other ISP's.
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/75084,wireless-last- ... - dusanmal, on 09/29/2008, -0/+15@jbmcb - OK, but how do you explain Sweden, which geographically much more parallels Australian situation and in Internet access parallels Japan while at the same time keeps way more regulatory pressure on companies than the USA...
USA (and Australian) companies are stuck in the old business model and want to get much more money for the service than they should vs. their peers in Japan, Sweden, S.Korea,... where they do not think of new ways to charge the customer but how to improve the service. - aussieNickuss, on 09/29/2008, -0/+15I agree with quotas instead of commercialisation, but the Aussie ISPs need to cut us some slack. I mean I get 40GB/month upload & download for just under $100 a month....that's excessive!!! I've got no cheaper options available where I live.
- JMilton, on 09/29/2008, -0/+13Net Neutrality: Content owner problem. Corporate ***** problem. Monopolistic problem. Freedom of speech problem. Freedom of information problem. Freedom of communication problem. Power of the people problem.
It's simple, we kill the internet. - Nintendesert, on 09/29/2008, -1/+14Damn, I was reading that and hoping at some point they'd have some twist that shows how ***** the American model is and how superior the Aussie model is. Boy was I surprised when it never happened. Instead I read through some of the most disturbing advocating of bandwidth throttling I've read. Please keep that stuff on that side of the Pacific, we have enough as it is here.
- theone3, on 09/29/2008, -0/+12Yeah, Aussies are increasingly getting skinned by these damn auto-playing video ads on Digg and other sites.
- JapaneseEconomy, on 09/29/2008, -1/+13Digg a little deeper and you'll find that CNET is owned by Viacom. One of the biggest media companies in the world. They would like nothing more than to bring down Youtube which is owned by Google. Remember they attempted to sue Youtube for $1 Billion dollars because of all their content that was on it. Now since that didn't go through they would love to limit users bandwidth and speed access to youtube, p2p programs and other means of distribution of their content.
- boneit, on 09/29/2008, -1/+12Just because ISPs down under are taking the piss and have conditioned you all into their view, doesn't mean we all have to follow their crap. Does Oz have the same kind of telco monopoly as NZ by any chance?
200GB may sound a lot for a kid living at home, but a family of four with two teens will eat that in no time, especially as we creep closer to HD video downloads, direct download of PS3 (and 360?) games instead of blu-ray discs, and general life online we tend to have these days. In a few years, 200GB is going to sound like dial-up.
There is no need for this, the ISPs peer their costs so the bandwidth is effectively free for the big boys, this has been covered to death. You'll always have extreme end users. Some will use all they get, others people waste more on spam received than their general online activity. That's another thing, all the spam you get is going to eat into your quota. How about all the script kiddies attacking your router 24/7? All those packets are going to get counted against you, even if they don't make it to your LAN. This might actually lead to class action suits against spammers if ISPs pull it off. So it's not all bad ;-) - esc27, on 09/29/2008, -0/+11"You can't just keep on building these networks forever for free. You can build them bigger and bigger and bigger, but somebody has to pay for it. There has to be a business model by which the network is paid for," added Milne.
U.S. internet is free? I've been being ripped off then. A smart company charges enough for its services to cover its costs and have some capital left over for growth, such as putting in new lines. - TheHayze, on 09/29/2008, -2/+12Quotas are fine, as long as it sticks to hundreds of gb/mo, and not stupidly low Numbers like AU ISPs. The whole point of the Internet is to promote, share, and expand media and ideas of its users. I find it disgusting that we're now at the point where it's seriously being considered to limit the growth of the free Internet because local ISPs have a very limited scope, and business models. (sarcasm)Granted, when the business models were formed how could they have possibly have known that the Internet would have grown to the size of what it is now. (/sarcasm).
Pahlease. AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and the others need to stop spending RIDICULOUS amounts of money. That money was given to them by the Federal government to aid in upgrading their lines mind you. Sure Verizon is now working their way through the major cities with FIOS (which is great I hear), while Comcast is still bitching about overloaded networks, and blaming it on the pirates. While it was their CEOs that pocketed the money from the Federal government, and the upgrade never really happened. This is the real problem in the country; it isn't about the Net Neutrality (though a law guaranteeing it wouldn't hurt, Congress.), it's with Comcast's, and AT&T reluctance to do anything meaningful with the money they're gouging from their customers.
Granted some of the blame can be given to the average pirating Joe, but there are reasons why the average Joe feels the need to pirate. But we will skip that debate for a more relevant time. - Defiant001, on 09/29/2008, -1/+11I wish I could digg you up so many more times..
I had bell up until a month ago, nothing but problems including throttling my entire connection to dial up more then half the day (torrents, limewire, if I even opened a torrent for a second after 4 pm then closed it things like google would take 10/20 seconds to load for the rest of the day), selling me a new connection then a week later letting me know the line into my house couldn't handle the speed anyways, their tech support is less then useless unless you get a level 2 tech but good luck doing that with skippy on the line reading his monitor... The list goes on. - JapaneseEconomy, on 09/29/2008, -2/+12The underlying true of this article is that its simply CNET catering to other big business while ignoring the the limitations the loss of net neutrality imposes on ordinary people. Just read all these digg comments from Aussies telling you how it really is.
- inactive, on 09/29/2008, -5/+15Best Quote: "Malone says that when users are offered truly unlimited access to download as much as they want, 3 percent of customers use over 50 percent of all the downloads. Download quotas can eradicate that problem if they are set at such a level that it affects this 3 percent, while having zero affect on the majority."
Bandwidth costs. One day you'll have to choose between unlimited bandwith and net neutrality... You can't have it both ways. The ISPs need a viable business model, which, at the moment looks to either be in the form of tiering or quotas. The latter will always be preferable. - skywake, on 09/29/2008, -0/+10The only "big" ISP I know of that charges for up and down is Telstra.... and thats mostly because Telstra seem to think they have a divine right of some sort. They charge almost double what the other ISPs do for a lesser service and yet they own most of the hardware.
for comparison I currently get 9000kb/s and pay AU$60/month for 20GB offpeak/10GB peak
Telstra's closest deal at that speed is AU$100/month for the same speed at 25GB... but that includes upload - theaceoffire, on 09/29/2008, -0/+10You must *really* hate the people in Japan getting 250GB per day caps...
- inactive, on 09/29/2008, -0/+10Maybe we're getting screwed, but as a Telstra customer you're getting screwed more, dollar for dollar.
- inactive, on 09/29/2008, -0/+9Bollocks!
Telstra get welfare thrown at them every time they build a tower! 50 - 60% of the cost is paid for by the taxpayer, then they hand in their expenses and we pay another 30% over 5 years! what a load of horse *****!
If Someone in Jimalongalong over by woop woop in the middle of a Desert with a cattle farm and a small town nearby complains they need a Net service then the govie goes in there and 'throws dollars at them' to shut them up.
Telstra are the ones that get the Job 'usually' over others as Telstra have a nice bunch of dollars to throw at either party come election time. The Argument over distance is bullocks! The Argument over 'costs' to provide is bullocks as taxpayers have paid for it! The Cable between Guam and New Zealand is owned soley by Telstra. The Cables (there are 2 and soon 3) between Asia and Australia are owned by 2 soon 3 different companies, one of which is Telstra!
Oh and the main exchange between all of them in Sydney is owned by.........
Telstra...
Remember it took Telstra 2.7 years to switch ADSL 2+ on after iiNet and TPG had installed it in almost every exchange in Australia. Now Telstra have Blocked any more conversions unless you pay them a special rate! The government amended the competition laws to get Telstra to build some ***** without sticking their hand out every time they do it! It didn't bloody work did it! - ITAvenger, on 09/29/2008, -0/+9So let me get this straight. Lets say you have a blog. You say something important on your blog or have some tidbit that you put on there. It gets linked to Digg or some other new organization, and then all of a sudden you're shut down because you've reached your quota?
This Australian model only works if everyone that puts content on the web is out to make a buck. Some people are just on the web to share information and ideas. That is why the net must remain open. - ray86, on 09/29/2008, -5/+13In Australia we've had usage limits since broadband arrived. You can get a 40GB monthly limit for a decent price.
Can I ask why American users get angry when say Comcast wants to introduce a 200GB monthly limit? Sure you could easily hit the 200GB in a month if you went out of your way to download content that you wouldn't use. But just be doing daily surfing and downloading a few things off bit torrent a day you wouldn't be anywhere near 200GB. - HonoredMule, on 09/29/2008, -1/+9These guys are giving themselves AND (U.S.) American ISPs far too much credit. The Aus model does NOT work because their network infrastructure and the capacity/service they are able to offer their customers are terrible, and their entire network is completely barren of innovation or technological growth and exploration, because it's just too hostile a technical environment. They aren't having problems providing bandwidth for innovative use because no one--aside from customers-by-residence who aren't going to emmigrate just for internet service--wants to use their network in the first place. Amazing things happen elsewhere, which incidently is also where the revenue and taxation goes...elsewhere.
Conversely, the US business model is not hampered merely by technical limitations but a typical American business market of regional hegemonies who all are assaulting progress on the internet to protect the profitability of their traditional cash cows (television and non-ip-based telecommunications).
Democratization of knowledge, technology, and innovation always hurts those poor, poor tycoons, and something must be done to stop all this bloody equality from destroying their ivory towers. - Bigheadaus, on 09/29/2008, -0/+8Some ISP's charge for downloads but not uploads, I have an ISP that has their own mirror. Internode offer data packs if you need a little bit of extra data to get you through until the end of the month.
I spent some time looking at different ISP's and I am very happy with where I am now, I use about half of what I am able to and that works great for me. In Australia we have an increasing number of competitive ISP's. - TheCheat1989, on 09/29/2008, -0/+8I would use shaw but they only exist in the west. i would use teksavvy or rogers in the east. (unfortunatly teksavvy uses bell ) the problem with bell is not the speed but the fact that they throttle p2p connections.
- inactive, on 09/29/2008, -0/+7It's a sad fact, don't digg him down.
- fani, on 09/29/2008, -0/+7Step 1. Create unneeded net neutrality problem/issue when none exists
Step 2. Lobby Congress and grease them and get it passed
Step 3. ??????
Step 4. Profit and control over the 'net
Lets stop these companies right at Step 1. - loopyloopy, on 09/29/2008, -0/+7ok Americans will be angry at this article because some foreigners are criticizing them about anything they do from afar (i know how much you hate that)
Australians will be angry at this article because they know how pathetic our internet service and pricing is by world standards and dont want to hear anyone from Telstra telling the world how good we've got it after years of ***** us with poor network availability, ripoff pricing and manipulating the federal government to protect its evil monopoly.
net-neutrality doesnt even exist in this article. - inactive, on 09/29/2008, -1/+8@ theone3: Australia shares the very same deep sea cable to Guam as SE Asia and Japan. Asking Australians to pay more on this basis is *****. Given the amount of data we use compared to Singapore / Hong Kong or Japan we should be paying less if you go by market standards!
Melbourne's Population 4.3 Million
Sydney is 6.2
Adelaide and Brisbane are over 2 million each.
The problem with Australia is Telstra still own the network that even OPtus with its cable still have to plug into local exchanges owned by Telstra which connects to said undersea cable owned by Telstra who charge ISP's 4000% Markup on data, wine to the government (give us money) that its at capacity when 80% of that capacity is leased for nothing to no-one.
When iiNet and a few others parallel the link through Singapore things will change rapidly I hope.
The main reason Australia pays 100 bucks of bollocks a month for a pissy average speed of 8mb/s and only 20gb of data is primarily because....
A: Telstra love raping peoples wallets. (a population of 24 million provides Telstra with a 4 billion dollar turnover - sometimes 6. This is ***** evil!)
B: Singtel /Optus are lazy and could not give a *****, gave up competing and now simply operate to "cover the market".
Singtel had every chance to at least beat Telstra in Melbourne and Sydney and but failed.
Optus / Singtel do not provide Cable to Buisiness.
Cable is their advantage! WTF!
Bloody Liberals totaled this countries Telecoms when Telstra was sold boots and all instead of breaking wholesale and retail up into 2~!
The reason was simple..The idiots in Canberra 'forgot' to save up for / pay for / allow for Public Sector Super payments under a law that both of those idiot fools passed in Parliament. 2 billion dollars worth!
Fools! Absolute bloody fools! - Blacksoth, on 09/29/2008, -0/+7Unless those companies that own the actual infrastructure choose not to play ball. Truth is, the owners can dictate anything they want... if we let them.
- chocula78, on 09/29/2008, -2/+8If ISPs in the US start throttling internet traffic or using quotas, another company will develop a new technology that people will go to because of unlimited bandwidth at a cheaper price. Once again the market fixes itself.
- giskard88, on 09/29/2008, -2/+8and on the eighth day the lord created adblock, that many may avoid stupid bandwidth eating ads.
- inactive, on 09/29/2008, -0/+6Everything in Australia goes past Telstra at least 2 times...
2 to 3 cables between each city. Telstra owns 1 of them at every City.
Every exchange is Telstra property, Each rack is Telstra property and the cables to the house are Telstra property. Then having transfered data from Adelaide to Sydney you have to go through the main trunk exchange in Sydney owned by Telstra...bastards!
If anyone wants to kill Australia's comms. that is the weakest point! - inactive, on 09/29/2008, -0/+6In Quebec, Videotron.
Bell is the devil. They trottle your traffic. Terrible customer service, outdated technology, monopoly in the north (you wouldn't believe the prices), they just plain suck. - Vektuz, on 09/29/2008, -0/+6Bandwidth usage is increasing. Even "normal" everyday users are starting to use services like youtube, amazon video download, legitimate services like netflix online video downloads, and a series of other media outputs that are growing right now.
200 gb sounds like a lot but most cables are shared by families with 4+ members, or 2+ roommates if not that. cut it down to about 50gb each and everyone uses Skype and its over before you know it. - inactive, on 09/29/2008, -0/+5What the ***** does this have to do with pols?
- fani, on 09/29/2008, -0/+4Thats real slow dude. With my cable I get 30Mbps down, 2Mbps up. Sadly its comcast so comes with a 250GB limit monthly. Now, I'm nowhere near that limit, but I hate limits. I want it to be unlimited internet.
- Vektuz, on 09/29/2008, -0/+4Whats worse is that any kind of download capped deal is misleading anyway. You can't save up bytes for later.
If you put an ethernet cable between your computer and another computer, you get 100mbit or 1000mbit or whatever, that's your maximum speed. Not using that link doesn't save it for later. Bandwidth is not like water, it can't be saved for later in some reservoir.
Even if you put everyone on just a 1gb/mo deal, if everyone decided to hit their connection at max at the same time, it'd fall over.
All that byte-capped deals are for is to cause people to not use the full bandwidth they've been allotted. They don't have that kind of bandwidth to share they shouldn't sell it.
What I'd like to see is a race back to the top. If there is any legislation to be made, it should be made just like the overselling airlines were made. There needs to be a hard cap on how many times the same bandwidth can be sold to different people.
ISPs need to take the bandwidth they have, divide it evenly by user (or allow users to buy more for more fees), and then allot each user exactly that much, instead of having everyone share the same pool. Inefficient? somewhat? Fair? You bet. Uncapped? Of course - there'd be no reason to cap.
So your speed may drop down to a tenth of what it is, at least initially. But at least it'd be honest. And you can bet a new ISP would come along and invest in actual infrastructure, faster connections, and try to sell you a faster version, backed by actual speed instead of just selling you a seat thats already been sold to someone else, with the hope that they don't show up. - TheYoshi, on 09/29/2008, -0/+4Cost has nothing to do with it, you guys are a mess. Net Neutrality is about preventing the fallacy that private corporations might filter internet content, not so much about how much it costs. In the real world (where some of us live but apparently not many on digg) you look around and realize that the greatest censorship of the internet ALWAYS comes from governments and not from the private sector.
Thank you but I'd prefer to keep regulators as far away from the internet as possible. - mitch37, on 09/29/2008, -1/+5Bandwidth caps hands down.
I would much rather limit my downloads, or download at off peak times, instead of having to buy the 'Youtube addon' to my Internet connection. - yeskia, on 09/29/2008, -0/+4Except for the fact iinet forces you to get VOIP and a home phone with them to start getting decent (for Australia at least) download caps.
- Vektuz, on 09/29/2008, -0/+4Meh, say that again in 2-3 years. Everything is going HD, even youtube is increasing the resolution (and thus bandwidth). Do a couple more skype calls, start using services like netflix (online version), and you'll blow through 30gb without ever using p2p even once.
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