Thread: High Speed Internet across Australia
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Old June 23rd, 2011
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I'm not so sure it's about government control. It's simply a policy to give accessible & upgraded options of internet country-wide. Brought in by the Australian Labor government. Whereas the Liberal party wanted to restrict fibre use to only city areas so the wealthy could use it.

Only comments I have at present are in regards to fibre's cost & improvements versus its price compared to ADSL2.

My ISP does have this option now. However price compared to limits is a little of a put off. My present ADSL2 plan offers 200 GB peak / 200 GB off-peak. Around 10-11 mbps down, around 800 kbps up. Speaking from a personal point of view, my present download speed is fine. Only advantage to the high speed network would be upload speed.

For the same price in Fibre, 25 / 2 Mbps, 30GB + 30GB peak / off-peak.

Would cost me AUD$20/month more for 50 / 4 Mbps, 30GB + 30GB or twice as much or more for either 100 / 8 Mbps, 60GB + 60GB or 90GB + 90GB.

If I'm using over 200GB / month overall then I'd find myself shaped down to 250 kbps if using fibre. At this point I do not see any big reason to change to fibre. Perhaps in the future the price of fibre will come down and/or the monthly bandwidth use will be more generous as happened with ADSL2 over time.

I do trust my ISP. More than I can say for Telstra Bigpond. And Optus has shown willingness to cave into government or business also. Unlike both Telstra BigPond & Optus, my ISP refused to trial out the censorship filters. They also fought in court against the RIAA to show them it's none of their business who shares what over the internet & the ISP is not responsible for it. I like the company's attitude in that regard. Optus & BigPond let RIAA have what they want as far as I know. That's what happens when you have USA citizens working over here at the top of the internet company's executives.

BTW the senator who was pushing the internet censorship filters is a member of a very narrow religious group & political party in far north of the country. Similar regional area as the infamous racist Pauline Hanson.
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