"43 BILLION dollars for a network that gives consumers the same speed is pretty crazy."
It's not the same speed. Fibre optics direct to the home results in a far faster connection than ADSL2+
Have you tested ping times using NextG wireless? Wireless has it's place but can not replace hard-wired cables for speed in the near future for the majority of Australian homes.
Yeah, I realise there are local mirrors for a lot of content. Unfortunately, the comparatively high cost of bandwidth for local hosting has meant that my company (any no doubt many others) host their web services on the west coast of USA.
I would prefer to keep my data local, for speed and local economy reasons. I can only hope that the cost of local bandwidth comes down dramatically with the introduction of the NBN!
Yes, unfortunately a lot of the population stick with the major carriers (Telstra, Optus) for a phone+internet package, which usually offer pathetic data caps for those that don't "need" a lot of data.
If your family is hitting their 6GB cap, you may want to recommend that they look elsewhere for their services. Fast-churning is standard industry practice so the down-time is minimal when switching carriers.
I'd like to see a proposal that increases the capacity of our international backbones.
If 93% of the population has access to 100mbps connections, the links between Australian and the USA/Asia are going to be a bottleneck rendering most of the speed useless.
Full-HD streaming from Youtube's international servers?! Forget it!
The differences between the two plans are like night and day.
Labour is implementing Fibre to the Home, while Liberal is proposing a Fibre to the Node network. Unfortunately, because of the low population density of many areas of Australia, it's the "last-mile" that causes the problems.
The distance between the local telephone exchange (the fiber end-point for the Liberal proposal) and the home can be many kilometres. As the distance increases, the maximum speed decreases.
So, regardless of how fast the backbone is, if homes are still connecting via old copper wires like they do right now, nothing is going to get any faster.
The Labour FTTH plan is smart, yet expensive.
It all comes down to "you get what you pay for". Pay $6 billion, get some speed upgrades throughout the backbone network. Pay $43 billion and get speed upgrades direct to the home.
"the middle plan is a 6gb per month download plan" - that is not even close to the truth! It is possible to get very low capped plans such as that however it is just as easy to get some much higher caps also.
For example, I'm on a top-speed 80GB/month plan, it costs $79.95. If I were particularly concerned about download quota, I would be with TPG who supply a plan 180GB/month plan for $49.95.
Kohjinsha is a very popular brand of micro laptop. Step into any Yodabashi or Bic Camera and take a look there, you'll see those insanely small PCs from Panasonic and Kohjinsha there.
They're really smart little machines, just very much over priced.
Valve files 'DOTA' trademark
Aug 12th 2010 12:36AM (Joystiq)Oooops! The whole point of my reply was to mention the LoL is free!
Valve files 'DOTA' trademark
Aug 12th 2010 12:35AM (Joystiq)You can get some great DOTA-esque action right now with League of Legends.
Careful though, it's addictive!
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
Aug 10th 2010 10:58PM (Engadget)"43 BILLION dollars for a network that gives consumers the same speed is pretty crazy."
It's not the same speed. Fibre optics direct to the home results in a far faster connection than ADSL2+
Have you tested ping times using NextG wireless? Wireless has it's place but can not replace hard-wired cables for speed in the near future for the majority of Australian homes.
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
Aug 10th 2010 10:56PM (Engadget)Yeah, I realise there are local mirrors for a lot of content. Unfortunately, the comparatively high cost of bandwidth for local hosting has meant that my company (any no doubt many others) host their web services on the west coast of USA.
I would prefer to keep my data local, for speed and local economy reasons. I can only hope that the cost of local bandwidth comes down dramatically with the introduction of the NBN!
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
Aug 10th 2010 10:50PM (Engadget)Yes, unfortunately a lot of the population stick with the major carriers (Telstra, Optus) for a phone+internet package, which usually offer pathetic data caps for those that don't "need" a lot of data.
If your family is hitting their 6GB cap, you may want to recommend that they look elsewhere for their services. Fast-churning is standard industry practice so the down-time is minimal when switching carriers.
Cheers!
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
Aug 10th 2010 10:35PM (Engadget)If 93% of the population has access to 100mbps connections, the links between Australian and the USA/Asia are going to be a bottleneck rendering most of the speed useless.
Full-HD streaming from Youtube's international servers?! Forget it!
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
Aug 10th 2010 10:32PM (Engadget)+1
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
Aug 10th 2010 10:27PM (Engadget)The differences between the two plans are like night and day.
Labour is implementing Fibre to the Home, while Liberal is proposing a Fibre to the Node network. Unfortunately, because of the low population density of many areas of Australia, it's the "last-mile" that causes the problems.
The distance between the local telephone exchange (the fiber end-point for the Liberal proposal) and the home can be many kilometres. As the distance increases, the maximum speed decreases.
So, regardless of how fast the backbone is, if homes are still connecting via old copper wires like they do right now, nothing is going to get any faster.
The Labour FTTH plan is smart, yet expensive.
It all comes down to "you get what you pay for". Pay $6 billion, get some speed upgrades throughout the backbone network. Pay $43 billion and get speed upgrades direct to the home.
Fiber optics get political in Australia as opposition party vows to scale down national broadband plan
Aug 10th 2010 10:20PM (Engadget)"the middle plan is a 6gb per month download plan" - that is not even close to the truth! It is possible to get very low capped plans such as that however it is just as easy to get some much higher caps also.
For example, I'm on a top-speed 80GB/month plan, it costs $79.95.
If I were particularly concerned about download quota, I would be with TPG who supply a plan 180GB/month plan for $49.95.
Inventec phasing out Kohjinsha brand, opting for Onkyo instead
Jul 4th 2010 1:12AM (Engadget)Kohjinsha is a very popular brand of micro laptop. Step into any Yodabashi or Bic Camera and take a look there, you'll see those insanely small PCs from Panasonic and Kohjinsha there.
They're really smart little machines, just very much over priced.