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Setsuna's crazy adventures - a cataloguing

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Naryoril:
it's really insane. I live in Switzerland, one of the most expensive countries in the world (if not the most expensive) and i pay 64 USD a month for 40/4 Mbit, but that also includes cable TV. Just internet doesn't even go as slow as yours, the slowest is 20/2 for 34 USD a month...

Setsuna:
Well, bear in mind I pay for a business line, which means I get certain dependencies that aren't offered on a residential (Minimum call out times, expedited tech support, the right to deploy the network as I wish, and resell the connection/run my own servers with a minimum guaranteed service.) so I pay more for those extra bits (mostly the fact that I don't have very much variance in regards with contested bandwidth or any sort of peak fluctuations.)

However, the other thing that plays into speeds in Australia is what sort of network is available.

Listed from highest to lowest:

1. Fiber

This was supposed to be the 'National upgrade' to the copper network we had. The idea was that we'd run a full scale fibre network to about 98% of the entire country, so basically short of you living 200km away from the nearest house (basically, you'd fall back to satellite, because you're literally somewhere in the middle of Australia) where you lived didn't really affect what sort of internet services you could get.

It would also have a significant amount of future proofing, because of the fact that speed upgrades are mostly about upgrading the receiving ends of fibre due to the nature of the medium.

The previous government (2007-2013) decided it was worth working on (it's expensive as all hell of course), and created NBN co to construct the network.

They were voted out, and the current government led by Tony Abbott had a few people complain about the network, on the argument the existence of the network would severely undermine their revenue. One of the main lobbiers who demanded that the network be stopped, and previous work be ripped out was Rupert Murdoch (for reasons I'll get to a little later).

They did so, although Tony Abbott didn't dare tear up the work that WAS completed after his colleagues said they'd murder him (roughly 15ish%) and after a bit more pressure, grudgingly used a hybrid system which protected the Murdoch interests (Like I said, more on that later) claiming the recycling would save money and 'we didn't need the upgrades at all in the first place'.

The irony is that the hybridizing doubled the eventual cost compared to the initial rollout plan, and ironically is more expensive to maintain AND delivers a much worse speed profile due to the fact we effectively maintain FOUR different systems, instead of two.

Tony Abbott was kicked out as PM about a month ago.

Anyway, if you live in a 'lucky area' you may get access to Fibre. Due to the history above it's a lottery based on 'where you live', and the collation government decided that it'll only do select areas based on needs.

I'll use my ISP as a point of reference for pricing, but bear in mind iinet are considered somewhat premium. For home use, you could easily slice 20-30% off these prices, but you know, you get what you pay for.

IF (Key word) you have access to the NBN and Fibre:

The absolute top end of the scale is a 100/40 line with 1TB download quota (and no upload quota) on a business plan will set you back 145/month. It's as gold plated as you can make it without paying for a 99.99% uptime service guarantee with a 1 hour fault turnaround (You get a 99% at this price with an 8 hour) with all the stuff I get. If you want corporate you'll get nearly zero contention, but at that point, you're buying actual circuits, and the price skyrockets, but if you're big business, you'll pay for the reliablity.

If you don't NEED the turnaround (I like the flexiblity, but let's face it, most people don't REALLY need the ability to call up and finetune a connection when it degrades 10% theoritical max upload) the consumer equivalent is 120/month (Although I don't know if the 1TB limit counts data in BOTH directions, not just down)

http://www.iinet.net.au/internet/broadband/nbn/plans/

You can tinker around with that to see what you can get at a residential level.

http://www.iinet.net.au/business/small/internet/nbn/

You can tinker around with this one to see what you can get at a business level.



2. Cable

You might remember me saying something about Rupert Murdoch in the Fibre part, and why he was so vehemently opposed to the NBN.

This is why. He has Foxtel to defend, which has a monopoly over Cable TV in Australia, and the existence of the NBN would completely destroy his business model.

Cause I don't really like Telstra (and they charge more for a LOT less service) I'll be referencing the Optus (the OTHER player in the cable market) pricing for what you can get.

http://www.optus.com.au/business/broadband-internet/office/plans/cable

A 30/2 line (Assuming you live on a street with Optus cable) will set you back 95/month 'Unlimited'. You can opt to upgrade it to 100/2 for another 30 dollars per month.

Yes, it's actually CHEAPER to get a cable+phone package than just the phone. You can check it yourself.

It's not actually unlimited, (from experience from people I know.) but closer to about 1TB before they start warning you, as in the 'We'll disconnect you for being in the top 10% of users' warning you.

The flip side is that it's actually very difficult to actually get anywhere near that, due to how cable internet actually works (Basically, there's a maximum provision per node (think of it as section) where the total bandwidth allocated is limited to x over everyone in said section, usually 1000/10, usually spread over one street (or usually between 16 and 32 addresses, up to 127). Basically, unless you get a undersubscribed street, the only time you'll get anything close to the advertised is when it's 3am in the morning.


3. (A/V/S)DSL

This is what I have allocated. It runs off the Telstra copper network, which was originally used for the phone lines when the company used to be Telecom, and was a government owned corporation.

http://www.iinet.net.au/business/small/internet/

Previously I was paying 119 for the bundle pack, and I don't really use my phone (I'm not big on voice communication), and the naked DSL was... also 119, which was why when I applied for the naked, he asked me if I wanted it knowing that the price was identical. I sort of lucked in on the price drop to 80/month happened and he gracefully transferred us over.

Anyway, in Australia, this is the majority of residental and small business connections. We don't have a fibre network, and due to how Telstra (Which inherited the government owned POTS service) treated the copper connections (Namely they treated it like crap and did things like use a substance that turns corrosive (to copper among other things) when exposed to water... to seal the cables from water. Yes, this was a multi billion dollar mistake they're STILL supposed to fix but are dragging their heels over.) the copper is pretty slapdash, degrading, and in really poor condition.

There's a reason why anyone with a DSL connection in Australia can tell when it rains - the network slows down significantly.

There's also a reason why there's an old joke - If you want a device that is impenetrable and on the internet, connect it to Telstra ADSL.

A very large percentage of broadband connections are DSL.

Scarily enough, there's a significant amount of people who fight for even DSL because...

4. Wireless

Due to the nature of the lines here, and how DSL works, you basically need to be within 3.5km of a telephone exchange for ADSL2, or within 8km of an exchange for ADSL1, assuming the copper pair that runs to your house is in decent to good condition.

However, you ALSO need to not be behind a RIM, or be pair gained (Namely, get 2 phone services on the 1 copper pair) or any other telecommunications trickery.

And of course, being a privatized service about to sell an aging asset (It's about 50 years old) where the NBN was planning to retire it (They intended to use the space the copper occupied to run fibre through) they didn't bother maintaining it, since it was going out, and they were planning to just short gap it until everyone ended up on the NBN.

Until Murdoch campaigned to destroy the NBN, and Tony Abbott ordered the hybridisation, maintaining a network no one wanted (And which is why it costs multiples more than the Fibre/Satellite solution. The repairs needed on the copper network are downright insanely expensive).

So if you're unfortunate enough to be behind a RIM, or were pair gained with your neighbour, or you were unlucky enough to have a flood and Telstra kept postponing the repair of the copper that runs to your house, or you were unlucky enough to have a pair that's about to fall apart or isn't good enough to run DSL off... you're going to be stuck with hoping that you have a good enough reception on your mobile phone.

Fortunately, Australia (for some weird reason) has one of the better (almost the best) mobile networks in the world, due to very recent heavy investment in new technology.

For an idea, I've seen my crappy barely enabled 4G phone pull 50/4 in bursts.

However there's always a few cravats.

The first is that it depends on your reception. Where you are matters - For those speeds, I was standing right under a tower, at thirty minutes to midnight.

The number of people trying to connect to the tower you want (Contention of network resources), as well as the presence of other access points to ensure a clear signal (signal congestion) will influence this.

And as you can guess, since there's pockets of 'bad broadband' spots, you'll find that contention and congestion are really bad in areas where people have no other option.

The other major problem is cost - For an idea, a prepaid plan cost me 40 dollars to get 2GB of data.

A friend who has a postpaid plan (Contract) pays 60 a month for 4GB.

They come with calls of course (They're mobile phone plans, and the contract comes with infinite calls mobile to mobile) but you can see how expensive it gets. All mobile plans count traffic both ways for the purposes of quota.

There's wireless broadband, but even that ends up being about 70 for 6-8GB a month.

Needless to say, it's frightfully expensive.

By the way, Tony Abbott (who was PM until just recently) actually said that Australia should be connecting everything via wireless and actively pushed to get telecommunication CEOs fired for 'spreading disinformation' when they all pointed out wireless doesn't work the way he envisioned it.

Needless to say, he doesn't understand the technology very well.


5. Satellite

I can't really comment on this, except that there are in fact people in Sydney (As in within a 50km radius of Australia's largest City) who resort to satellite because they haven't been allocated fiber, are too far away from an exchange, don't have access to cable, and are in a mobile blackspot.


-----

That's a very basic rundown of the current state of the Australian telecommunications networks. Basically, what you see as 'it's utter crap' is actually the only options you REALLY get. The real problem is the fact that the entire state of affairs ended up happening because of the fact we sold our government network off, then the private sector went 'Well, screw this, we'll milk you for what you're worth because who else are you going to go to, really?'

Oh, and when competition shows up, you pressure the government to ban them. They so nearly pulled it off when Optus threatened to compete, and they just about pulled it off again with the NBN.

I'm sure there's some details I probably got wrong (or are at the very least mostly unprovable, since I've talked with some of the major players, and they're just stories from them) but the general gist should be accurate.

Nakiame:
Suddenly I feel myself lucky with 1gbit symmetrical connection for ~13$ a month lol

Setsuna:

--- Quote from: Nakiame on October 01, 2015, 03:40:12 pm ---Suddenly I feel myself lucky with 1gbit symmetrical connection for ~13$ a month lol

--- End quote ---

You generally don't realise how something is until you realise the costs of getting it.

For most part, I'm pretty lucky in the sense that I got anything that resembles broadband at all - When I was living in a suburb about 10 years ago we were in were actually earmarked at one point for decommissioning because 'Not enough people wanted broadband internet at the prices offered.'

There was a reason for this - a DSL connection (512/64) connection with 3000 MB a month with a 25c per MB excess was 180/month. You needed an ABN, and it was purely on Telstra's decision to provision it to you.

They got caught ransoming a few people (I should know, I was part of the settlement) by literally saying 'Pay up 500 dollars, or you're not getting a damn thing'

Granted this price WAS in 2003, but that's the 'best' you could have gotten.

So perspective helps a lot generally. What you have is generally only valued the harder you fight for it.

Setsuna:
So after we were told that everything inside was a complete loss, I was told to come to a pawn shop.

... Even though we were told that taking the items out was too risky due to asbestos, someone ELSE decided it wasn't.

The fun part was that the person who decided to wasn't particularly smart decided to try and sell the entire games collection ALL AT ONCE to them. Not even cleaned up either.

Needless to say, the pawn owner stalled for long enough for the police to arrest the guy, and then they concluded that it came from a place with a fire. After a few calls around, they found me (I had to give a statement) and told me that they were from the site.

So I now have (most of) a games collection, and now we have to go through the testing phase.

Unfortunately the PSP didn't work (it took too much fire damage) but the 3/DSes came out fine.

This is where you'll learn something new: Apparently Nintendo run a weapons grade division, because every single game we tested so far still works.

The worst damage we have so far is that my light green DSi has broken speakers... but the headphone jack still works.

Go the hell figure.

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