The_Wookie

Well we will be moving into our new place in Perth soon so I've been looking at getting broadband sorted out.

I'm absolutely stunned at the cost of internet connection over here.

A company that is meant to be one of the cheapest, Amcom, charge $70 a month for upto 8M speed with a cap of 25G per month. You also have around $150 for set-up fees and the modem.

I really can't get my head around it!

Telstra will charge $100 for the same thing, or $150 for a 60G cap.

You compare that to the deal that BT are doing at the moment for 25 quid, where you get upto 8M speed, unlimited download a free router and loads of other bits and pieces.

Sorry for the rant, but this has come as a real shock.

jayr

It's called competition, or the lack of...

Vash the Stampede

Considering that the number of Australian ISPs is currently in the mid- to high hundreds, I don't think lack of competition is the answer. It's a little more complex than that.

The key issue is infrastructure ownership, not ISP competition per se. All ISPs have to use Telstra's infrastructure, and Telstra charges a premium. So this is really about Telstra's monopoly of infrastructure, not a lack of market competition.

Australia's broadband market is screaming for an upgrade. We need new infrastructure (fibre-optic for preference) and a private company prepared to build it.

Until we have an alternative infrastructure to the Telstra monopoly, we'll be stuck in the dark ages and prices will remain artificially high.

jayr

Indeed your answer is rather fuller than mine; the issue is one of competitive access to the Telstra network and thus the quantity of retailers is largely irrelevant if they cannot compete against a monopoly.

Amazulu

Australia also has a bandwidth problem. Most of the internet traffic into Australia is via a single trans-pacific cable from the US. This cable can only carry so much data. Hence the Gb caps that we have. This is not such a problem in Asia, Europe, UK etc. So they have lower prices and no caps.

Vash the Stampede

Precisely.

Optus was supposed to be the St George that would slay the Telstra dragon, but for some reason they seem to have come unstuck.

Meanwhile, Telstra is poised to build its new FTTN infrastructure, but refuses to do so until it receives a regulatory guarantee on the pricing of wholesale access to FTTN for its competitors.

If Rudd wants to be taken seriously as a man with the nation's interests at heart, he will invite tenders from multinational telecoms for the new fibre-optic network, and force Telstra to compete fairly, or die.

Vash the Stampede

Excellent point. Any chance of an international tender for a bigger pipe - or even a few more of them?

We can only dream, I guess.

benlast

As well as valid points made by others, we need to consider that in the UK, the competition has driven prices down to the point where ISP's margins are incredibly thin (which is one of the explanations for why technical support is so lousy and often charged for). There's also huge amounts of churn as people move provider to get the best deals, so very few ISPs are prepared to break ranks and raise prices.

The margins are so small that the extra bandwidth used by the success of the BBC's iPlayer has meant that more and more of an ISP's customers are actually costing them money. So you're comparing Oz, with its own particular issues, against the UK where the cost of Internet is almost too low to sustain a business.

In other words, it's a pretty complex situation

Cheers
Ben (used to work for an ISP, now just a customer like everyone else)

@boy

aha...but you ain't in Kansas any more Toto ;-)

Don't worry. There will be a lot of things that you will have to adjust to now you are living here in Oz. Give it a few years and you will no longer compare everything to a continent that is half a planet away. All spanking brand new immigrants have to go through this adjustment of thinking. For some it can take quite some time to stop going through the 'back in the UK' process. That's normal - it will pass !

Hutch

Already happening. New Australia-Guam (Hawaii) pipe is under way and the Australia-Japan pipe's getting an upgrade. The Australia-Guam optic pipe is 6,900 km and has a 1.92 terabit capacity. The better independent ISPs (like my own Internode) have already bought capacity on it. It is due for completion in July 2009.

Amazulu

Great news. This should have an impact on prices/caps.

Vash the Stampede

Well it's about bloody time!

datamile

Take a look at http://whirlpool.net.au/ for all these Oz broadband

Good second tier like iinet or internode

Johnsyweb

I heartily recommend Internode.

Some other useful comparison links in this thread.

Good luck!


--paj