It has always seemed to me that Gov. made a very serious error in not retaining the Telstra infrastructure in public ownership, or at least majority Public ownership.

In my view, they did this without any real appreciation of the consequences, simply to satisfy political dogma.

The result is Telstra has the Nation over a barrel. They are charging monopoly prices and stopping any progress on speeds and access.

They have what amounts to a Monopoly in urban areas, with only the regulator standing between them and the consumer.

My question is:

Can anything now be done to break this monopoly eg an alternative wirelss system, funded by Government perhaps, to BY PASS the TELSTRA SYSTEM COMPLETELY?

If not, we seem to be doomed to a second class system forever, while Sol and his sidekicks rip us off for all they can.

There is no technical or capacity reason why we have limits on downloads. There is plenty of capacity on trunks routes to supply all the capacity needed for unlimited downloads. The only reason we have the limits is to increase the telcos income. It would be good for the ACCC to look at why we do not have competition in the provision of capacity and I believe we will find that it has Telstra's hand all over it.

There is another physical solution to the 12mbits per second fibre to the node infrastructure and that is through the power lines. For a relatively low cost the power companies can give us fibre to the node by putting fibre to power transformers then using the physical power lines to deliver broadband to each power outlet. This has the advantage of not requiring access to the home to provide and of being usable for power company purposes such as remote real time metering and assistance in the control of consumption. They don't do it because Telstra has it in the ground in much of Australia.

I have fibre to a node 20 meters from my house and it has been there for nearly 10 years. Telstra a couple of years ago when they were forced to give our area broadband because of political pressure laid copper back to the exchange from the node because they did not want to open up the node to competition. I now have a maximum of 250K so called broadband as I am about the limit for ADSL. I could have at least 12 mpbs almost tomorrow if Telstra decided - for a very low cost - to turn on the fibre to the node. (their problem is that they would have to turn it on for everyone attached to the node and not just one or two). I suspect that all infrastructure deployed over the last 10 years has fibre to the node already installed but lying dormant.

the cable network, glass or copper, is a physical monopoly. it is insane not to manage this physical monopoly for the nation, by the government.

this insanity has a name: politics.

fortunately, there are so many other things being done badly by politician rule that i am quite amused by the broadband discussion. it makes a light relief compared to the war, the aboriginal problem, the tax system, health infrastructure... and on and on.

if the ship of state were a harbor ferry, it would have been seized by the passengers long ago. shame they think they can't do better with the nation.

I can't stand how it all works. I had dial-up until two months ago, where I got an ADSL2+ connection.

The first minutes of using this service I realised what I was missing out on, and it really is a neccesity.

The author is right, my download limit of 80GB is met two weeks into the month, so the last two weeks, like now, I can only browse.

It annoys me. I want to be able to download old Dr.Who, Star Trek, and the like, non-stop!

Fickle Pickle
good comments.

you say:

"There is another physical solution to the 12 mbits per second fibre to the node infrastructure and that is through the power lines.'

Subsequent to sales of state electricity assets, I wonder how much of the power transmission infrastructure is still owned by State Governments?

I recall that power transmission lines were being used in Tassy as a trial for broadband, do you know whether this was successful? Could this be used as an alternative to Telstra, and is it being considered as an option in either the Gov. or the opposition initiatives?

Aurora Energy has been trialing BPL in Tasmania. Here's a link to
what's public about these trials ...

https://www.auroraenergy.com.au/news/default.asp?file=1-december-2006.txt

Unofficially I believe that they're reasonably happy with the technical
performance.