AU Goverment To Break Up Telstra; Filtering News 144
benz001 writes "The Minister who has pushed the ridiculous broadband filter plan has at least won a few brownie points with yesterday's press conference, in which he promised to force Telstra to split its network and wholesale businesses. Australia's largest ISP, and the country's main infrastructure owner, will be given a chance to implement the structural separation voluntarily; if it does not, the Government will step in with legislation. Here is the Minister's official press release." And speaking of the filtering program, reader smash writes "After several years of debate and electioneering, some statistics on the Australian national web filtering effort have been disclosed. Apparently, the typical Aussie web surfer is 70 times more likely to win the national lotto than stumble across a blocked page. Additionally, despite the claim that the main aim of the filter is to block child pornography, only 313 of the 977 total sites blocked is on the basis of child porn. At $40M AU so far in taxpayers funds, the cost so far is around $40,900 per blocked URL. Government efficiency at work..."
Corruption and Australia (Score:4, Interesting)
As an Australian citizen I have to say I am ashamed of Australia's level of corruption at all levels of government (and the lower the level the higher the corruption) from local to state to federal. With a justice system for which truth is no defence against an allegation and unions that have no interest in actually doing their job.
Is Internet Filtering about protecting Australians or giving authorities more reason to prosecute and more agencies kickbacks for "essential services"?
Here in Australia you don't even need to break a present law to have committed a crime. The Australian Tax Office (or Federal Government) can, at any time, pass legislation that applies retrospectively. For anyone with a short memory consider the repealed alcopop tax in 2009, the luxury car tax that was levied prematurely, the petrol taxes levied by Keating without budget approval in the senate, etc etc.
People get excited about Australia but it is just the weather and landscapes that are worth raving about. The regulatory system has nothing fair or just about it.
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
From what I've heard, ever since Telstra went private in 2006, they've been nothing but a nightmare for Australians
Nothing changed in 2006. Telstra/Telecom has always regarded their customers as the enemy. Back when Optus was starting up I preselected them for long distance. I called Telstra customer support with a question about my Telstra account for local calls. Their answer was that they couldn't answer the question because I has preselected Optus. In other words: you deal with the competition so STFU.
Old telstra people I know regard their employer as part of the federal government. By that argument dealing with the competition is just like dealing with another government.
Brownie Points? (Score:2, Interesting)
The Minister who has pushed the ridiculous broadband filter plan has at least won a few brownie points with yesterday's press conference
I'll believe it when something actually happens. Senator Conroy has a history of extreme inconsistency, ranging from "The government just wants to block child porn" to "The government just wants to stop 'Unwanted Content'". Conroy, get your story straight, the Australian people, including the non technical part of the community are tired of your complete and utter lack of consistency.
From the Brisbane times
"Unless it structurally separates, divests its ... cable network and divests its interests in Foxtel,'' Senator Conroy said.
I wonder exactly how profitable are those parts of Telstra's business? Has anyone seen what Telstra tries to charge for it's branded version of Foxtel? (it's much more expensive than the already expensive Foxtel)Honestly anything to try and break the monopoly, but realistically is this going to achieve much?
Re:You don't want to push the efficiency angle... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra (Score:3, Interesting)
My daughter spent 2 hrs on a kids games website at her grandparents house not long after they signed up to Telstra. This put their account over the limit, and combined with all the other traffic that went across the account in the first month, they received a $280 bill. Despite my repeatedly telling them that they should choose a better ISP (one which only includes downloads in the transfer limit for a start, and one that has a transfer limit that takes more than 10 minutes to chew through for another) I was the one who got yelled at. They were perfectly reasonable with the customer support person... *grumble*
Apparently the sales person told them that 200mb is more than they will ever need in a month for their account. I'd like to find someone in Telstra's sales department and see if they can convince me that they don't need wings to fly as i throw them from the nearest rooftop, by the sounds of things they might actually be able to convince me!
Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra (Score:2, Interesting)
I first got broadband in 2003 on a 2 year conract, 512/128 1gb download limit (with uploads counted!) and excess charges for $70AUD a month through Telstra.... In 2004, I bought out the contract and switched to iiNet... 256/64kbps 4gb download limit (Uploads not counted) with excess usage capping for $60AUD. Oh how things have changed since then. I'm not living in Australia now, but last year I was on ADSL2+ (Upto 24mbps we usually got about 8-10mbps) with a 30gb download limit and speed capping for $60AUD per month. Despite 5 years of inflation prices have fallen, speeds have risen by 16x+ for many and download limits have risen by a factor of 10 at least and caps rather than excess usage charges are now the norm.
Telstra still holds a significant share of the market, but they're by no means dominant. True structural separation will remove the final barriers that competing ISPs have been complaining about.
On a side note, God I'm sick of Australians complaining about their internet access! Our urban areas aren't particular dense and most of our data comes from and goes to overseas locations requiring expensive to maintain communications satellites and underground cables. Despite that for about $60AUD ($50USD) most people have access to ADSL2+ with a generous download allowance (35gb looking at iiNet, 25 with no peak/off peak split looking at Internode). Furthermore, even if you don't have access to ADSL2+, 1.5mbps ADSL1 or cable is almost definitely available. Not only that but we're looking at massive new infrastructure rollouts in the next few years, which should see the final gaps fixed.
Re:The truth... (Score:3, Interesting)
You have to be kidding me, every Telstra investor is now crying in their drink after losing 70% true net worth on their investment (net worth versus cash). They would have been better opening a cash account and getting 4.5%pa.
Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra (Score:3, Interesting)
Hahaha. Your standards are so low it's laughable. "Generous download allowance" of 35 gigabytes? Your attitude is mind-numbingly ignorant.
If most of your data went through underseas cables, then why does your cap apply to all traffic?
You also realize most of the popular sites Australians visit are hosted locally in Australia, right? This reduces costs for the content providers as well as the ISPs.
Japan is a similarly isolated island country, and yet affordable 1 gbps connections are proliferating in urban areas.
Do you fully comprehend that the institution of caps is a gross abuse of the progress of internet technology? Speeds (and routers) increase according to Moore's Law. You should be experiencing internet speed increases on par with hardware speed increases.
Re:Statistics? (Score:3, Interesting)
To think that I was a native of a country (UK) being harassed by immigrants (Africans) about harassing immigrants (Aboriginals)!
In what way are Aboriginal people immigrants?
Buying it Back (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe the current government is maneuvering to buy back the wholesale arm of Telstra. It should be in public hands IMO, and it sure would make the NBN (National Broadband Network) a lot more viable. ... and I don't think it's the wrong thing to do.
Re:It's hard enough dealing with ONE Telstra (Score:5, Interesting)
There are astonishing anti-competitive roadblocks to wholesalers. I recently looked into converting my internet service into a naked service, but the caveats and hoops they have to jump through made me give up for now.
The internet service stays the same, the physical wire stays the same, the exchange connections pretty much stay the same, all that I wanted to change was moving the line rental from Telstra to my ISP. To do so would require a totally new service to be commissioned with extended outages, and was told this is an artificial limitation.