What a shock. Teltra's new prices suck

[tim31]

Yeah, I know. It's a personal thing for me; I have two sisters working as teachers in 'isolated areas', so I can't help but support network upgrades. Besides, if rural Australia gets new gear now, it'll have to last. I have to wonder whether they'd get any more money for comms infrastructure upgrades for another 15-20 years after this.

[phongn]

The article I saw on the weekend suggested they were rolling out fibre to the middle of nowhere, but it was just a regular newspaper. 6000kms of fibre would pretty much give use three runs down the east coast, which would help more people. In the mobile space, there's a big push for coverage on 3/4G (to the extent that Optus is massively oversold in cities due to density, but invests in regional expansion anyway).

At least from my reading it sounds like your government is aiming for 90% wireline with the rest wireless of one sort or another.

Educational opportunities that need 8mbps+ exist?

Sure. Improved long-distance video instruction, access of rich media, etc.

[Stark]

Sorry, giving 5 guys in the middle of nowhere some highend feature or luxury is way less important than benefiting the actual population. I mean they're already supported by the government and destroying the environment; they want city-quality network access too? If the breakdown is as you imagine, 10% of the population covered by wireless would easily, easily cover the remote 'complete waste of time rolling a fibre' population. '98% coverage' for mobile phones, for instance, is less than 30% of Queensland's land area.

The thing that struck me about recent reporting is that the government plan seems to be far earlier than I thought (I imagined it was near the 'work commence' phase) and that it isn't even 100% going to happen. The idea that 'coverage of vast swathes of land with 1 person/ 20000km2' is considered a benefit here is Labor-thinking.

The conspiracy theories about how it's just a project to enable easier internet filtering are great fun, though.

[tim31]

Fair go, not all farmers are involved in the evil plot to dry up the M-D basin.

Only the cotton farmers.