Now that we’ve had a few days to digest the Rudd Government’s proposed FTTH NBN, commenters are coming out of the woodwork to argue against the plan. What they are most concerned about is the lack of detail given by the Government on how it reached its figures, and at how the entire network will work financially. And although there’s a lot of speculation and doubt over precise figures, early numbers being thrown around by the opposition have the monthly cost to the consumer sitting at around $150 a month.While most of us geeks wouldn’t be too against paying that amount for the speed (depending on data caps, of course), most families running a standard $40 a month ADSL plan would choke at the prospect of paying more than three times as much money for broadband than they are now.
So, how much would you pay for access to the new 100Mbps NBN?
jules
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 2:29 PMThis is typical of Malcolm in the Middle and his very, very negative attitude towards things. It’s all FUD. The most intense and wildly variable numbers I’ve seen thrown around are $100/m and that’s based on current fees and charges, which will be unusable as there will be massive competition between Tesltra and this new network forcing prices down. What about current line rental fees? What about the cost of making a phone call on a POTS system vs. a VoIP call?
As always, the opposition is opposing for the sake of opposing. And knowing Steven “Family Last” Feilding, he’ll act as the token Liberal puppet he is.
matt
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 2:37 PMWhat do the opposition recommend? spending 8 years rolling out something that by the time complete will be horribly obsolete? or maybe just doing nothing?
JakePT
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 2:59 PMYep, because the opposition doesn’t stand anything to gain from exaggerating costs and scaring voters off the plan.
Craig Mc
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 3:05 PMI’d pay exactly what I’m paying now. ADSL2+ is good enough even at the 3.5Mbps I get. Volume is more important to me, and no line rental.
As for the “massive competition” from this new network – its costs won’t allow it to fight a price war. It will have to pay $4.3B in interest per year alone.
kirsco
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 3:11 PMUh, hello? Internode already do this where possible and the prices are affordable.
http://www.internode.on.net/pdf/products/home-fibre-pricelist.pdf
Why should the price of this new NBN be too much different to the above?
Ross
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 3:22 PMI just hope that this brings unmetered or extremely high usage caps to Australian Domestic Internet.
Bruce
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 3:28 PMNot sure where I got this information from (possibly the radio) but I thought the connection was to deliver a phone connection as well as internet. There’s no reason why they couldn’t do that and get all VOIP like and offer as many local / national calls as you like per month without charging for it. Still won’t be of interest to everyone, but you’d find a whole lot more people willing to pay $100 or more if that was the case.
poppit
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 3:33 PMSpeaking of Mr Fielding can you see him helping this through the senate without some sort of clausing stating that the new NBN must be a clean feed or only provide christian material or some such crap.
Cam
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 3:40 PMI’ve go no problems paying whatever is required for fast internet really, speed is secondary to caps. Now if you said i can pay $150 per month for 100mb connection with say 200gb cap, i’d be reasonably happy with that right now, if i was paying the same amount with a 30gb cap i’d be outraged.
I guess what i’m saying is i need to cap to increase with the price otherwise i’ll be sticking with ASDL 2+.
NRD80Y
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 3:46 PMInclude free local and national calls, unlimited download, and all foxtel channels, i’ll pay $200 a month.
Colin Capruso
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 4:24 PMI currently pay $150 a month for my internet, so i wouldn’t have a problem paying that much. But these download caps have got to go, i’m not a big downloader, but the fact that i’ve gotta keep track of how much i download just to keep the internet usuable is a joke.
hinow2007
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 4:36 PMCouldn’t agree more…if you see the way Turnbull reacts when asked what he would do its absouletly hilarious! It is evident he doesn’t have any plans and he just goes on about he is passionate about broadband because he started OzEmail. Furthermore, Turnbull keeps saying that the it will cost taxpayers more than $40 billion but he choose to ignore that the private sector is interested (come on as if Telstra would just let their Monopoly go and not try to stop it) and that the government will pay up to $22 billion.
Nigel P
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 4:56 PMProblem with determining a cost is “what is the data cap?” Thats the key question with the cost. Seeing I have no choice of broadband provide (Telstra added cable instead of upgrading the RIM cabinet), I would probably be paying more than most.
To me its not about the cost at the moment but the ability for many customers to finally get a choice in provider rather than be stuck with crappy service. The libs never understood this when they were in power and thats why they are trying to deny everyone fair access to a utility.
boc
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 5:31 PMI already pay $150/month. That’s for the ADSL2+ service and line rental. I’m not that fussed. I’ll pay what I need to go get the service I want. Could it be cheaper? Yes.
This new network, if it happens will be used. All major industries will pick this up in some way or another. They’ll cover any consumer shortfall. Businesses always adopt these things before everyday people.
The NBN commercial entity will make money for sure. The ISPs that are “mom’n'pop” focused will have a big fight for marketshare.
PinballLes
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 7:20 PMI don’t see $150 this as a very real number. What is it based on? I would imagine it is some sort of number based on current pricing, but current pricing isn’t going to be applicable by the time everyone has availability to 100Mbps internet, 100Mbps will be the new norm, and the pricing will reflect that.
Ben Anderson
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 8:09 PMIsn’t the cost based on how much data you use, not the speed? For me, 24 Mbit/s is fine for the foreseeable future, (but I know it won’t be in 10 years’ time). I want to see cheaper internet, and much higher/unlimited download allowances as a result of the NBN. The increase in speed just increases the uses of the internet, something we won’t want to pay for until we know what that is ie. working from home.
randomfire
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 10:43 PMTwo things are worrying.
1. Why?
2. At what cost?
Don’t get me wrong faster broadband for the masses will benefit a few – but but why do we need fibre at every doorstep now, at a time when the bank balance is depleted through the deployment of a fiscal sugar rush and some rash infrastructure spending that has the potential to go spectacularly wrong.
If fibre to the door can demonstrably propel mum+dad+kidsV2009 into a scene the Jetsons – I’ll back it in a heartbeat. If it means they can get youtube a little faster, and download pirated media in 2 seconds V’s 60 – you have to ask if that’s really worth 43 Billion + blowout + inflation.
Grab a grip people. We need to convince these bozo’s to build this infrastructure for Medicine, Education, and Real money making industries first – then think about streaming HD movies into peoples living room live once the bill are paid.
Christian
Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 11:16 PMI currently pay $115 for 55Gb with Internode on the Telstra network. I would pay extra for the faster speed but I would need a much higher download cap. That’s my main point.
It needs to be fast but with a bigger cap otherwise I would use it up in a couple days…Or no cap with an ‘acceptable usage’.
Speed no bigger for with 8mb or above 100mb wow but higher or no limits!!!
WTP
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 12:26 PMLike most others I agree totally that speed is not the question here but Gbs is, for without them the other becomes superfluous.Even if the 100Mb/s turns out to be more like 20Mb/s (a little like Telstra 8000/364 that can’t average 2000)it would still be fast enough for most. So the question will then become what can I actually do with those Gbs and the obvious answer is video video video as it is basically the only thing that will chew up your Gigs.As it now seems clear to most who follow these things P2P file sharing will be stopped,by hook or by crook sooner or later the music and movie lobby will have their way,so basically that will only leave you with downloading and or streaming legitimate content,and if you think that will be cheap I suggest you better think again.So at the end of the day you will have 100/100 for your $200 and be expected to pay another hundred or so to watch half a dozen movies.Seems like a lot to pay for the reading of a few emails and Gizmodo.
Tenacityman
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 2:50 PMWhen I was living in Japan, I was paying 4500 yen a month for a 50Mbps fibre optic connection (that’s upstream and downstream), with unlimited download. 100Mbps was available, of course, but it was slightly more expensive, about 7-8000 yen a believe. I hope the Australian prices and service are similar to this. I would be stoked with a AU$100 a month for unlimited, 100Mbps up and down. But I doubt this will be the case in australia, somehow we always end up getting screwed.
Roland
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 6:05 PMConsidering I pay $29.95/mo for a copper line I hardly use so I can get ADSL for $50/mo and I get no alternatives 5km from Perth CBD, yeah, I’ll pay 2x as much to go from 28kbps to 100MBps.
Also, this is about the possibilities of true fast fibre can provide for other businesses. We are seeing power utilities roll out internet-monitored smart devices which can moderate and change energy usage; imagine the kinds of devices and services you can set up with a decent internet connection. Wireless WAP phones linked in to home network hubs calling VOIP for free, full HD teleconferencing, video on demand (ala Quickflix), bundled cable-internet services, the death of print media as we purchase PDF e-books online and download in instants. This is infrastructure as vital to the commission of economics (the business of life) as sewerage. What Rudd is planning is akin to rolling out sewerage nationwide at cost to the government so its pay-per-poo taken away swiftly and neatly; Turnbull is trying to force us into engaging the nightsoil carter and using bedpans by comparison.
Once built, this isn’t going away. Look at the Adelaide-Darwin Rail Line; the company is in recievership but the rails aren’t going away. We’ll be using the rails for centuries yet, so who cares if this is a dinosaur and goes bankrupt?
boc
Friday, April 10, 2009 at 10:50 PMThe question was asked “Why?”
Well this fibre needs to be laid eventually doesn’t it? If internet usage continues to grow as it has, won’t having this network be critical in eight years time?
It’s true that business, medical, and other industries need this before everyday people. But, there is a hospital and a string of businesses on the same street as where I live. So why not lay the fibre to my house as well? It’s cheaper that way!
So I hope you realise, overall, it’s more cost effective laying the fibre everywhere now, rather laying bits and pieces here and there.
If people think this network will become obsolete in eight years, what’s going to obsolete it? They’ve already stated that hardware at either end of the fibre will need to be upgraded to increase speeds. But, what’s going to obsolete it?
The only thing I can think of that would obsolete this network, and I mean the whole network, not just bits of it, involves quantum physics.
008Zulu
Sunday, April 12, 2009 at 6:12 AMIt’ll be cheap, it’ll be fast, it’ll force you to use the mandatory filter they have been trying to force on privately owned ISPs.
Delores
Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 11:43 PMThat’s steep! Here is the U.S. I pay 19.95 a month for 100 mbps.