Chinese Technology Company Huawei Banned From Bidding in NBN

Huawei make great products – cheap but great (the shit stuff is just get-what-you-pay-for) and so I think Huawei were going to be offering Australian consumers CHEAPER products/service than what the government wants to rip us off with

When/IF the NBN is ever completed, then it will be even-more-so out of date, yet still marketed as the fastest thing ever and we will still pay up for an out of date waste of money product that ultimately WE ALREADY PAID FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE

One thing I don’t agree with in this article, Australia being well known for its shoddy internet and being the “only 1st world country with second rate telecommunications” etc. I’ve traveled extensively and not once has someone discussed Australian internet or telephony with me as something it is “well known for”.

The few times I’ve discussed our internet or telephony, the other “first world” people it’s been discussed with think we have great services available, they just believe we pay too much for it. That said, some justified the extra cost with the greater distances of unpopulated land that communications lines must cross etc. They don’t think of us as being bad for anything except mobile coverage, and even then many of those people hadn’t been to Aus since the 90′s.

In the USA, whilst some major cities have extensively good internet at affordable prices, most urban areas do not and rural areas are far worst off, with many still on dialup or ADSL 1 (as with some Australian rural areas). In fact, the overall average speed for internet connectivity in the USA hovered between 6 and 7mbps last year, in comparison with Australias being being between 4 and 5. Average peak speeds were around the same between both (20mbps). As for Europe, most of Europe is between 4 and 5mbps. The global average is only 2.8mbps so we are well above that and roughly around the same as all other 1st world countries. The only places with considerably higher averages are small Asian countries with dense population, high GDP and far less area to cover, thus far less expense involved.

I get annoyed with how many people in Australia think of our comms infrastructure as poor and not matching up to the US etc. Really?? Do you know that we had 3G services for most of the population for a decade before the US? That we had high speed cable internet available in many areas far earlier than many US cities? I have lived in a smaller city about 40 minutes from Brisbane most of my life. When the internet first came out I had dial up, for maybe 4 years? Then Optus cable rolled down my street, and I had something like 2 – 5 mbps on the cable service, then shortly after 10, then 20. When I permanently left Australia for work in 2011 I had 100mbps cable broadband.

I now live in the UK, much smaller country, far more people, etc. I live about the same distance from a major city as I did in Australia, in a smaller city roughly the size of the one I came from (at least in population). I now have 15mbps ADSL and am limited to that. There are no cable options and whilst the UK now has FttN (or FttC as they call it), I cannot benefit from that. In my opinion Australia is ahead. Also, mobile phone reception. So close to a major city, I loose signal all the time, indoor signal is very poor in most areas, often find myself on 2G, and I’m with one of the two biggest networks with the most coverage. Another issue I never had in Australia.

So yes, some of Australia has bad internet, mostly hard to reach, expensive to cable rural areas. Far less of Australia is populated and I’m sure if it were we’d have better coverage to those areas. I for one am proud of Australian telecommunications, we’ve had our stuff ups and such, but we do well for such a new nation with such a small population and such a vast area to cover!