Australia has a small tax base and a vast largely empty desert of a continent, as big as the lower 54 of the USA. WE have a population about the same size as one American state, admittedly a medium to larger one.
Australia is also along way away from the centres of internet activity. There are only a few cables which can be used. These link with Hawaii as our hub. Nowhere else. About 70% of Australian internet traffic goes through these congested cables. The owners charge us a fortune four their use and shape us down mercilessly. They make so much from us dopey Australians that they can subsidise the rest of their much more competitive global operations from the profits they make from the antipodean suckers.
If OZ wants faster internet it would get it by putting more and bigger cables to more places in. It would cost a small fraction of the unaffordable fiasco currently being rolled out by the fiat of the IT illiterate Rudd ands Swan plan.
I now have 4 cables in my street, the new one is underground which costs five times putting it on the telegraph pole. At least. I have Telstra and Optus cables and Telstra copper. Now I have the fiasco cable as well. But I dont use any of them, I use wireless.
The speed of the web is determnined by the size of the narrowest bit of the pipeline. Tens of billions of dollars later and nothing will change.
Message to the ALP-its the overses coinnections, stupid!
