Why is australian internet so bad

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There was an error submitting the form. Please try again. First Name this. Last Name this. News National. Australian internet prices soar as speeds remain some of the slowest in the world. By 9News Staff.

Tweet Facebook Mail. Prices are rising despite slow speeds, and there are now calls to treat the internet more like an essential service rather than a luxury. This inferior technology is far behind the high-speed fiber technology the world is progressing towards.

Australia was well on its way to employing FTTP technology, the future of high-speed internet access. This tech has already proven itself in countries like Norway, Hong Kong, Swede, and South Korea that rank high on the internet speed index. However, politics got in the way. This means that Australians would not even enjoy standard-definition Netflix streams while US residents could access high-definition options. However, delays and mismanagement sored its public perception.

The coalition government promised a faster network version that used copper phone cables, cutting the predicted costs and taking the advanced FTTP technology off the table. Instead, homes were connected to nodes that used existing copper networks using the FTTN technology. However, as promising as it sounded, Australians have ended up with a Frankenstein monster made of old and new parts, and internet speed relies on the weakest and oldest ones. While the NBN project was predicted to end by , a combination of mismanagement and short-sighted political machinations continue to slow down the project.

Leaked documents in indicated that it was well behind schedule, with the government stating that the project will be much more expensive than previously planned. The failure of the compromised NBN version is such a sore tragedy that it has become a punchline among Aussies. The deliberate lack of genuine competition due to monopoly keeps the prizes high for embarrassingly slow internet.

That means that free online pokies are not so accessible for Australians as for Canadians, and It is a problem. But, despite this Australia is one of the biggest gambling countries in the world. Australian consumer groups agree that the broadband and telecommunications industry needs to do better from nearly all fronts.

This request is especially dire in the current era where the internet has become a service as essential as water and electricity. Pro Tip: Crosswords. In contrast to our need for speed, our online time has grown tremendously. Our internet usage is like a marathon runner gradually adding more and more miles to their training distances, rather than a sprinter reaching higher and higher top speeds.

It therefore makes little sense to judge our multi-hour marathon of video streaming, gaming and teleconferencing by running a connection speed test which is a second sprint. So what do we need from our broadband for a good streaming, gaming or conferencing experience? A connection that offers low and relatively constant latency the time taken to move data packets from the server to your house and loss the proportion of data packets that are lost in transit.

These factors in turn depend on how well your internet service provider ISP has engineered and tuned its network. To reduce latency, your ISP can deploy local caches that store a copy of the videos you want to watch, and local game servers to host your favourite e-sport titles, thereby reducing the need for long-haul transport.