[LINK] NBN to be 1Gbps

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at janwhitaker.com> wrote:

> Why unreasonable? It is common in other countries. Why not here? My
> US friends scratch their heads when I ask if something they might do
> would take up their data quota. They don't know the concept.
>

In at least some cases, that just means they haven't bothered reading their
contracts.

Comcast, who are one of the bigger domestic Internet providers in the US,
have a 250GB download quota, although if you were to ask most Comcast
customers I'm sure they could claim they are unlimited.  Several other cable
and DSL providers have similar limits, with some (although generally very
few) even going down to Australian levels like 40GB/month.

I think ISPs need to broaden their thinking as well.
>

ISPs need to pay their bills.

In the US, I can buy a 1Gbps connection "to the Internet" (delivered to a
datacenter, not domestic) for US$700/month.  In Australia a similar service
would be a few orders of magnitude higher.  Can you really expect ISPs to
offer unlimited 1Gbps bandwidth for $50/month at those prices?

  Scott.