[LINK] NBN to be 1Gbps

[Scott Howard]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 6:51 PM, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at janwhitaker.com> wrote:

> >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?
>
> And the disparity is because... ?


Because, at the end of the day, the "center" of the Internet is the US (and
to a lesser extent, Western Europe) - and it's the responsibility for the
provider to connect to that "center".

So an Australia provider, and thus their customers, has to pay (directly or
indirectly) to carry their data all the way to/from the US, whilst the
equivalent for a US provider is to carry the data to the same place which is
obviously much closer and thus much cheaper.

If you in Australia access a US website, it's your provider which is
covering the cost of the trans-pacific leg.  However if I'm in the US and I
access an Australian website, it's the Australian provider for that website
that pays for the trans-pacific leg.

Dial-up used to cost big dollars, too. Times change.
>

Internet access is no different. It's not all that many years ago that many
of us (both consumers and ISPs) were paying ~20 cents/MByte for traffic.  A
typical customer using their full "50GB" ADSL cap, at that rate, should run
a bill of about $10k/month.


No mention of quotas, just speed choices, even looking at the fine
> print. At least I couldn't see it mentioned anywhere.
> http://www.qwest.com/residential/internet/broadbandlanding/
>

http://www.qwest.com/internethelp/eup/

It's not quite as clear as a "xxx GB cap", but it's there.

  Scott.