Why is Australia so far behind with internet technology?

[Yorick]

1.No live Ashes 2006 online anywhere (audio or video). Cricket Australia put an internet blackout on it.
Nor can you buy it from their official site. If you're in England or America and half of the world you can't buy it!

2.Itunes is years behind. They only recently put the Aussie store up because of territory arguments. This means there are no TV shows or movies on the Aussie store like there are on the American store.

It goes back to how late we were getting cable. When was it? Late 90s right?

It would all be fine if the Aussie government admitted to a techno-lag. But noooooo. My Dad heard a poli asked about it, and he was defending it saying "no I don't think we're behind".


At least they've got the cellphone situation worked out. None of the double billing that occurs in the USA!!!!

[Bozos of Bones]

You're kidding me, right? Australia behind on internet technology? Dude. I'd give my left pinky toe to live there. The top-of-the-line internet access in Croatia is a 3mb/s download DSL with 1mb/s upload. And it costs ~$200$ to install, and about ~$60 per month. And that's just for the basic 1gb/month package. A 5gb package costs ~80$ per month, and it's ~$150 if you don't like limits. Each additional gig is ~5$. And those prices are in a country where the average monthly pay amounts to ~$700. And it's pretty much a Monopoly, held by a company that was a government institution up until a year ago. And the laws are practically non-existant. The DSL provider can pretty much shut off your access, reset your connection and things like that whenever they like. Without any limitations or reprecussions. They don't even give us maintenance warnings.
What I described just now is just the tip of the iceberg. You don't want me to start ranting and raving about mobile services. Trust me, Australia is pretty well off as far as internet's concerned.

[ 12-15-2006, 07:54 PM: Message edited by: Bozos of Bones ]

[wellard]

Well Croatia and other places may well have poor service but there is no excuse for Australia having piss poor telecommunications systems. With the vast size of the continent we live in it should have been a national priority to produce a uniform minimum standard of service that was world class but the government has wasted the opportunity to carry out an exercise in nation building to make way for some petty short sighted ideology of capitalism and political expediency.

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Bozos of Bones: You're kidding me, right? Australia behind on internet technology? Dude. I'd give my left pinky toe to live there. The top-of-the-line internet access in Croatia is a 3mb/s download DSL with 1mb/s upload. And it costs ~$200$ to install, and about ~$60 per month. And that's just for the basic 1gb/month package. A 5gb package costs ~80$ per month, and it's ~$150 if you don't like limits. Each additional gig is ~5$. And those prices are in a country where the average monthly pay amounts to ~$700. And it's pretty much a Monopoly, held by a company that was a government institution up until a year ago. And the laws are practically non-existant. The DSL provider can pretty much shut off your access, reset your connection and things like that whenever they like. Without any limitations or reprecussions. They don't even give us maintenance warnings. What I described just now is just the tip of the iceberg. You don't want me to start ranting and raving about mobile services. Trust me, Australia is pretty well off as far as internet's concerned.

Hi Bozo. I wonder though if Croatian politicians pretend or state that Croatia is on the cutting edge of technology. That's the issue I'm miffed with more than anything. That rather than look at fixing problems or working at ways to improve, the govt. will speak as though there is no problem.

[Bozos of Bones]

The issue is politically inexistant. For one, we've bigger problems to talk to our politicians about, and everyone skirts the issue.

[Aelia Jusa]

Well on the abc site where you can stream live commentary within Australia they say that they only have the rights for streaming within Australia and not anywhere else. That seems more like a legal issue rather than a technology issue - i.e. it's not that they don't have the technology to do it but they don't have the legal right to?