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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday May 13 2017, @04:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the next-time-without-the-oops dept.

Fed up with Australian internet speeds that trail those in most of the developed world, Morgan Jaffit turned to a more reliable method of data transfer: the postal system.

Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world have downloaded Hand of Fate, an action video game made by his studio in Brisbane, Defiant Development. But when Defiant worked with an audio designer in Melbourne, more than 1,000 miles away, Mr. Jaffit knew it would be quicker to send a hard drive by road than to upload the files, which could take several days.

"It's really the big file sizes that kill us," said Mr. Jaffit, the company's co-founder and creative director. "When we release an update and there's a small bug, that can kill us by three or four days."

Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: its internet speed. Eight years after the country began an unprecedented broadband modernization effort that will cost at least 49 billion Australian dollars, or $36 billion, its average internet speed lags that of the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the most recent ranking of internet speeds by Akamai, a networking company, Australia came in at an embarrassing No. 51, trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya.


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  • (Score: 2) by citizenr on Saturday May 13 2017, @07:46PM (1 child)

    by citizenr (2737) on Saturday May 13 2017, @07:46PM (#509239)

    Exactly.

    They build modern nation-wide fiber network ... and put transfer limits on INTERNAL traffic! citing expensive transcontinental transit as the reason :) :):)
      Australians got raped in the ass by Telstra and other industry incumbents, cant compete with good old boys!

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:41AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Sunday May 14 2017, @10:41AM (#509420) Journal

    How is the options for building your own internet connection with fiber in Australia if you have some neighbors that cooperate and have some money?
    In particular the legality to dig cable trenches and their cost. As well as the distance to the nearest POP. Which of course can be monopolized. That can be workaround if one has lots of money by buying sea fiber capacity.

    If the state won't do it. It's DIY time.