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from the they-don't-make-em-like-they-used-to dept.
It's a day for Australia as Telstra, one of the main ISPs providing internet access with the newly built NBN network, declares 100Mbps plans will no longer be sold as they cannot be used. This change has been made due to the determination that the NBN cannot deliver the speeds promised. With the original plan in tatters after the Liberal government downgraded the network components to use "Multi Technology Mix" many customers lack the physical components to connect to the NBN to be able to receive the full speeds available. While some of the initial rollout delivered fibre to the premises the Liberal government switched the rollout to use copper and existing cable systems with many customers connect via FTTN leaving a lot to be desired in terms of speed. Farewell 100Mbps, we hardly knew you.
No large scale infrastructure plan survives contact with an incoming government.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday March 03 2020, @12:15PM (1 child)
See this post [soylentnews.org], technically it was an attempt to save money, but what really drove it was the realisation that Australia's entire GDP for the next twenty years wouldn't have been enough to enable a rollout of the original plan. It was doomed to fail as soon as it was proposed.
(Score: 2) by Pav on Wednesday March 04 2020, @01:40AM
Hmmm... there's plenty of pre-existing channel, and the population centres are generally on coastal flood plains with better soils, but while it is true that the inland has pretty hard rocky soils these aren't that big of a problem and there is local equipment even right down to the smallest scale operations to make it much easier. I grew up in a place called Charters Towers (inland from Townsville/Queensland), and I had to dig postholes in some pretty horrilbe ground by hand with a crowbar on my fathers hobby farm - compacted rock-hard clay, and deconposed granite a little way down until the solid bedrock. (We basically created a new soil with gypsum, organic matter etc... but that's another story). My father wouldn't spare me the labour and hire/buy a cheap little "dingo" [dingo.com.au] ie. a little trenching, post hole digging, earth moving etc... machine the size of a ride-on mower. Relatively fast trench digging is a solved problem even for the smallest scale guys who don't do much of this kind of thing - my brother and uncle used them on small building sites all the time. Even solid rock is just a question of a jackhammer attachment... much more effective than hand-held because of the extra inertia of the machine, and not much more expensive. It just gets easier for larger operations with more professional gear.