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posted by cmn32480 on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the golden-rules-make-golden-fools dept.

Once again the flailing Australian National Broadband Network is in the news with a couple in Melbourne being quoted up to 1.2 million dollars to connect to the NBN. The primary reason for this is the the house in question is seven kilometres of fibre would be needed to connect the property. With the copper network being switched off around Australian, even in places where it is still viable, the only option is to switch to the NBN unless a competing network already exists. The NBN has stated that it can cost $30,000 to run fibre for a "few hundred metres". It is getting to the point where it can be cheaper just to move house if the internet is bad.


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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Sourcery42 on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:17PM (22 children)

    by Sourcery42 (6400) on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:17PM (#692866)

    Sooo...almost as costly as Comcast Triple Play then.

    • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:57PM (19 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:57PM (#692898)
      • Why should the rest of us have to subsidize your rural living?

        You are choosing to live out there; if you don't like it, sell your property to someone who does like it.

      • Also, why must we always look to quasi-governmental agencies to do one particular thing?

        Society's like Australia's were built by people banding together to scratch their own itches.

        Hint: You don't need 100 Mbps, and it doesn't need to be wired.

      Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily been disabled.

      Fuck you people. This is why we can't have nice things.

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:12PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:12PM (#692911)

        Because the Australian government passed laws forcing people to use the NBN :(

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:22PM (#692921)

        Get a better vpn.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Popeidol on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:35PM (7 children)

        by Popeidol (35) on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:35PM (#692963) Journal

        Why should the rest of us have to subsidize your rural living

        Disclaimer: The residents, in this case, are whining dickheads. They're covered by fixed wireless NBN, and complaining about getting 30Mb/s. I'm still a year or two away from NBN in my area and this comment is posted from a 2.5Mb DSL line. If they're regularly dropping to under 10mb/s they either need to talk to their provider about allocated bandwidth or a technician, but I'd love to trade places right now.

        Having said that: in the general case it's a good idea to provide services to areas you want people to live. You want people to be able to farm, and you want people to have the option of living out of town. My parents are farmers who aren't far out, only about 200km from the state capital and 6km from the nearest town. I grew up there with dialup. They had a mediocre mix of ISDN/satellite for a while, then for about four years they had an antenna on their roof to catch the edge of 3G coverage. It worked about half the time. A year ago, they got on NBN satellite and it was a game changer. They still want something better (4G should cover them if local towers get upgraded from 3G, and the local council has been trying to lure in WISPs for a few years) but this is orders of magnitude better than before.

        Many of my extended family live much further out. Some old friends live three thousand kilometres away - still in the state. I'm completely okay with my money subsidizing things that let them live there. Internet is a requirement today, and it's important people who live out of a city can still function in society. If it was around at the time, the 'why should we support you' argument would have meant the place I grew up would have had no power or phone line.

        This is all anecdotal and based off a partial comment so feel free to ignore it. I just felt the argument could use some context.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:12PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:12PM (#693063)

          Is that the simple, albeit still expensive, way of handling this is permanent concrete or geopolymer conduits run along or under the road. They already need access for power lines, plumbing, etc. So why not start working on a permanent set of conduits you can run multiples of these assets in, with permanently excavated areas they can be worked on/maintained? Once these conduits are placed, given sufficient space allocated for future growth/use you will only have to find an available mounting point for the new service, or splice an existing line with fiber repeater/relay/switch and you can provide service to the new location. As a result of this even individual taps being built out will be reusable in the future as the region expands. Depending on where this is, Australia has a lot of open shoulder on its more rural roads, so this shouldn't be possible.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:40AM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:40AM (#693333)

            Sounds expensive. Who pays?
            Around here they would flood.

            • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday June 15 2018, @01:13PM (1 child)

              by Pino P (4721) on Friday June 15 2018, @01:13PM (#693462) Journal

              People who eat would pay farmers for food, and farmers would use this money to pay for the conduits.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @06:09PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @06:09PM (#693620)

                If domestic groceries double or triple in price, would people still pay, or are they going to buy Chinese stuff full of heavy metals?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:54PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:54PM (#693108)

          I'm completely okay with my money subsidizing [my family]

          You realize how irrelevant that is, right?

          What you really mean to say is "I'm completely okay with taking other people's money for subsidizing my family."

          That's different. Very different.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Popeidol on Friday June 15 2018, @06:31PM (1 child)

            by Popeidol (35) on Friday June 15 2018, @06:31PM (#693629) Journal

            You realize how irrelevant that is, right?

            Yep. Thats why I mentioned it was anecdotal and you were free to ignore it.

            What you really mean to say is "I'm completely okay with taking other people's money for subsidizing my family."

            I'm offering it as a perspective directly relevant to the story at hand, because it might be useful to others. I'm okay with my money subsidizing rural areas, which includes family and friends. I've also lived in a city my whole adult life and understand why some people disagree. Your opinions are your own, but if you want to argue the point, maybe bring an argument?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:52PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 16 2018, @12:52PM (#693930)

              What's irrelevant is not your anecdote, but rather the fact that you're talking about how you want to spend your own money!

              That's not the issue at all.

              The issue is whether you and others should have the right to spend other people's money.

              You have an opinion; I have an argument.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Pino P on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:03PM (5 children)

        by Pino P (4721) on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:03PM (#693055) Journal

        Why should the rest of us have to subsidize your rural living?

        Because rural people's food production subsidizes your urban eating of food.

        Also, why must we always look to quasi-governmental agencies to do one particular thing?

        Because it's criminal trespass for anybody but the government to bring utility lines across nonsubscribers' land.

        Hint: You don't need 100 Mbps, and it doesn't need to be wired.

        It has to be high-volume because of the sheer size of the files that farmers use nowadays. In the transcript of episode 6 of Mozilla's IRL podcast [irlpodcast.org], Mark Erickson said:

        They create these files that they need to then upload to their crop advisor and they would start the download at 6 o’clock at night and at 6 o’clock in the morning, it wasn’t finished yet because it was so slow or it had timed out and they had to restart it. They would take hours and hours as it was actually cheaper and quicker for them to drive it 50 or 60 miles and drive back.

        This means it has to be either wired or high-volume wireless. The way wireless Internet carriers' explanation of the bandwidth caps on their plans make it sound, the laws of physics preclude high-volume wireless Internet service to desktop or laptop computers.

        • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:56PM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:56PM (#693109)

          You need more money to pay for your lifestyle? Charge more money for your food.

          Are you starting to see materialize here a picture of how society can organize itself strictly through voluntary exchange?

          • (Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:39PM (3 children)

            by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:39PM (#693195)

            ...society can organize itself strictly through voluntary exchange?

            Go on, tell us about that violently imposed monopoly again.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:37AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:37AM (#693331)

              Aud government passes law starting only the POS they built can be used.
              People bypass said POS and build their own GD telecommunications.
              Gov fines the naughty purple who dared fight the gov
              the free and mighty purple me with awesome cheap net access and horrible auto correct give the gov the bid
              the government officiant appointed natty people in blue arrest the aberrants

              there is your violence. Peaceful high speed Internet living geeks throw in jail by th Jr wicked nbn baking government

              • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday June 15 2018, @01:10PM

                by Pino P (4721) on Friday June 15 2018, @01:10PM (#693461) Journal

                People bypass said POS and build their own GD telecommunications.
                Gov fines the naughty purple who dared fight the gov

                In your ancap scenario, the government would only be doing the bidding of the non-subscribers over whose land the physical medium for "their own GD telecommunications" was pulled.

              • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:58AM

                by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @06:58AM (#693873) Journal

                Peaceful high speed Internet living geeks throw in jail by th Jr wicked nbn baking government

                This might be an insightful comment - but I haven't got a clue because I don't know what it means. The usual language for debate here is any recognisable dialect of English. This isn't.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Pino P on Thursday June 14 2018, @07:25PM (2 children)

        by Pino P (4721) on Thursday June 14 2018, @07:25PM (#693126) Journal

        if you don't like it, sell your property to someone who does like it.

        To whom, and for what purpose would the buyer use it? Now that it has become more common for farmers to upload big files to crop advisers, anyone who would use the land for agriculture would need the same upload capability.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @01:10AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @01:10AM (#693283)

          If your business needs an upgrade, then pay for that upgrade.

          What could your point possibly be?

          Need to pay for that upgrade? Well, you've got 2 choices:

          • Prove your request is warranted by getting people to pay you voluntarily more money for your product.

          • Whine and dine the local guns politicians, urging them to steal money from others on your behalf.

          I know on which choice I want society to be built.

          • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday June 15 2018, @01:16PM

            by Pino P (4721) on Friday June 15 2018, @01:16PM (#693465) Journal

            My point is that the finding of unaffordability of an upgrade dramatically reduced the value of two things: the value of this parcel of land to a prospective buyer, and the value of farming experience to the landowners who now have to retrain for an urban job.

    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:51PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:51PM (#692941)
      • Why should the rest of us have to subsidize your rural living?

        You are choosing to live out there; if you don't like it, sell your property to someone who does like it.

      • Also, why must we always look to quasi-governmental agencies to do one particular thing?

        Society's like Australia's were built by people banding together to scratch their own itches.

        Hint: You don't need 100 Mbps, and it doesn't need to be wired.

      Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily been disabled.

      Fuck you people. This is why we can't have nice things.

      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday June 16 2018, @07:04AM

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 16 2018, @07:04AM (#693874) Journal

        There is sometimes a price to pay for your anonymity - and this is part of it.

        Are you using a VPN? If so, perhaps others using the same VPN are causing the problem. Try posting direct and see if it helps resolve the problem. Failing that, try making up a nickname and using that to post comments - anecdotal evidence suggests that it currently works for over 6700 members of our community.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:28PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:28PM (#692872)

    obviously they paid more for their running water, so they can't complain.
    I guess the electricity was cheaper, since you can put that wire overground. although there would be the problem of clearing forests etc, so I can't be sure.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:41PM (9 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:41PM (#692884)

      Its AUS so they need to armor the cable to survive the teeth of the dreaded carnivorous Australian Drop Bear, a truly ferocious predator animal.

      Although semi-seriously, I live in a state where approximately nothing outside is poisonous to humans, whereas everything in AUS seems poisonous, so maybe it costs more to install outside plant stuff when the workers are fending off human wave attacks of poisonous snakes and Arrakis Sandworms and whatever else lives in AUS.

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:14PM (6 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:14PM (#692914)

        See it is complete BS like this that gives people the wrong impression about this place.
        Drop bears don't eat metal cable.
        Idiot.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:38PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:38PM (#692934)

          you conveniently left out the fact that this cable is not a metal cable.
          there! I have now revealed your evil ways!

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:48PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:48PM (#692969)

          I thought Drop Bears were omnivorous?

        • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:18PM

          by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:18PM (#693211)

          Drop bears don't eat metal cable.
          Idiot.

          Does anyone know if Vegemite is a metal or not? Until this is resolved... well I wouldn't leave cables laying around the AUS wilderness.

        • (Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:04PM (1 child)

          by Fluffeh (954) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:04PM (#693235) Journal

          Drop bears don't eat metal cable.
          Idiot.

          Yes, that's true, but once I did see one rip down a live powerline to pick at some meat and bone stuck between its teeth...

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:29AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:29AM (#693329)

            Obviously it did not see you

      • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:41PM (1 child)

        by bob_super (1357) on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:41PM (#693197)

        Easy solution:
        1) attach cable to sandworm
        2) send sandworm towards house, draggin the cable underground
        3) dispose of sandworm when it comes up
        4) spend $500k to rebuild house, plug cable into LAN

        There you have it! Saved half the cost!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:31AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 15 2018, @04:31AM (#693330)

          How, exactly, does one "dispose" of a sandworm? Throw in a dropbear?

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:42PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:42PM (#692885) Journal

      I doubt they have running water.
      Accordingly to TFA, the guy lives in Jam Jerrup [google.com] - switch to satellite view and you'll see farmland and some beach cabins there.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:37PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:37PM (#692881)

    Having worked closely with that field (as in fiber) for decades, its typical monopoly / hollywood accounting in that you CAN spend like $1M/mile or whatever to install fiber IF and only IF its right thru the financial district in downtown Melbourne or whatever passes for a large city in AUS. However, hyper-rural aerial fiber on poles is actually cheaper to install than power lines, generally power line contractors installing single phase aerial like 200 amps or less they'll run a profit at $7/foot or more, installed w/ materials.

    So, what, say 7 km is wand wavy 23 kilofeet or so? Thats close to 25 kilofeet to make the multiplication in my head easy, figure $175K to install single phase 200 amp service per most electric company tariffs at a profit. Now it would seem installing 7 clicks of fiber would define rural living, thats one hell of a driveway to snowplow, eh mate? or whatever AUS really say to each other, and installation is staggeringly cheaper out on the farm along a farm road than thru the HOA subdivision or city center, yet of course copper isn't any cheaper just because you ship it out to the middle of nowhere, so a private installation contractor can probably install that fiber for a VERY hand wavy $100K US dollars.

    I actually bothered to look it up in case AUS dollars are worth less than pesos in which case 1.2M would be cheap, but an AUS buck is about one US buck (to one sig fig anyway) so its ridiculous ripoff.

    Now what I have seen on the job and at past jobs is nobody willing to risk their job on pencil whipping and duct taping some shit together that you know will work but doesn't meet an arbitrary corporate HQ standard. So yeah they need 7 KM of fiber but no one mentioned that the connection point to existing fiber is already 50 KM from the nearest repeater site so technically to meet some arbitrary standard they need to build an expensive repeater hut cookie cutter designed to be capable of serving multiple 1152 count fiber cables just to serve this one poor bastard but the only note in the press release will be the fiber. Kinda like electric power comes from copper wires in the air, not multi billion dollar plant complexes LOL. Oh and I forgot to mention there's already a chain of 3 fiber repeaters and corporate standard is no more than 3 so they actually need to build a full switching hut not just a simple repeater hut or an even simpler single line in line extender, so the charge includes 1 milllion dollars to build a complete station (insert evil genius twisting his mustache while sipping Aus Fosters Beer) and so on. Well sorry old chap but technically we need to assess you a significant fraction of the construction cost of the geosynchronous satellite launch pad AND a satellite ground station complete with radio telescope sized uplink antennas AND a fraction of a new nuclear power plant to run it all AND the previously mentioned repeater hut and switching station complete with vendor neutral carrier hotel facility and rentable rack space data center AND .... next thing you know its a billion bucks to install some "fiber" although its actually a billion bucks of buildings and infrastructure and like $500 worth of fiber. This is almost certainly whats going on here.

    • (Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:26PM

      by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:26PM (#692923)

      Love to have such postings, thank you, VLM! Exactly what's probably going on.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:56PM (4 children)

    by Aiwendil (531) on Thursday June 14 2018, @01:56PM (#692897) Journal

    Isn't wireless an option? I mean, an ubiquiti airfiber24 can cover about 13km. so for that 7km one such pair should be enough, or for the 50km to its nearest hub five pairs (the specs also clain up to 20km, so you might get away with three pairs). It seems to be priced at about 3.5k USD each (CBA to see if it is per pair).

    So just the hardware would go for between 3k or 35k USD, add to that housing. So if you are willing to be limited to only 2gbps per second and have a few hops extra for a couple of dozen ms delay it should be possibly to do it for less than about 75k.

    Since australia isn't exactly dense in terms of population (outside of cities) they really should standardize relayboxes for such things simply plonk it in where there is long range coverage and power.

    (I might have missed something fundamental - network is not something I enjoy)

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:18PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:18PM (#692919)

      The guy has wireless. It isn't cutting the mustard.

      • (Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:40PM

        by Aiwendil (531) on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:40PM (#692935) Journal

        Thanks, it made me bother to skim the FA (STFA?). Seems like NBN selects really crappy solutions (or rarely upgrades them).

        Also made me skim the unbt website, seems like they have a thing priced ad about 1k usd (again, no idea if pair or single) that can push about 1Gb/s for about 100km with a latency below 1ms.

        Kinda makes me wonder he could just buy a 2x2m plot at nearest place that already has a hookup and ask NBN to hook that in and install a relay station there.

      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:21PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:21PM (#693212)

        WISP is like cable tv in the 80s, you can do it right and it'll work great, but you can also half ass it and make even more profit, so you guess how that works out.

    • (Score: 2) by Entropy on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:12PM

      by Entropy (4228) on Thursday June 14 2018, @10:12PM (#693206)

      Wireless sucks. The only person who thinks wireless doesn't suck is that idiot running Verizon wireless.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by suburbanitemediocrity on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:03PM (2 children)

    by suburbanitemediocrity (6844) on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:03PM (#692902)

    I was going to get a couple of these https://www.amazon.com/Ethernet-Converter-single-mode-1000Base-LX-1000Base-Tx/dp/B01MPZYP9Q/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1528984585&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=tp+link+fiber+media+converter&psc=1 [amazon.com], a couple hundred dollars of cable from ebay and (illegally) split my internet with them.

    I think it should last a few years just laying on the ground, if not, we'll staple it to the trees.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:29PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:29PM (#692928)

      It should last a few years just lying on the ground, not laying.

      Also, how about using a proper link [amazon.com]?

      • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:27PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:27PM (#693085) Journal

        "Lying" has another meaning 🤥

        It's like "they": people are willing to sacrifice correct grammatical number in favor of that pronoun's neuter-animate gender. Likewise, to avoid the homophone that means "tell a deliberately deceptive untruth", some people have reanalyzed "lay" as a mediopassive verb [wikipedia.org], where the grammatical subject is the patient if intransitive or the agent if transitive. Another familiar mediopassive verb "bake", where "the cookies are baking" but "Staisy is baking cookies".

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:08PM (16 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:08PM (#692906) Journal

    It's only a matter of time before satellite based ISP service becomes an actual option.

    For example Iridium Next. (their new constellation of satellites, not their old constellation) These are LEO satellites (eg, low ping times) and cover any point on the earth. (South pole, middle of ocean, desert, mountain, territory in unfriendly countries, etc)

    Or SpaceX's plan to have LEO satellites provide ISP service.

    And other ISP service that exists today. On a week cruise in early 2017 I had good internet service for only $10 / day / device. From the middle of the ocean. That's not a sustainable price for regular ISP service. But the technology is there, and will only get better / cheaper.

    IMO, it's a matter of time

    Then Comcast, AT&T, etc will be crying and whining!

    Well, they're already whining.

    Are we tired of whining yet?

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:13PM (1 child)

      by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us (6553) on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:13PM (#692912) Journal
      --
      This sig for rent.
      • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:29PM

        by Pino P (4721) on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:29PM (#693090) Journal

        Last I checked, large uploads and downloads weren't economic on satellite because of its roughly $5 per GB rate, in the same ballpark as cellular.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by Snotnose on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:14PM (5 children)

      by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:14PM (#692913)

      It's only a matter of time before satellite based ISP service becomes an actual option.

      Not when latency matters. Round trip from ground to bird to ground is probably gonna be 100ms, add in all the other delays and you're looking at some mighty large TCP windows. Say goodbye to gaming, Skype, and possibly streaming video/audio.

      --
      Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:15PM (4 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:15PM (#693018) Journal

        Don't confuse LEO and GEO satellites.

        LEO satellites are not very far up. Practically scraping the ground. That's where the L in LEO comes from.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:29PM (3 children)

          by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:29PM (#693087)

          I worked on the TCP/IP code for Globalstar. G* used LEO satellites, I calculated that if the bird was on the horizon you had a 250 ms round trip. We were happy with a 100 ms delay but prepared for much more.

          --
          Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:05PM (1 child)

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:05PM (#693147) Journal

            Yep, you are right. I hadn't thought that through. Straight overhead, 90° elevation, you have a short distance. But at any bearing out towards the horizon, you have a much greater distance.

            That is an interesting problem to look forward to.

            Of course, downloads can still have great throughput with sliding window protocols. (With "great" defined as whatever bandwidth you can get out of some new satellite system designed for internet.)

            But you can never make up for latency. And some applications require low latency to work well.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
            • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:49PM

              by bob_super (1357) on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:49PM (#693198)

              > And some applications require low latency to work well.

              "You see, officer, it's just a misunderstanding: my ISP is so slow that if I click on the teen porn, I get MILF porn, and if I click on the MILF porn, I get granny porn. And I really wanted teen porn"

          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:06PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:06PM (#693148) Journal

            Maybe I'm being over optimistic in hoping that satellite based ISPs could free us from the tyranny of ground based ISPs.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:35PM (2 children)

      by isostatic (365) on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:35PM (#692932) Journal

      Been using satelite internet for over a decade. Microwave point-to-point is a better solution here, or just run a fibre sensibly (which costs peanuts if you have permission on the land)

      Do these people not have electricity? Why can't the fibre run on the same poles?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:41PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @02:41PM (#692937)

        Do these people not have electricity? Why can't the fibre run on the same poles?

        That's just it, they can, and it would be cheap.

        Some corrupt higher-ups just want to buy new yachts.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:16PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:16PM (#693019) Journal

          Or they want to protect rural people from the evils of the intarweb tubes.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:14PM (4 children)

      by wisnoskij (5149) <reversethis-{moc ... ksonsiwnohtanoj}> on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:14PM (#693014)

      Are there ways to make satellites work well? The way I understood it, satellites just do not do upload. So you have dial-up upload paired with high latency because of the distances involved.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:20PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:20PM (#693020) Journal

        It depends on the bandwidth of your upload connection.

        As I mentioned, somehow, I had good internet service in the middle of the ocean on a cruise for a week.

        Iridium's Next is aiming for speeds more sensible than they presently can offer. Their Next system is obviously already designed, as some of those SpaceX launches have been Iridium launches carrying a dispenser which releases ten satellites in a single orbital plane.

        I don't know what Iridium's competitors offer.

        But I believe it is inevitable. Eventually. Hopefully soon. But eventually is likely to be a certainty.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:43PM (2 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @05:43PM (#693037) Journal

        I have heard of the type of satellite service you are talking about. From GEO satellites.

        LEO satellites do upload. While I cannot go into specificity, your mobile device would be assigned a certain channel and time slot both for upload and another for download. Handoffs occur frequently because LEO satellites are only in view for several minutes.

        The issue is building a service that does this at more practical speeds suitable for the internet rather than for voice.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:08PM (1 child)

          by Snotnose (1623) on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:08PM (#693179)

          LEO satellites do upload. While I cannot go into specificity, your mobile device would be assigned a certain channel and time slot both for upload and another for download. Handoffs occur frequently because LEO satellites are only in view for several minutes.

          The issue is building a service that does this at more practical speeds suitable for the internet rather than for voice.

          The problem with uploads is the strength of the signal you can generate. Directv or somesuch, not a problem. Your phone? Problem. You can see this with sat phones. You'll be able to get a signal but can't make a call simply because the phone can't reach the satellite.

          Handoffs aren't a problem. A satellite connection won't handoff any more often than a car going down the freeway, or in city driving surrounded by tall buildings. Now if you're in a plane on your phone then handoffs are a problem. You might have line of sight to a cell tower, but your puny phone has to pass through the plane and travel many a mile to be heard. We did a study in the early 90s that showed that by the time the handoff was complete it was time to do another handoff. Not a situation a carrier wants to be in. Most of the systems I've looked at have a path ground -> satellite -> plane -> satellite -> ground.

          As for who is doing satellite internet, take a look at Viasat. They started with connecting planes to the internet but they're also looking at home internet service as well.

          --
          Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:10PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 14 2018, @11:10PM (#693238) Journal

            Don't sat uplinks have to be on frequencies that are not used for any other porpoise to prevent drowning out your signal?

            We haven't even talked about doppler shift, which would be significant. And the doppler shifted frequencies would have to be part of the allocated spectrum reversed for use by the satellite system.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Shire on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:42PM (2 children)

    by The Shire (5824) on Thursday June 14 2018, @03:42PM (#692965)

    Mr Stewart said the service has been "terrible".
    "We're getting 25-30 megabits on a 50-megabit service at best. The average is between nine and 20 megabits per second," he said.
    "In my work I connect to client sites and do remote work."

    Seriously? This guy does remote work that exceeds 9mb/s ? I do multiple site remote work and monitoring too and I have yet to see it approach 1mb/s.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:38PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @06:38PM (#693099)

      to be fair, if you pay for 50 and you get 9, service is objectively "terrible".

      • (Score: 2) by The Shire on Friday June 15 2018, @03:26AM

        by The Shire (5824) on Friday June 15 2018, @03:26AM (#693316)

        "Up to 50mb/s" covers a range of speeds down to and including zero.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:22PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:22PM (#693153)

    The nbn is a political football. The government mandated no more fibre.

    There is no way 7km costs that much. The NBN think we are all stupid.

    At my work place we got Telstra to quote on fibre install over 5km. Quotes varied between 8 and 25k. I found that variance way too high and inconsistent.

    NBN quoting over a million is just bulkshit to fulfill the governments mandate to leave Rupert’s Foxtel as a fixed like monopoly.

    For fuck sake, the prior pm Tony fucking Abbott had Rupert on speed dial to run policy past him.

    Abbot is a fucking stupid cunt. As is Turnbull.

    These are the same cunts who are trying to force overseas online retails to collect and remit GST to the au government (!) to save bricks and mortar retailers like Gerry fucking Harvey.

    These idiots need a bullet for the damage they are doing to the economy with their incompetence and corruption.

    Unfortunately the opposition isn’t that much better, full of union grubs.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by evilcam on Friday June 15 2018, @03:47AM

      by evilcam (3239) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 15 2018, @03:47AM (#693319)

      As angry as AC is, this post is on the money.

      The NBN has been a joke, at some level, from the very beginning. The ALP's (former, more progressive government) approach to CVC pricing done on the back of a napkin was fucking cringeworthy, then the LNP (current, more conservative gov) decision to change the network mid build to a Fibre to the Node approach was even dumber. Buying asbestos-riddles pits and oxidized copper from Telstra and Optus (large Aussie telcos) for billions of dollars was beyond fucking stupid.

      But hey, whilst the Aus Public are paying for this bullshit, successive governments have been able to finger point and blame game their way to bonus political points whilst keeping their donors happy; the system working as intended!

      Maybe I'm just bitter that I can't get a fault to be investigated after seeing my sync speed drop from >100Mbit to 12Mbit, it's all good..."
      Pack of ankles.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:49PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 14 2018, @08:49PM (#693172)

    to another country.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:52PM

      by bob_super (1357) on Thursday June 14 2018, @09:52PM (#693200)

      But definitely not the US, if getting 9Mb/s in a rural place is deemed a problem.
      Getting that much around here is reserved to farms breeding unicorns.

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