Australia has deplorable broadband pricing and speed, and mostly it is because of our incumbent telecom Telstra. Since the vast majority of ISP’s in Australia are in fact Telstra wholesale resellers, Telstra have had no real incentive to improve their offerings and price. Recently they significantly dropped their retail ADSL pricing and introduced a $29.95 (AUD) 256/64 ADSL plan. unfortunately they didn’t reduce their wholesale price to match. The result was that reseller ISP’s had great difficulties even competing with Telstra’s retail arm. The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) were called in and issued Telstra with a “competition notice” that had the power to fine Telstra 10 Million dollars for each breach, and another one million for every day the breaches continued. Instead Telstra is rebating $6.5 million to affected wholesale ISP’s, something which in many minds is just a minor slap on the wrist.
In Australia, we are totally amazed at how cheap and fast broadband is in the US. We are on the broadband equivalent of dial-up over here, and paying a great deal of money for the privilege. This will not change as long as Telstra is the only real player on the scene. Fortunately both Optus and Iinet are rolling out their own ADSL2 equipment into Telstra’s exchanges and will soon be able to offer speeds that Telstra cannot compete with. (Telstra’s equipment is all ADSL1 standard). The privatising of Telstra over here has been a real problem as the more private they get, the more they serve their shareholders and the less they seem to serve their customers best interests.
Read more here and here.
