Internet in Australia
In July 2009, the federal government, in partnership with the industrial sector, began rolling out a nationwide fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and improved fixed wireless and satellite access through the National Broadband Network.
[7][8] In October 2020, the federal government announced an upgrade by 2023 of NBN fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) services to FTTP for 2 million households, at a cost of A$3.5 billion.
[9] Australia was recognised as part of the Internet when the .au domain (ccTLD) was delegated to Robert Elz of the Australian Computing Science Network (ACSNet) in March 1986.
[5] In late 1994 the Telstra team led by Max Bosotti commenced negotiations to acquire all the assets of AARNet and establish a fully fledged commercial operation.
After extensive negotiations with the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) Telstra Internet commenced operation out of Canberra on 1 July 1995.
Founded in 1992 by Mark Gregson, APANA ran many small, widely dispersed gratis hosts for bulletin board systems and newsgroups, but developed into a provider of low-cost, non-commercial access to the Internet for its members.
[13] The first competition to Telstra's DSLAMs was provided by then Optus subsidiary XYZed, launching business-grade xDSL services from 50 exchanges in September 2000.
[14] Competition in the residential infrastructure market began in 2003, when Adelaide-based ISP Internode[15] installed a DSLAM in the town of Meningie, South Australia.
[citation needed] In 2005, Telstra announced it would invest A$210 million in upgrading all of its ADSL exchanges to support ADSL2+ by mid-2006, though they did not say whether they would continue to restrict access speeds.
This was later scrapped, with Telstra citing regulations forcing it to provide cheap wholesale access to its competitors as the reason not to invest in upgrading their network.
This has allowed many Australians access to higher speed broadband, while the comparatively lower wholesale rates discouraged competitive infrastructure investment in most cases.
[23] In June 2006, the Australian Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) under the then coalition government called for expressions of interest for discussion of how to invest up to $878 million in funding under Broadband Connect program to provide greater access to broadband services in rural and regional areas at prices comparable to services available in metropolitan areas, $500 million of which was envisaged as being available to infrastructure projects.
[24] On 21 September 2006, the government announced they would invest up to $600 million in broadband infrastructure projects in rural, regional and remote Australia under this program.
[28] The funding agreement was signed on 9 September 2007, which was dependent upon further planning by OPEL and confirmation that it would reach the agreed levels of coverage.
[29][30] The then federal opposition communications spokesman stated that they would honour the agreement, a stance maintained after winning government two months later, despite their own competing National Broadband Network proposal.
[45] Former ACCC chairman, Graeme Samuel later said the proposal was 'an illusion on cost and on the capacity to truly deliver high-speed broadband to end users'.
[48] However, on 2 April 2008 Communications Minister Stephen Conroy of the then recently elected Rudd Government, terminated the agreement because OPEL had 'failed to meet the terms of [the] contract'.
[49] Nine telecommunications companies—AAPT, Internode, iiNet, Macquarie Telecom, Optus, PowerTel, Primus, Soul and TransACT, formerly known as G9—proposed its own FTTN network on 20 April 2007,[50] however, it was rejected by the ACCC on 17 December 2007 because of future unknown conditions for access.
[55] (a) Data not collected on broadband before 2004–05[56] (b)[57] [58] Internet access and at use at home by age 06-07 [59] In October 2008, the OECD compared countries where more than 50% of offers have bit/data caps.
Smaller ISPs often resell these wholesaled services, but recently there has been substantial infrastructure investment in DSLAM technology by other providers using local loop unbundling.
[65][66] Wireless internet is better suited to the more rural areas of Australia due to the larger distances and lower population density which make traditional lines costly.
[67] These are also considered a solution for providing broadband in regional areas[68] Most Australian ISP plans traffic shape residential customers after a monthly download quota has been exceeded.
Shaped connection speeds are typically claimed to be 64-256 kbit/s (kilo-bits) per second, depending on the plan, although 64 kbit/s is barely-usable and an industry standard slow-usable minimum would be reasonable.
[71] In March 2007, the ALP announced a new policy, accepting the privatization of Telstra in order to fund a world class national broadband network.
[74] Due to Australia's large size, sparse population, and relative remoteness to other countries, a significant amount of infrastructure is required for Internet communications.
The vast majority of Australia's international Internet transit capacity is sourced from undersea fibre-optic communications cables to Asia and the US.
This has been seen as a move to curb the amount of peer-to-peer activity, since other services which upload such as multiplayer computer games are not counted towards the limit if played through certain servers.
[77] With the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre's Geoff Huston stating that IPv4 addresses will be exhausted prior to October 2010,[78] IPv6 is becoming increasingly important in the future of Australian Internet connectivity.
[88] In February 2017, the Federal Government of Australia funded the project for the NBN in order to build a mixed technology network.
[90][91] In June 2020 Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed that Australian organisations, including governments and businesses, and key infrastructure were being targeted by a sophisticated foreign state-based hacker.
