Australian internet is a joke Edit: accepted the A$85 Super fast plan from TPG which can get to 270Mb down and 20Mb up, I'm happy now :) Aug 2021

*So Australia has spiders, snakes, crocodiles and shitty/expensive internet. the snakes are the internet companies

"I would like fiber" "$8,000 a month" "Can I install my own fiber" "Sure, $400 a month" "But, can't I just use your fiber you already have installed for $400 a month?" "No, but you can install your own fiber for less money going off our network" *surprised Pikachu*

you can hear the pain in this man's voice

Data caps in the age of broadband makes no sense. It's like being told you can go 100 MPH down the highway but you have to stop after 100 miles.

It would be cheaper for you to put your videos on an external hard drive/ ssd overnight it to me in America and let me upload it with my Google fiber.

No idea why this was recommended to me and no idea why I clicked it. But I like it. The guy sounds like a very upbeat person. Probably the accent. Australians always sound like they're loving life.

Well i won't be living there ever! Do they at least take you out to dinner, and a movie before they screw you? I will never complain about internet here in the states again! DAMN!!

The NBN was a perfectly fine design originally, as proposed by the Rudd Government. The subsequent Abbott government made a political decision to modify the architecture to an inferior one, for no legitimate reason other than to deprive the previous government of what it perceived as a popular policy "win". They claimed it would make NBN cheaper and quicker to implement, neither of which is true, and have saddled Australia with a sub-standard Internet. Criticising the NBN without acknowledging this sabotage by the Abbott/Turnbull governments is, with respect, painting a very incomplete picture. We now face an even larger bill fixing the mess Turnbull created.

Here in Japan we have 2gigabit fiber for ¥5500 a month. That's around 55USD. The 1gigabit line is 43USD a month.

im downloading a game right now, and its going at 200kb/s Its gonna take 4 days

Thanks for the tour! Reminds me of visiting Imperial College in the UK, in the early 80's - where they had to rent a big, filing cabinet sized "300 baud modem" for a significant amount of money each month from Her Majesty's Post Office, long after a few inexpensive chips could more easily do the same thing... Today my kids don't believe my horror stories of using 1200 baud dial-up service in the 90's - long before the broad band they've grown up with! Thank goodness technology evolves so fast!

Wow. I'm in small town NZ and I have 800/500 Mbps un-capped fibre to the premise for about the same money. How did Australia fall so far behind?

In Latvia for 10 euros/month you get unlimited, 100mbit, ping bellow 5 internet.

I am just back from Japan. Most cities have free internet available out on the streets, in cafes etc, 27.73 download upload 24.59. For FREE!

I was lucky, my NBN is pre-Abbott era. Been fantastic.

Wow, these are insane price. In Poland I have 100 mbit symetric for 55PLN/m (c.a. 20AUD) and can have 1000 mbit symetric for 155PLN (c.a. 55AUD)

So Australia has spiders, snakes, crocodiles and shitty/expensive internet. Why do people want to live there?

US: hEAlthcare Australia: internEAt

Looks like about every MDF I’ve seen: Six super overpriced “well, we’re already here” companies, two “if you pay, we can be in next week” companies, the typical DSL option, and the wildcard competitor undercutting everyone else.

That's insane. In New Brunswick, Canada. We can get a 50/50 fibre connection for around 50$. That is the slowest you can get, so it's very reasonable. It used to be the same price for ADSL (5 Mbps), so I'm glad they have finally decided to upgrade their infrastructure to fibre 5 years ago.

I actually thought the voice over was Shirley Strachan from Skyhooks " all my friends are getting married" fame.... Thanks for posting

That is crazy! We pay $80 per month and I get Fiber with 1,000 Mb upload and 1,000 Mb download! Yes, 1 Gbps both ways! I ordered this because I run my own servers at home, Still cheaper than paying for shared hosting!

Watching this six years later and would you believe it hasn't gotten much better

Like Aussie, New Zealand has an "ultra fast broadband" programme that was Government (taxpayer!) initiated. We got fibre to the door about a year ago and for $NZ 104.99 per month we get 100Mbps down and 20Mbps up and a home phone line as well. We have no data cap...

If it makes you feel better, some in places in US broadband connection is still unobtainable luxury, even in cities!

Hey Dave! Any chance for an update on this video? I'd assume things may have gotten better at this point?

I worked in the Telecommunications industry all my life. It amazes me how people think much of the technology they see today is new technology or just a few years old. In the early sixties Bell Telephone or the AT&T group was digitizing telephone calls one of the type of circuit they used was called a T1 which was later adapted allowing for data to be transmitted like internet this line could transmit 1.54 megabit per second or 24 or 23 phone lines. T1 has a larger cousin call T3 which was basically 28 T1 combined. DSL and its derivatives where develop somewhere between the late 70s and early 80s . And as far as gigabit it's existed since the 90s with much of the phone companies tying their Central offices together with this technology. Most technology has existed for a long time the problem is meeting the price point at which enough people will purchase the product is the largest problem.

I like how everyone is still trying to work it out but deny the guy with the answers because they want to have done it and they are better. Yep, awesome.

Some of those fibres coming in seem to be business leased lines. They would be a private connection directly to an exchange, so they shouldn't have any bandwidth restrictions, just a data cap. The symmetrical lines which are 10/10 which even in 2017 they seem a very low speed, I would expect 100/100 for a similar price in the UK. I am also surprised Australia has limited data caps still. I have seen what it was like 11 years ago on ADSL/2/2+ in Australia, but then it would just limit your speed to a crawl if you went over the data cap.

Wow, just curious: that 20/20 package is a single user connection for how much?

Why would you need fiber to get a 20/20 signal when regular wire would work fine? Is that like the only option, or what?

That Telstra cabinet that you first pointed out is for wideband 2meg services so ISDN 30's ect fed via fibre due to distance

Fair to say that you are an IT person not a telecommunication technician, Nice video for highlighting how screwed the mixed tech NBN network is in Australia. but you're a little off the mark with what most of the stuff in that MDF room are for and what they do. Thanks for the 'A good NBN summary video' in the info box that one really sums up what customers can expect trying to switch over.

Do you know if the expensive ones were dedicated bandwidth? Those are usually very expensive

Can you please explain what a symmetrical broadband is? As for consumer level a $1800 for 10Mbps connection is obviously non sense. The one I have is from Harbour ISP (ok not Telstra but they are just a bit cheaper) for $69/m for 25Mbps.

This is crazy I work for a newer ISP here in the USA. We run fiber as well. Our residential customers can go all the way up to 10gbps up and down of course you haft to buy your own equipment for that high of speed. However, most customers that want faster speed settle at 1gbps for $69.95 a month and that is up and down and that is the total price with tax and everything.

I live in a small town in Romania. My internet connection from home is on gigalan fiber ,download speed is 900 - 950 Mb/s and upload 850 - 900 Mb/s (Unlimited downlad/upload) , very stable without interruption. It is faster to download something from the internet than to get it from HDD. The monthly subscription is incredible cheap ,I pay 15 dolars /mounth. I do not know anyone in town who have an internet connection lower than 100 Mb/s at 5 dolars/mounth. It's inconceivable to pay hundreds of dollars for a shit internet conection, The internet providers from Australia are showing you the finger and ask you to pay for this privilege. Very sad :(

I wonder how is the situation NOW (4 years later) of this video? What's your current + cheapest option? With which Company do deal with now?

That was 3 years ago, time for an update, can show us what the MDF looks like now?

1 Gbps/1 Gbps for $30/mo braggart signing in for duty ;) Here in Japan, the most common connection method in apartments is fiber to the basement of the building, with VDSL to the premises. Newer buildings have fiber to each premises. The most common fiber provider is the major telco (NTT), but they only provide you with the fiber - then you choose an ISP (among around a hundred or so) to run over it. The ISP is configured using PPPoE, so you can actually have multiple ISPs at the same time if you want (my bog-standard consumer router can have three separate PPPoE connections active at the same time!) Many ISPs are terrible and horribly under-provisioned to the point where your 1 Gbps line will see 1 Mbps during peak usage hours. In reality with my ISP I see around 300 Mbps down/200 Mbps up We moved into a small apartment building that wasn't equipped with any kind of internet access outside of a POTS line, so we got the telco to string fiber off a telephone pole and in through a hole we drilled in the balcony door. $200 installation fee.

So your building have AAPT fibre, and AAPT is owned by TPG. have you tried getting TPG's Fibre 400 before? $400/months for symmetrical 400 Mbps connection is pretty decent

just got recommended this video - what's it like now, 4 years later?

Out where I live we have fixed wireless NBN so we’ve got a diamond shape antenna that is on our roof that’s pointed to nbn tower

The smaller the country, the shorter the lines, the cheaper the lines, the cheaper the internet. This bit isn't really a surprise. I hear there are areas here in Germany where even DSL hasn't been installed yet. That's why the Pirate party of Germany demands it to be standard that the telecommunications infrastructure is to be set up and operated by official organizations like we had it until the late eighties, when the ministry for mail and telecommunications ("Post und Telekom") was in charge of just thta, mail and telephone service. Private companies would pay fees for the access to the infrastructure, but the hardware itself would remain in official property. The best way to organize it, methinks. But hey, who needs quick internet access when there are Kangaroos, Koalas and Kookaburras just outside? ^^)

I didn't see a door in that room, how did you get out ?

IN the 'test city' for australian nbn one city block recieved fibre to premisis before the rollback. We got the nbn a year before anyone else, yet it took an extra 2 years for them to work out how to control the software for a single address with multiple flats or offices.....

Interesting overview. Your new to be connected NBN service, which RSP are you using and are they providing Business Grade service levels? Or have you sacrificed the service levels for a cheaper price? Therefore WHEN there is an outage, YOUR service will be treated just the same as a residential service and put to the bottom of the queue to fix. But good luck with it all :)

I pay the equivalent of $57 aud in the uk and am getting 64mb down and 20mb up when tested. That's fibre to cabinet. Damn your internet is expensive for 90's tech !

the stoneage called, they want theit internet back :D

150/150mbit FTTP in Canada for under $30/mo... i think i have a cap, its a couple of terabytes?

A lot of buildings like that usually have one fiber optic cable coming out of the ground and then get split / distributed into multiple ethernet lines by hubs switches and firewalls for the computers and the phones

Huge island country. 24 million people. Work it out

And here I am with 50MB/s Down/30MB/s Up for 5€/month. Unlimited of course.

Is there a online syndicate in Australia, because it doesn't sound like real competition?

ISP for commercial building always have overinflated price, but for residential housing area in AU also like this?

I thought you were Aussie man reviews for a second 😂👀

Meanwhile in South Korea, you can get 1Gbps symmetric connection for $60/mth in most large builidings.

In my area, you just have to pay around $30 for a fibre broadband connection. Here optical fibre is used extensively for Internet and Cable TV distribution.

in the netherlands you can get fiber: 1Gb up and down for 60 euro, or normal cable: 300 down 30 up for 75 euro with tv and unlimited calling included

here in atlantic canada, i'm getting 350mbit/50mbit for under 200/month!! how can anybody in australia accept those prices??

Holy shit!!! In Canada I pay $102/month for 250 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. Unlimited usage as well.

Just caught this. So, three years on, is the Internet infrastructure improved at all, or is it still gobsmacking expensive for very low speeds?

That is an INSANELY CLEAN MDF compared to what I'm used to seeing! Most of the ones in the buildings I work on are an absolute rat's nest, dog's breakfast, whatever you want to call it. I dread having to do any work on those MDFs, absolute needle in a haystack trying to find the right pair, lots of abandoned cross-connects and taps everywhere, always afraid I'm going to snag something wires criss-crossing everywhere...

Dave making use of his lock-picking skills again. I know you were just searching for more dumpsters in there, but don't get caught! You could 24/7 stream if you encoded the video as ASCII art.

15-20$ for 100mbit/s in Russia.

1850/month for 10x10m with a cap of 100gb? I work for centurylink in Washington and install sequential 1gb to homes and businesses for 129 and 600 a month respectively. Those prices are ridiculous!

Dave were you not able to get TPG's fibre offering for some reason? 400Mbps down, 400Mbps up, unlimited data, $400 per month.

Wanna hear a joke? Australian fast speed internet.

not everyone in Australia has a shit connection, had 100+(max300) down 20+(max 50) up for under $100 for the past 10 years with a fringe provider, fuck the majors, telstra still has a government monopoly mentality don't expect it to change anytime soon

When I was working in Sydney we had a book for all of those notes...damn those tags everywhere :(

why is there so much fiber? in Belgium we have coax(DSL) and twisted pair, with fiber lines costing 10 000 and up to install. i still have 220 down and 80 up via coax tough! we just use cabinets along the street with repeaters in them, wich are basicly powersupplies with some huge mosfets that trigger on the input of the input line(simplification, ive had one appart, there is a lot more going on)

In the US things are like that with healthcare : |

I think the higher tier NBN plans have been unlimited for a few months now. When I started out, I had many periods of 10-15mbps down, but I could upload at 35mbps pretty much always - was kind of funny, but it's stabilised now and I usually get around 95mbps down.

I don’t even get fibre, I’m on ‘AirNBN’ where I have a dish on my roof pointing to a tower. The tower can’t even support a town of a few thousand *not* using at all at once

zis is insane

Dude just disable comments that's the best option..

NBN at my work in Liverpool, New South Wales Australia. I remember the day of the switch over. All excited thinking I'll actually get to do some work and not wait 30 seconds for each, "page", view on the internet based information system I work on. About 30 minutes later I called to ask the NBN provider if we're actually on the NBN. They assured me we were. I found zero difference to what we were on. I actually have quicker internet at home with Telstra's cable internet than what the NBN provides. My home is 7 kilometres from my work place, so we're in the same ball park, relatively speaking.

Not sure if this is available in Australia but you can have multiple dsl line concatenated into a ethernet pipe using up to four pairs one of the NTE that I have installed for customers in the past is a OneAccess 1424 not sure if this would be cheaper that the fiber but a nice benefit is that the service can still run if a pair is lost due to failure, it just runs slower so theres almost diversity in the wan delivery depending on what msan card they connect to in the exchange.

I think all UK prisons have internet by now, including Australia.

Are you aware that the pitch of your voice was getting higher and higher over the course of this video? You practically sounded like a Monty Python actor pretending to be a woman by the end. Loosen up your vocal cords a bit, you're carrying way too much tension in them.

so... they use fiber for data rates that can easily be carried by lowly cat 4 or 5???

When he spoke about his net speed it sounded very familiar to my speeds here in Missouri

that wifi is so bad you might as well make a cubesat sattelite for internet.

Unusually idotic comment in the video Dave: ”fibre to the node is redicilous”. Fibre to the node (or FTC in the uk) moved me from a patchy 512k to 80m/20m. I call bullshit on your comment !

I thought we had it bad in Canada, but that's insane. Here in Canada business plans generally have unlimited bandwidth, or can be upgraded to unlimited for around $10-$20/month, and in most places you can at least get 100/100Mbps over cable, and in newer developments you can get 1/1Gbps over fiber. For $8000/month you could get a dedicated 10/10Gbps line!

the only thing with your NBN vs the other fibers is that the fibers are like on a 1:1 connection ratio compared to NBN which is shared by everyone, 1:1 costs more because its not being shared and its just for you

I hope that viewers don't assume the creator is well informed. I live in Australia and travel regularly overseas. It's not the greatest here by a long shot, but it's nowhere near as bad as reported. A bit of real research will clarify a great many things (understand the Telecom Act constraints, and talk to a real technician about fibre in the CAN, for starters). For overseas viewer, this is a great example of what Australians would call "whinging". *lol*

So wait that's one office building but you have half a dozen ISP serving different section. What do you do if you need to send an interoffice memo to someone within the building but on a different ISP? Your files will get routed to god-knows-where and back again.

I live in sydney and get 135mbps/5mbps (Telstra) and i pay $135 plus landline, it's really really good, but since the NBN is to be installed in my area soon, that connection is going to be cut, and i am going to have to be forced to get the NBN, which i am not happy with

that box next to the telstra rack is actually Optus , its called an FTP and provides fibre connections to small medium enterprise customers in the building it can be voice over IP internet P2P basically any bandwidth up to 1gbs they don't provide residential services

moved to aus in 2013 and was so lucky to have NBN fibre to the home. I'm scared to move as every other suburb is in Fibre to the node. :(

I thought that in Italy we would be in the divide part of the digital divide, but as I saw your costs I must admit that we are really lucky!!

I'm a telecommunications technician and those prices are not unheard of for companies here either. But typically invidual consumer fiber is like 5-20€/month and company fiber 2x to 3x as much depending on certain factors.

Has it improved in the 3 years since this video?

Please tell me those aren't wire wrap terminals.

In France if your neighborhood is connected to the main fiber network (mostly at cities and around) you could get like 1gb/s for 27€/month and a little but more for 8gb/s

That is nuts that all the cables to every office are accessible from a common room.

Please post a video in a few months once you have NBN. Looking forward to how it goes between 7-11pm.

£60 (100AUD) in a new block of flats in a big city in England in 2017 will give you FTTP 1Gbps download and upload. Fibre to the cabinet is available in rural towns, for as little as £30/mo but it's 30Mbps down and 15 up last time I checked (last year). Great for small servers, which is what I used it for. crazy it costs so much over there!