- This is Australia -
a land of unfortunately poor internet.
As someone whose career has taken a turn
to be entirely based of said internet,
let me tell you, this is a very frustrating reality.
And that frustration has been felt
by more and more of my fellow Australians
as working from home becomes the new normal.
Now, the reason Australia has such poor internet
is because it is very big with a very small population,
which means any internet company
that wants to provide this service
needs to pay a lot for infrastructure
while only accessing a tiny pool of customers.
[internet buzzing sound]
Compare this with any European nation
or even the United States
and you will see that you get much more people
per mile of internet cable that you lay,
and therefore, more return on your investment.
However, recently, there has been a private company
here in Australia that was going to take the chance
and offer to provide high-speed internet to Australians,
but the government told them they couldn't.
Sad...but why?
Well, you see, the Australian government
had recognized this internet problem,
and it also knew that if its advanced economy
was going to have a chance of remaining competitive
in the 21st century,
it probably needed something better than dial-up connections
to its businesses and homes.
So they rolled out the NBN or National Broadband Network.
Now, this in and of itself
was a fine piece of infrastructure in theory.
It would connect the whole nation via modern fiber optic
and give people download and upload speeds
in line with their Western contemporaries.
The problem was, it was a large public infrastructure project,
and inevitably, politics got involved and ruined everything.
What Australia ended up with
was a system that was only possibly better
than the internet infrastructure it had before
after costing a cool $56 billion.
Anyway, the private sector saw an opportunity
to deliver a better experience at a comparable price
and were told "No" because it would ruin the premise
of the whole NBN system.
You see, in terms of internet,
Australia has some very clearly profitable
and unprofitable zones to do business in.
The major cities filled with lots of rich businesses
and densely packed housing - very profitable.
The outback where you have to lay a million dollarydoos
worth of cable to get to one shack - not so profitable.
The government figured that it could address
this inherent imbalance
by providing infrastructure everywhere
and compensating for the losses in the country
with profits in the cities.
The private companies that were planning to provide
a better service were, of course, only looking to do so
in the profitable cities,
which would cut off the government scheme from its profit centers
and ruin the whole neutral cost model
they had going for them.
This decision to effectively block fair competition
has caused a lot of outrage,
especially amongst those in the cities
who were not happy with their subpar internet,
but there is always going to be a loser in this scenario.
If these companies were allowed to compete,
the government-run NBN would become unprofitable
and require ongoing support from taxpayers
to fund a non-financially viable venture.
If companies aren't allowed to compete,
then the Australian public is ultimately at the mercy of the government
to make sure their internet infrastructure is competitive in the modern world.
A government that has shown themselves
to not exactly be super competent
at sticking to the plans drawn out by experts, we might add.
And, of course,
if the government doesn't get involved at all,
we have a situation where people in the country
won't have access at all,
and even people in the city run the risk
of being left behind by complacent corporations
that don't wanna make the large
and risky investment into technical infrastructure.
So given the options, what would you pick?
Or maybe you can help us
by fixing our little conundrum here.
Now, if this whole video sounds like a bit of a rant, it is.
I hope one day I'll be able to upload a video
in less than an hour.
But in the meantime, at least it's an interesting case study
into the dynamic between private and public services.
And if you wanna see an interesting dynamic
between two warring nations, go and watch our video
on why Hawaii once had its very own special currency.
Thanks, guys. Bye!