The Buzz is all Broadband

Image by Brett L. via FlickrFrom Reuters:

Australia has slower and more expensive Internet access than many other developed countries, and though penetration rates are on a par, officials and experts have warned Australia may fall behind in competitiveness without faster, nationwide coverage.

They're not telling anyone in Australia anything new. Expensive broadband with poor service has come to be expected. Leading the race to the bottom is the company that can most affect service: Telstra.
There is even a term: fraudband, to describe ADSL service sold for too much but slower than dialup.
Some people in the technical field consider all Australian ADSL service fraudband because of the coverage maps. Coverage maps are published online (supposedly) showing where ADSL in different versions is available. There are two problems with the maps:

1. Commonly where coverage is shown, the telephone exchanges are too far away. Although full service is indicated within 4km of an exchange, past 1.3km or so, the quality (read: speed and reliablity) drops off dramatically.
2. The out of date, or just poorly wired, exchanges are full. ADSL may be offered in an area, but you take out a lottery ticket to get service. Some homes almost next door to an exchange have waited over a year.

IHT picked up on the story:

Australia could be a step closer to building a high-speed broadband network after the government canceled a deal for a rural system that would have overlapped with the one planned nationwide. The scrapping of the rural network plan, which was to cost 958 million Australian dollars, or $888 million, came as the government planned to invite bids for a national network as early as next week.

Hate to tellya, folks, but that's been going on for more than 5 years.
The government has commissioned Telstra to provide outdated service to regional (rural) areas, then realized the service would conflict with other plans - wasting years and hundreds of millions of dollars. Regional users are forced from one flaky plan to the next (CDMA to NextG is the latest.) and still have dropouts and poor service.
The government has looked to private enterprise to pick up some of the slack by offering grants and special loans. Satellite service and free service expands too quickly for these small firms to keep up. One abandoned network is cobbled onto the next, creating a nightmare for customers and those companies that took the bait.

Like the old AT&T in the US, Telstra is great at the big projects:

Australian telecommunications company Telstra has begun the arduous task of laying a 9,000 km undersea internet cable from Australia to Hawaii.

Again, that's not the whole story. Telstra is laying that cable, not out of social consciousness or entrepreneurial zeal, but out of monopolistic necessity. Telstra has been buying bandwidth from old rival Optus for years.

If you can't even get email, why bother to open up a business online? An inspiring example is as passion for beauty.
There is no question some companies have braved the madness and succeeded though. Relatively, for a country that needs reliable communications from coast to coast like no other, Australia has made the road to success unnecessarily hard.
There are many words to describe the slosh of media in one direction then the next, with only miniscule real progress: most of them 4-letter words.

SEO/SEM in Australia is a special issue for so many reasons. Join me was we explore. It will be a fascinating and informative journey.

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