Viddler

This is the most exciting news for Australians in a long time. If you’re an Aussie using the Internet, that is. Just last week a new submarine cable owned by PIPE International surfaced on Sydney’s suburb of Collaroy. Named PPC-1, the cable transfers 1.92 terabits to and from Guam. Before this fast new connection arrived Australia had about 4 terabits worth of bandwidth to other parts of the world, but only 15 percent is being used. This is believed to be because all of those 4 terabits are owned by the large telecommunications companies and they restrict the amount of bandwidth that can be used.

Enough with the facts. You’ll get more in the video.

Australia has some pretty fast download speeds but that doesn’t even matter because most ISPs restrict bandwidth usage to around 40GB per month (on average). For that, you’ll pay over AUD$110 per month. If you exceed the cap (which some companies falsely label as “unlimited”), then you’ll either pay outrageous excess fees or have your be connection slowed to dial-up speed.

By comparison, most ISPs in the United States, Sweden, and other countries have unlimited Internet plans for reasonable prices. In Sweden you can get 100Mbps download/10Mbps upload for around US$25 per month. Yeah.

In case you don’t know, I’m an avid user of the internet, I’ve lived in Australia for the majority of my life, and for the past year I’ve been traveling around the U.S.A. discovering how much Australia is being ripped off on by its ISPs. I don’t even want to get in to how frustrating it is to have to watch how much I use the Internet every month. I’m traveling back there in less than a month and I’m not sure I’ll be able to adjust back after having so much unlimited freedom in the States.

This video is quite geeky, but it will effect the 11 million (half the population) Australians that use the internet.

Who made this?

Midnight Update (subscribe) is a daily technology podcast for Australian geeks. Australia usually gets technology months after countries like Japan and the United States, so it’s great to have a source that will inform us of when we get the goods. Seamus, the host, is has written for publications such as APC, Australian Macworld, Desktop, Rolling Stone, The Sydney Morning Herald, and tons more. He’s an uber geek he updates you at midnight (AEST).

What kind of Internet do you have where you live? Do you have full freedom or are you restricted on what you can use? Leave your comments.