[AusNOG] Complexity is not an excuse for an industry-wide cop-out (was Re: Conroy quit.)

[Jared Brown]

> From: "Matt Palmer" 
>
> > Excluding overseas bandwidth, is there some reason New Zealand can't have
> > good broadband for $55 per month?  Several north European countries with
> > similar land and population sizes seem to manage.
> 
> That's *the* reason why the Antipodes can't have nice things.  Excluding it
> somewhat defeats the point of having the discussion.
  I don't agree with that assessment. Excluding overseas bandwidth costs focuses the discussion on the costs which are incurred locally. Those are usually 80-90% of all costs for an ISP. Furthermore I'd like to know why good broadband can't be done for $55 (plus overseas bandwidth costs) in New Zealand, as I'm not that familiar with that market. 

  All things being equal, New Zealand should be able to have good broadband for $55 per month, as other countries of similar size and population manage. Perhaps there should be a (reasonable) premium to account for the additional cost of overseas bandwidth (in the order of average overseas bandwidth per subscriber time cost of transport to international hubs). Regardless of that, local bandwidth should be cheap and abundant, and thus not a factor raising prices. You could even have a two tierd structure with full speed, line rate access to local service and more modest speeds to overseas services, further driving down costs. Once you load up on local peering and/or content caches to the large content/online service providers, you should account for most of your traffic locally. This brings us back to the original question, excluding overseas bandwidth, which things are not equal in New Zealand?

  As to Australia, it's fairly obvious why we can't have nice things. No peering with the Gang of Four, high/inflated cost of domestic transport/backhaul/tails, various anti-competitive practices, regulatory uncertainty and the NBN. And all that is before we even get to the cost of overseas transport or IP transit. 

  Are the reasons similar in New Zealand?

Jared