internet usege

By matthew dampier

  • early days

    Australia was connected to the internet on 3 September 1983 when Darwin established a connection to the University of California in Berkeley, California and connecting via a UUCP dial-up using an early version of Rick Adams SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol). This connection was maintained privately until the CSIRO took over the maintenance and costs of the weekly UUCP SLIP calls.

  • first austrailan network

    Internet access was first available in Australia to universities via AARNet in 1989.The first commercial dial-up ISPs (Internet Service Providers) appeared in capital cities soon after[4] and by the mid-1990s almost the entire country had a wide choice of dial-up Internet access providers. In present times Internet access is available through a range of technologies, chiefly hybrid fibre coaxial cable, DSL (digital subscriber line), ISDN and satellite Internet. The Australian Govern.

  • first broadband

    In the late 1990s, Telstra and Optus rolled-out separate cable Internet services, focusing on the east coast. In 2000, the first consumer ADSL services were made available via Telstra Bigpond, at speeds of 256/64 kbit/s (downstream/upstream), 512/128 kbit/s, and 1500/256 kbit/s. Telstra chose to artificially limit all ADSL speeds to a maximum of 1500/256 kbit/s. As ADSL required access to the telephone exchange and the copper line which only Telstra had this allowed Telstra to be dominant due.

  • Competition, faster broadband

    In 2005, Telstra announced it would invest A$210 million in upgrading all of its ADSL exchanges to support ADSL2+ by mid-2006, though they did not say whether they would continue to restrict access speeds.However, in 2006, they announced new intentions to substantially alter their copper phone network and setup a "Fibre to the Node (FTTN)" network. This was later scrapped, with Telstra citing regulations forcing it to provide cheap wholesale access to its competitors as the reason not to in.

  • Telstra uncapped its retail and wholesale

    In late 2006, Telstra uncapped its retail and wholesale ADSL offerings to the maximum attainable speed of ADSL to 8 Mbit/s, however with a limited 384 kbit/s upstream speed. This has allowed many Australians access to higher speed broadband, while the comparatively lower wholesale rates discouraged competitive infrastructure investment in most cases.
    Wireless broadband in Australia is widespread, with many point-to-point fixed wireless broadband providers serving broadband-poor.

  • Delivering broadband to rural areas

    In June 2006, the Australian Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) under the then coalition government called for expressions of interest for discussion of how to invest up to $878 million in funding under Broadband Connect program to provide greater access to broadband services in rural and regional areas at prices comparable to services available in metropolitan areas, $500 million of which was envisaged as being available to infrastructure projects.

  • Internet in rural areas

    Enternet in Australia has great differences between urban and rural areas. With the March 2007 announcement of the Broadband Guarantee program, which will replace the Broadband Connect program, many long term projects to bring Internet to Rural Areas are under review. A week after the announcement, Internode suspended its programs to bring Broadband to the Country and many others providers are having to follow suit as the cancellation of the Connect program has removed the financial incentive.

  • Innovation in broadband delivery

    In November 2007 the first Naked DSL product was announced by iiNet. Shortly after this other internet providers also started to provide DSL products without telephony service over copper, reducing line rental fees.

  • Residential Internet access

    Residential broadband Internet access is available in Australia using ADSL, cable, fibre, satellite and wireless technologies. Since July 2008 almost two thirds of Australian households have had internet access, with broadband connections outnumbering dial-up two to one. According to the recent ABS statistics the non-dial-up services outnumber dial up services 3.6 to 1.
    The most common form of residential broadband is ADSL, which uses existing copper telephone lines. In Australia.