Monday, June 25, 2007

I Do Not Stammer (normally)

I’m not going to bore you with politics because our two major political parties are barely different, making the choice impossible. However, it is a well known fact that Australia has one of the worst internet/broadband networks in the world. Yet we’re so far away from civilisation who do you think needs it the most?

The issue of widespread and improved broadband has been an election promise of both parties in contention and is now gaining weight. And the “Australia Connected” initiative has been born to bring fast broadband to city and rural communities. Labor’s plan, should they be elected, is to to invest $4.7 billion in cross-country fibre optic networks delivering minimum speeds of 12 megabits a second.

The good thing is that our emails and/or voice won’t have to kangaroo hop half way around the world, taking the longest route, to actually get to their destination. Or so the theory goes . . .

After attempting to talk to a couple of US pals on Sunday, I realised how truly shit our internet is. I have ADSL at home, it’snot the best but it’s OK. I can gasbag to the Irish, the English and the New Zealanders with ease and no break up or delay, however, it seems the east coast of the States is out of bounds. It could have been a ‘hopping’ issue as I was technically informed as one server tried to find another as if it had bought a round the world air ticket and could only progress in one direction – obviously it took the long route via Asfuckistan.

I don’t care about bits and mips, bytes or bandwidth. . . I just want to be able to make a phone call to the US without m-e-e-e-e-e- s-o-u-n-d-i-i-i-i-i-i-ing, like I have a st-a-a-a-a-a-amm-e-e-e-er or without hearing my own voice on delay 20 seconds later which leads to the longest silences on the line you can imagine .

Then again, it could have been something to do with our foul winter weather, a summer storm brewing in Atlanta, or a wombat digging up the copper cable in Cunamulla!


6 comments:

Brian Damage said...

So your connection to our sweet equally wet shores was okay?

Baino said...

Yep. It's jut the 'centre of the universe' I have trouble talking to . . maybe it's not after all!

Anonymous said...

You can say what you want about how bad it is in Aussie - but rest assured - its amazing compared to the connection speeds in NZ... Ours are on the same level as Mexico apparantly - 'cept theirs is better.

Baino said...

G'day Dodge. I'm glad it's good in Mexico. ClareBear will be there next year.

Yeh, well you're signal prolly hops over Antarctica, over to Easter Island and through the Galapagos where cables are carried by domesticated giant tortoises over the Andes across to the gulf.

Anonymous said...

If you run a trace route on a voip connection you will be amazed at where it goes to get to it's destination. I have no doubt that the Wombat in Cunamulla was listening in as was the Chilean tortoises and a telephone operator in Fill-In-The-Blank-istan.

Baino said...

VOIP, trace routes, mips, bytes and SCSI dongles. . . .who thinks of these stupid names. No wonder I can't let an IT geek NEAR my boss for fear they'll be beaten to a pulp with a rolled up Money Management magazine.

Let's just run a really long cable up a few extension chords from Sydney to the Space Station then back down to Pennsylvania and everything will be hunky dory.

Personally, I blame the weather in Atlanta . . it was behaving the week before. Maybe the cayman's ate the cable.