[iptrans]

The Australian NBN would also have sucked a lot less if the government hadn’t sneaked in usage fees on the network.

It is, or at least was, insanely expensive to use the Australian next generation network. It cost ISPs providing service on the network thousands of dollars per month if a fiber customer actually used their gigabit connection, instead of a fixed line rental fee.

Batshit crazy stuff.

[Gigachad]

This doesn’t seem to be a problem. I have a gigabit connection, the whole speed is usable and there are no data caps. It doesn’t cost a huge amount, and I don’t believe the ISP is running at a loss to provide this service.

[iptrans]

Until recently NBN fiber connections only came with 2 Mbps of bandwidth. Any usage over that was billed at $8 per Mbps to the ISP.

In other words, an ISP customer taking full advantage of their gigabit fiber connection could cost the ISP almost $8000 per month.

And that was just the cost for the local bandwidth in Australia. Add all the costs for cross connects and Internet capacity in addition to all the normal costs of running a business.

Obviously this was and is a millstone around the ISPs’ neck. You can find a plethora of complaints and write ups on the ISP business in Australia illuminating the extremely thin or negative margins in the business.

The only thing that kept the ISPs in business was statistical multiplexing at scale and aggressive traffic shaping.