Hacker Timesnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

You have to decouple the physical infrastructure from the service provider - how else are you supposed to have competition in a market with a natural monopoly? It's just about the only thing the EU did right during the mandated privatization of infrastructure.


This is exactly what Australia did.

The government laid the fibre (sorta) and then the ISP can use the fibre in any location to serve customers. We can select from nearly 100 different ISPs with many different plans (up to 2Gbps) and the switch over can take as little as 10 minutes if provisioned correctly.

* The Australian governement originally elected to roll out fibre everywhere. The next government decided it was too costly and designed "Multi Technology Mix" (MTM). The MTM consisted of Satellite (Skymuster), 4G/5G Towers (Fixed Wireless), FTTN (Fibre to a Node, then Copper to House), FTTC (Fibre to Curb, then copper to house), FTTP (Fibre to the Prem). Many years later, all of this is overtuned and effectively all FTTN/FTTC customers can get a free FTTP upgrade.


What Malcolm Turnbull did to the NBN was absolutely disgraceful

The reforms also resulted in a lot of people never getting FTTN/FFTC in the first place - so will forever be 5G only unless there’s a new scheme rolled out


I firmly believe it was Murdoch’s plan to delay FTTP NBN because he could see it would scuttle his Fox empire preemptively.


I understand your point and generally agree. But I do see some exceptions like the Railway networks (usually a natural monopoly) in Japan being successfully privatized between so many different companies with their own parallel train lines.


Exactly. And because the infra was never public in the US, and thus no “privatisation with rules”, it’s been a bit of a disaster.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: