There’s more customers per square mile across the entire USA than in Australia, by a factor of twenty or more. Extrapolate that, and it means (roughly) that every kilometer of copper or fibre laid down costs Oz customers twenty times as much. The reason Australia lacks unlimited Internet plans is an important aspect for metro/sub-urban customers atleast.
And while that might not change anytime soon, John Howard reckons that 99% of the Oz population will receive broadband by 2008. So are we talking about a PAYG style plan, Or maybe one that’s advertised as 128 Kbps broadband, delivering only about 15 Kbps downstream, and capped to 2 GB monthly?