Surely it’d be cheaper for them to switch to a more common media like cheap, crappy flash drives than sourcing out floppy drives?

I remember having to juggle something like 6 floppy disks just to load Dune II on our family’s old, hand-me-down Amiga 2000 back in the early-to-mid 90s. How is this still a fucking things 30+ years later?!

Edited to add: sorry, backbone was probably the wrong term to use.

The actual history of Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) is actually needlessly complicated - primarily due to a (somewhat) successful sabotage attempt by our Conservative government in the early 2010s.

But basically, every single new home is built with Fiber to the Home, and every single metropolitan and suburban home either has Fiber to the Home (or Premises), or at the very least Fiber to the Curb through a remediation process to replace the Conservative-implemented Fiber to the Node boondoggle.

We also have a number of neighbourhoods stuck with HFC (again due to Conservstice sabotage) which while still delivering 100+ Mbit connections - are a bit of a technical dead end and will need to be remediated at some point in the future.

Basically, nbnCo serves as a national broadband wholesaler providing high speed connectivity (100, 250, 500, Gigabit) to something like >95% of the population.

The most remote communities are also serviced either through a fixed wireless option or satellite.

Basically though, unlike the US we don’t have a significant number of people still on dial-up and haven’t had so for a very long time.

It’s not so much about being built on a grid, but rather being built with a particularly high population density in mind - and further supported by a robust public transit network.

Chicken and egg situation, Americans drive because that’s how their cities and suburbs are laid out (excluding NYC, for the most part).

They don’t rely on alternatives because they are slow, inconvenient or non-existent; alternatives can’t be built up as the costs can’t be justified based on existing patronage levels.

Except that US ISPs have already been provided upwards of $80b to roll out a fiber optic backbone for rural connections, and have instead largely pocketed the funds and sat on their hands.

It has largely fallen to smaller communities to incorporate their own local ISPs and manage their own roll-outs, as such projects aren’t viewed as worthwhile for private companies.

Honestly, if Australia could roll out a national fiber backbone (almost a decade ago!) across the same approximate landmass as the contiguous 48 states at less than 10% of the overall population; there is no valid reason that the wealthiest nation to have ever existed can’t also do so.

Even if a Federal program (not under this administration, obviously) was to just run fibre parallel to the existing interstate highways, and leave the last (20) miles to local utilities - it would be cheaper, faster and more reliable than LEO - and without all the additional negatives that come with that!

The US is very much on the decline, and thanks to the poorly thought out One Child policy- China has also likely past it’s apex. But like the US, it too can cause a lot of damage during its downfall.

India, thanks to burgeoning population and rapid industrialisation is probably the most notable nation currently ‘on the rise’.

Think how truly life changing it would be, if $1m just popped into your bank account one day - you could pay off your mortgage, buy a new car, start a business, or take your family on a vacation to remember.

Mark Zuckerberg could do that each and every single day of the year…

…36 times over…

…just from a 5% return on his current net worth!