Every now and then I see articles about Australia's "brain drain" where university educated people leave Australia for overseas jobs. I am one of those people. 6 months has turned into 12 years in the US and now I work for Microsoft in Seattle. I do miss Australia, visiting nearly every year so my family won't forget what I look like.

Recently an internal discussion at Microsoft about broadband usage prompted a fellow expat to post a link to Optus's broadband plans and I was shocked: 21GB/month for $60 but it's not even that good as it's actually only 7GB peak/month where peak is defined between noon and midnight - 90% of likely usage time. Oh, and don't forget the $248 connection fee!

In Seattle I pay about $45/month for unlimited use (I think it's meant to be 250GB but I don't currently think there's any consequence of going over that) and there's no peak/off peak restrictions. I use Netflix (on demand streaming TV and movies) and Xbox Live averaging around 50-60GB/month. My speed is about 16-20 Mpbs. The closest comparison I could find in Australia was Foxtel Cable Internet at 100GB for $269/month! And that's still less than half of what I get.

It's things like that - that make me not want to return to Australia because I feel that Australians basically get bent over a barrel from businesses because of the lack of competition and size of the population. Telecommunications isn't the only industry with this problem, I also see it with cars, banking and retail.

The world is moving online and that's been a steady trend for a long time, Australia is not promoting broadband adoption and if they want to stay relevant in the 21st century, much less be a leader, need to make some changes to attract people.

I would like to move back one day and while there are always more factors at play that just the financial one, that's a big one and I just don't see any financial reason to return home and I'm sure I'm not the only expat with that view.