Per Cloudflare themselves c. 2016, Oceania is expensive because of Telstra's monopoly: https://blog.cloudflare.com/bandwidth-costs-around-the-world...

Haha. 21x for Telestra. Total crazy. They must be getting it from someone though, but that is abysmal. Good on cloudflare for detailing it - it's not just cloudflare who is impacted, the fees charged by others are also very high in these areas.

I think it's usually been a case of bugger all fibre optic connections to NZ at least. https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ is a good place to have a look. We are (or may have already gotten) some more bandwidth due to a new cable: https://techblog.nz/2603-More-connected-than-ever-new-unders...

Lots of distance with lots of nothing in between.