A Senate committee has heard that most Australian households will not want broadband speeds as fast as the Government wants to deliver. This is coming from so called “experts” that claim householders will unlikely to use it or pay for such speeds. What a load of rubbish! I still believe that Australians pay premium rate for sub-standard internet services and the voice of the end users call out for more speed as well as consistency. While I don’t have the technical details on how the Goverment propose to roll out this infrastructure, it is still in the best interest of of both parties to deliver a solution that is future proof, unlike roads that have been built which don’t have the capacity for growth. We need this in place because this generation of Aussies are internet aware, internet access is no longer just browsing your favorite websites or online banking. The contents delivered on the net spans accross all consumer segments therefore it is important to put in place something that will work effectively now and years down the track.
If you have a look at the major issues facing end-users on one of the biggest online forums for broadband users (Whirlpool), you will see that they are all speed related or lack thereof. The need for speed is evident if you look at the history on how the internet access speeds have increased in the last 10 years, from dial up, cable and ADSL2+. Nobody is ever satisfied with what they have and the fact is, users are willing to pay to have what is now a necessity rather than a luxury service. The digital content on the web are no longer measured in Kilobytes or Megabytes but is now consistenly moving to Gigabytes. Hard disk drives have grown in capacity and have decreased in prices to make way for the future, the only thing holding users back is the medium in which they are able to obtain these contents to fill them up.
Comments such as “Certainly there would be business and premises that would benefit from 100-megabits per second connectivity. Without having seen market data, my experience would indicate that that is not necessary in the great bulk of circumstances.” is totally irresponsible and in total disrespect to Aussies’s capacity and ability to move with the times. My peers and family have always been quick to embrace new technology without any major problems in transition so the statement above is not only innacurate but totally the opposite. The committee needs to hear feedbacks from the household users which will be using the infrastructure not from these so called experts that are stuck in the Cro-Magnon way of thinking. It is probably the same group of people who design our two lane highways which are suppose to be major arteries connecting metropolitan Sydney. What a joke!
To use as a comparison, the South Koreans have the fastest internet connection on the planet per capita at around 100Mbps and yet they only refer to it as ordinary and they don’t have to pay hundreds of dollars for it. The average plan would cost about $50 which is $20 less than what I’m paying for a 7Mbps service. While the population is not comparable, the plan for growth is still evident when the infrastructure was put into place. I just hope the powers that be see the logic of the proposed plan to roll out this high-speed internet and make it available to 90% of Australian homes like they promised.
