Echoing comments made by Christopher Pyne last year, it seems the NBN Co's boss doesn't think Australians are ready for super-fast broadband above 100Mbps.
According to a recently published article on the Courier Mail, NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow says there hasn't been a huge demand from Australians for speeds of 100Mbps+
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“Even if we offered it for free, we see the evidence around the world that they wouldn’t use it anyway,” Mr Morrow reportedly stated.
Internet Australia CEO Laurie Patton called the assertion that Australians don't need “gigabit speeds” as simply “spin that would impress the Australian cricket team”.
Mr. Patton and Internet Australia have continuously argued that we should be building a future-proofed NBN.
“It’s not about what we need this year, or next year, it’s about the future," said Mr. Patton (PDF).
"It’s about our ability to compete in a digitally-enabled world where other countries have high speed broadband networks that already leave us behind”.
As we mentioned after similar comments from Christopher Pyne last year, the Internet is continuing to evolve at a breakneck pace. Applications are becoming more bandwidth intensive and increasingly appliances and devices other than computers and cell phones are connecting to the web; all requiring a slice of the bandwidth pie.
Mr. Morrow acknowledges there are applications "on the horizon" that are going to increase the need for faster broadband. That horizon may in fact be closer than many think.
Government and even industry experts have continually underestimated the pace that technology moves at - and there's no reason to believe it will be any different when it comes to broadband speed requirements. Looking back over the years, each time technology has allowed a boost in speeds, applications that can use it aren't far behind - and then push the limits again.
However, it should be noted that NBN Co does in fact offer 1Gbps wholesale services to retailers it seems, but apparently no retailers have chosen to sell these services. So, is it a case of what the public doesn't know about, they can't demand?
Director of UWA Centre for Software Practice, David Glance indicates this may be part of the issue.
"There does seem to be an opportunity to educate the market about the benefits of the higher speeds that would presumably be in the interests of the companies making money from selling these plans, including NBN Co itself," he said.
There's also the issue of bandwidth caps - the faster the connection speed, the more data consumed as you can do more in a shorter time. Super-fast broadband above 100Mbps is only useful if accompanied by unlimited data.
