I have already blogged about the fact that Australia is behind in the statistics for Mb per dollar and average internet speeds, our current average download speed is 2.6 Mbit/s , which has us at number 50 out of 201 in the world.
Labor has announced a $43 billion(maybe more, probably more) plan to deliver 100 Mbit/s to 93% of households by 2018.This plan is currently being rolled out.It will give us a long-overdue jumpstart into the 21st century, when places like South Korea, Japan or even Greece already have speeds up to 100Mbit/s routinely.
Enter the Coalition and their own broadband plan.What do we get ?
The opposition will cancel the government’s $43 billion national broadband network, instead aiming to use a mix of technologies including optical fibre, hybrid fibre coaxial, wireless and DSL to deliver services of at least 12 megabits per second, about triple current standard speeds, to 97 per cent of the population.
and :
Where Labor seeks to use a government company to deliver mostly fibre-based broadband services, the Coalition is instead offering grants to the private sector and leaves open the prospect of rival technologies.
Yeah, because that has worked out so well to connect rural and remote Australia so far, right ? There is just not any money to make if you have to roll out infrastructure to remote areas with small population density.It doesn’t even have to be the Simpson Desert or remote WA, just think anything 50km away from the metropolitan centres.
The other thing I notice is, this coalition “proposal” seems to create an even bigger patchwork of infrastructure than Labor’s, with DSL, optical and coaxial fibre, wireless and god knows what else.
Now, I don’t blame the opposition leader Tony Abbott for not being in the know about the technical details of his own broadband scheme, but I would have expected him to at least be aware of the basics, like, what speeds will we be getting ?
Mr Abbott was later questioned on how many towers the opposition would have to build to implement the plan, how many kilometres of fibre would be required to connect them, and what spectrum would be used to deliver the network.
”I’m no Bill Gates here and I don’t claim to be any kind of tech head,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 Report presenter, Kerry O’Brien.
Mr Abbott also drew blanks on what his broadband network’s peak speed of 12mbps actually meant.
The NBN needs to go ahead, and you really don’t have to be Bill Gates to realise it. As to Mr Abbott maybe being our next PM, someone please wake me up and tell me it’s all a joke.
