[LINK] The PLAN, and broadband speeds?

[David Lochrin]

On Wednesday 20 June 2007 07:46, Richard Chirgwin wrote:

> Bevan is dead right, and has been saying so for quite some time. The
> "short" version is simple: what's the point of 100 Mbps if all you do is
> consume your monthly allowance in the first four minutes?
>
> The reason this is so often left unsaid is that many people don't care
> about you having a fast connection to the Internet. They want a monopoly
> fast connection to the home, with most of the bandwidth reserved for "in
> house" applications (ie, pay TV and content the carrier itself hosts).
> Then if you're lucky there's a little bit of pipe left over for an
> Internet service that's faster than today, but not by much.

   Amidst all the hoopla I've been wondering when someone would ask the obvious: how is 12 Mbit/s (or whatever it turns out to be) to the home going to help Australia in any non-trivial way?

   Obviously some organisations need a lot of bandwidth, but they can get that now.  Richard is right as usual (:-) - it's all about TV-on-demand.

   I wonder if it will catch on, or whether the video shops will still be doing business as usual after all the cable is laid?

David