[LINK] NBN to be 1Gbps

[Philip Argy]

What practical use is 1Gb/s for the majority of people right now?  Whilst I personally think we should be aiming for 100 Gb/s in the next 5 to 10 years to cultivate innovation in an ultra high speed bandwidth environment, it's a bit of a con job to entice people with 1 Gb/s to the home when most households, if they have anything, will have Cat 5 cabling and components which won't support gigabit Ethernet no matter what they do.

Surely it's better to get wider coverage at a reliable base speed of 12Mb/s in the next couple of years than to give a few Tasmanian households a 1Gb/s fibre link to their front door?  And where's the commitment to an accelerated IPv6 implementation that is more critical than bandwidth.  Not much good having the fibre at the door but no spare IP addresses for what's in the building to connect!

Very shallow debate I'm afraid.  Let's propose to give every man, woman, child and newborn baby a free top-of-the-range iPhone 4 @ $800 - 22 million of them would cost less than $18 billion so it puts into perspective the size of the $43 billion or possibly more for the NBN Co's fibre.

Philip