Hack Tuesday April 9 2013: http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/daily/hack_tue_2013_4_9.mp3.
Listen to this recording of the ABC TripleJ radio show Hack and hear what Malcom Turnbull is planning if the Liberals get into power in 2013. A broadband network using copper wires instead of the Labour proposed fibre to the node that would use a network capable of 100 megabits per second. I can get 10 megabits per second already, 25 is not that much faster. Other countries like Japan have much faster speeds. The infographic I have added shows the Internet speeds around the world in 2009, Japan had over 60 megabits per second back then. Now Hong Kong has a speed of 54 megabits per second, this is a very respectable speed for an Internet service. America has 29 megabits per second. Why is Australia sticking with a slow and unreliable copper network if the Coalition gets in? They are promising speeds between 25 and 100 megabits per second by 2016, rising to between 50 and 100 megabits per second by 2019. But America is getting Google Fibre, this provides a one gigabit per second connection that would revolutionise online learning. You could gather a class together using Webex and other online cam sites like a Google hangout that would allow all students to chat and watch lectures live in high definition. That would revolutionise Universities.
Google Fiber would be an awesome way to watch high definition online without having to put up with moronic advertisements. But Google have much more money than the Australian Coalition at the moment, they can afford to layout fibre to the node. The Labour and Coalition broadband plans are actually quite similar, but they both provide speeds that will be outdated by 2019. That is the problem with these plans, the speeds are not high enough. Australians want even faster speeds to keep up with larger and larger downloads and uploads that take up the majority of Internet data caps every month. As shown by this forum posting, the size of gaming downloads off Steam can be massive. This is why you need a large cap to go with a faster Internet connection. The Coalition plan proposes a 25 megabits to 100 megabits per second connection, but if there are no large or unlimited caps to go with the faster speeds then this is pointless. This reminds me of a broadband plan I saw a long time ago, that offered enough data for 50 seconds of browsing at ADSL+2 speeds. That does not really happen anymore, but it shows that sometimes things can be too good to be true. The broadband plan offered 150 megabytes of downloads. Read more about this here: http://www.goodgearguide.com.au/article/190175/free_adsl2_from_dodo_amounts_bird_feed/.
This Internet plan would not be very useful for anyone; unless you were transmitting plain text E-Mails. Better to use a more respectable cap that will actually complement the speed you are getting from the ISP and your exchange. We need better service than the one the hopeless Labour and Coalition are proposing. But it seems this will not happen. We need better leadership from the government to move Australia into the next 20 years as a tech leader. Singapore will have better Internet connectivity than Australia.