Forget Mains Water, Get Me Fibre Optics

Broadband is a big issue here at present. The general mood is that we’re way behind other developed nations in rolling out high-speed services and this is a bad thing. I’m not so sure it is and, anyway, there’s a good reason for it.

As I’ve remarked before, Australia is big, really big, and really empty. There are 20 million of us knocking around, enough for an attractive infrastructure market if we were all huddled together in one corner of the continent, but we’re not. Far from it, there’s a strong feeling held by many that they don’t want to be near anyone else and many people buy properties miles from anywhere or anything.

The odd thing is that while they’re prepared to accept that these properties are on a dirt road and don’t have mains water, postal deliveries, buses, shops, a doctor, a school or refuse collection (and for a very good reasons), once they discover that they can’t get an internet service that enables them to download the whole of The Lord of The Rings on DVD, with director’s commentary, in ten minutes, they’re horrified. And they certainly don’t want to pay any more than they did when they lived in the city.

I’m sure you can do most things at lightening speed in the cities. For the record, in Sandy Beach (pop, around a few hundred, who knows?) we have ADSL at 256 kb/sec. Anything faster, and you pay through the nose and your download limit plummets. In time, we may get ADSL2, which will be faster for less money. (I don’t understand why).

My point is that, considering where we live, which is 20 minutes drive from the region’s biggest town (pop. 60,000), and six hours’ drive from Brisbane, that’s not a bad service. And, unless you’re running an internet-based business, who really needs anything faster anyway? Most of us don’t. Most of us don’t play games and most of us don’t download movies and our lives wouldn’t be any better if we did. Offer me the choice between high-speed down-loads and an empty beach and I know which I’d choose. In fact, I have.