We will need 100Mbps, we just have to convince the Coalition

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 25 August 2011 15:38

Opinion and Analysis

The Coalition has once again repeated its now jaded argument against the NBN: there is no hard evidence to support the idea that we need the 100Mbps that the FTTH network will deliver. Maybe not, but there are portents aplenty. Coalition pundits just need to be a bit more visionary.

This time the Coalition's criticism was channelled through Coalition members of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications, in their dissenting report on the committee's just released report of its inquiry into the role and potential of the National Broadband Network.

The dissenting report said: "The single most striking conclusion from this inquiry is that there were very few persuasive examples given of applications which actually require the speeds that the NBN will deliver. This was so across a wide range of sectors including telemedicine, education, business and government."

It's true that the main report was able to give few persuasive examples of applications that require these speeds TODAY, but if the dissenting members genuinely failed to be persuaded that such applications would emerge then they are singularly lacking in vision and imagination. Because what the report did muster was a convincing catalogue of commentary that demonstrated: the folly of trying to set limits to the potential of, and the demand for information technology; and the possibilities that, if you look closely, are reasonably evident.

This is best summed up in this quote in the main report, from Dr Dean Economou, technology strategist at NICTA.

"At the moment what looks like [high definition TV] looks really good compared to TV, but in 20 years it will look like a postage stamp and you will say, 'Why did we ever put up with that?' You will say, 'You really need it.' The thing is that technology is making it possible. Samsung screens get 20 percent cheaper and 20 percent bigger every year. The Japanese 15 years ago were working on what is called ultra high definition TV, which is 16 times HD'¦So 16 times is coming and that, even compressed for broadcast, is 200 to 300 megabits [per second]. That is what we can perceive. All I can say in my time in this game and Dr Percival's [Terry Percival director of NICTA's Neville Roach Laboratory] as well, is that we have never seen demand for bandwidth go down and whenever you try to double guess that it is going to level out it just does not."

And AARNet head, Chris Hancock told the Committee about the OptiPortal, a high-definition videoconferencing system comprising 24 screens and requiring about 40Gbps.

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