Of course more Internet use 'boosts case for NBN'

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 12 November 2010 13:51

Opinion and Analysis

The Australian Communications and Media Authority, ACMA, has unsurprisingly shared figures that show strongly rising Internet usage, with NBN Co's CEO, Mike Quigley, unsurprisingly noting that 'ultimately you're going to need a new type of infrastructure to keep up with demand'.

OPINION: With more desktop and portable computers, smartphones, mobile broadband modems, iPads and tablets being sold every year, and seemingly unstoppable growth in services like Facebook and Twitter, it should come as no surprise to discover that Internet usage is rapidly growing.

Amongst a sea of stories looking at ACMA's report (which you can download here from ACMA's site in Word of PDF formats) was a short story by the ABC, entitled 'Rising internet use 'boosts case for NBN''.

Here NBN Co, CEO, Mike Quigley, is quoted saying: 'As we've seen with this latest data, where we've had, year-over-year in the June quarter, another well-over-50-per cent increase in capacity from 99 petabytes to 155 - now that's a lot of bytes that have been downloaded in Australia.'

Mr Quigley also stated: "Ultimately you're going to need a new type of infrastructure to keep up with demand."

Well, of course! That goes without saying. The argument isn't over whether an NBN is needed, but how profligate we are going to be in creating it.

It's still a worry that, after building a national network, it will then be sold, leaving whichever non-Government owner who owns it to repeat the Telstra experience all over again, except this time for our great-grandchildren.

Which Kevin Rudd-esuqe person of 2050 will be promising to build a brand new, corporate monopoly-busting minimum 12Tbps (terabits) NBN, before setting on a $430 trillion dollar 100Pbps (petabits) system?

Thankfully our current NBN has had some progress on the business case front - more on page two, please read on!