Federal Government Announces Fiber to the Home
This morning the Prime Minister of Australia has announced that the Federal Government in partnership with the private sector will build an Australia wide fiber to the home network. This was a surprise as the general thought was one of the bidding consortium would win the tender to build the network. I do approve of the Governments move to build and hopefully own the network themselves as that way we should not have the problems that we have been having with the current telephone network. I like a lot of people felt that when the previous government sold of Tel$tra they should have sold it as a telephone provider and retained ownership of the infrastructure. By the government owning the infrastructure and not one company then each player in the market has a fair go and not have a monopoly on the market who can force their own way and potentially hinder or exclude their competition.
By going down the fiber to the home approach we gain some big advantages over what some of the other proposals where. Fiber to the home pretty much future proofs the Australia’s communications for the next 50 years at least (maybe more). Australians will get broadband speeds comparable to many countries in the world and not the slow one we have now (dial up and ADSL). True a lot of people do have ADSL2+, cable, and even there are some who already have fiber to the home (mostly in the ACT and some other suburbs around Australia) Fiber links can provide tera bits per second not the ~24MBPS we have now. It will also allow a whole new entertainment revolutions to take place by having such high speeds the general public will be able to whatch HD movies on demand as well IPTV.
I look forward to hearing more about the proposal and I hope they start constructing the network soon.
Edit: you can find the press release here