If you’re reading this, then you most likely think the Coalition’s rather low tech broadband plan involving a pair of scissors is pretty crap. I make this assumption simply on the grounds that you are currently using the internet, which is probably quite presumptuous of me, so sorry. Perhaps you are perfectly happy with whatever megagigawebabits you’re getting right now and can’t imagine what you could possibly do with 100 megabits per second, much less a gigabit.
I remember being pretty bloody excited about my 100 megabyte hard drive back in the nineties. I now have a terabyte drive in my computer and it’s getting a bit chokkas. While it falls somewhat short of being a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis, the answer to the question “what could we possibly do with all that bandwidth?” is “heaps of cool stuff” and I’m quite looking forward to finding out.
The Australian 11 August 2010
None of us know where faster downloads will lead us, but others are there now, so slowing us down will definitely leave Australia lagging behind – in jobs, development and ideas just for a start.
Abbot’s idea of maximising inefficiency to save money is bollocks!