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National Broadband Network |
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Written by Nathan Woodcock
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Monday, 20 April 2009 |
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Rain, rain and more rain the past few weeks with Pomona, Kin Kin and Cooran cut off again. Queensland towns being cut off in floods is nothing new, but the Government's proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) has the potential to help in these situations. Since the governments announcement that they will be going it alone (in public/private partnership) and not tendering out the entire NBN there has been a lot of discussion in the media about the proposed plans. The governments plans are to provide “fibre to the home” for 90% of the population, as opposed to the original plan of “fibre to the node”. So what does this actually mean? Fibre to the home means a fibre optic cable direct to your house, like a telephone cable is. The difference is the amount of information, or data, you can send and receive with fibre optic. Most peoples internet connection are around the 1Mbps mark, on average. Fibre supports 100Mbps and more. This opens up huge possibilities for future and existing technologies that require high speed connections. Some examples of things we could do right now include doctors appointments by video, and teaching by video. Forget the little webcam video that the current broadband speeds support, fibre supports full screen high quality images enabling doctors and other practitioners to clearly see you making remote diagnosis a possibility. Next week we’ll discuss more possibilities.
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