Got yourself a super fast broadband connection? Well if you believed Bigpond/Optus and others that claim in advertising that super fast broadband at 256k per second is in actual fact broadband……….. think again. So here is a little primer.
1k = 0.001 Megabits per second
100k = .10 Megabits per second
1000k = 1 Megabits per second
Australian download speeds for broadband average just over 1 megabits per second, this is embarrassing compared to overseas countries averages.
Britain = 13 megabits per second
France = 8 Megabits per second
Germany = 6.85 megabits per second
Canada = 6.80 megabits per second
United States = 3.3 megabits per second
So let us get a few things clear, broadband is not speeds under one megabyte a second, in fact in 10 years time we will be talking about speeds of 100 megabytes a second as standard, so all this talk about broadband is just plain ridiculous and without bashing Telstra (again) – they alone are pretty much hard to go past in the blaming stakes.
This is because we are all still tied to them but with WIMAX and other technologies on the horizon they will soon be losing their grip on even more revenue and the good thing is they cannot do anything about it. By Telstra not supporting WIMAX and building their own proprietary standard network it will open up competitors everywhere and this could (will) hurt them.
However they are no fools and I think they will have a backup plan if WIMAX does take off.
Already today more and more people are turning to VOIP (Voice over Internet instead of home/business phones) to save money – and more and more people are ditching landlines to favour mobile (competition makes mobile a cheaper). In fact the only real reason for not ditching landlines is ADSL, but as I said once wireless internet becomes mainstream Telstra’s monopoly will soon be loosened.
So when you next get a broadband connection look at 2 things, download speeds and download caps as many companies make their money from people like you going over their download limits.
A good place to start your research is phonechoice.com.au
This website lists Mobile, Fixed Line (Home/Office Landlines) Broadband and VOIP plans……