Jon Dee, founder of environmental group Do Something, said: ''The potential of the NBN is to reduce considerably the amount people have to travel through using video conferencing instead and so reducing airborne emissions.
"But it isn't just the environmental issues. It is about productivity, with so much time wasted through people being stuck in traffic jams.
"I live in the Blue Mountains and high-speed broadband with video conferencing will mean I don't have to drive backwards and forwards to Sydney all the time."
He said 8 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions came from cars, and figures for July showed the air route between Sydney and Melbourne was the fourth-busiest in the world.
The Greens are broadly supportive of the planned fibre-to-the-premises NBN as "an enabler of economic activity, greater engagement with government, important e-health and online education opportunities".
The Australian Telecommunications Users Group (ATUG), a business organisation, sees it as unrealistic to leave building such a broadband service to market forces.
Describing Abbot's broadband scheme ATUG's Managing director Rosemary Sinclair said: "We don't think it is going to take us in the direction we want to go in. We think 12Mbps is too low."
Choosing fibre means simply that all those connected will have speeds of at least 10 times the maximum speeds envisaged in Abbott's patchwork solution. Moving data over fibre is developing fast while reliance on the old telephone standard copper wire has already reached it's upper limit.
New developments for fibre probably mean that speeds are likely be up to 100 times as fast as the alternatives. Thus putting in fibre now future proofs the network in a way that a mix of wireless and copper cannot.
The recent agreement between the Labor Government and Telstra means the conduits that now carry the copper phone line to homes can also carry fibre, so new trenches will not have to dug. This is likely to reduce the final cost to about half the $46 billion being proposed. So for 3 times the cost of Abbott's scheme we would get 100 time the speed! No brainer!
The faster connection speeds certainly will help overcome the disparities between regional Australia and the cities. Farmers and others will have the same instant access to information and markets as the stock exchange. Schools and hospitals will potentially have the same of access to libraries and world class medical information that is today reserved for those close to the cities. For Aboriginal health and education it will help close the gap.
Because the NBN represents such a radical upgrade it is simply not possible to predict all the ways it will affect our lives. That's exactly what the buzz in favour of it is about.
No comments:
Post a Comment