The NBN – Instant Gratification On Steroids!
It’s no surprise that we’ve become an instant gratification society like never before in our history. We now stress over things that never used to bother us before. Remember when we had rotary dial phones and it would take at least twenty seconds to dial a local number? Thanks to the Internet, we really take convenience for granted these days but yet, we still want everything to be FASTER!
The answer is at hand with the NBN (National Broadband Network), and it’s tantalisingly close to happening, but of course, not fast enough! If only we could have the NBN as speedily as it promises to perform when it gets here.
Turning hours and minutes into seconds
The NBN is going to deliver amazing things for Internet users. Once upon a time, people used to log on to file sharing sites and set up a queue of songs to be downloaded overnight. With the NBN, it will be possible to download not just three-minute songs, but entire albums and ninety-minute movies in mere seconds!
Video streaming will obviously be a whole lot quicker so we’ll no longer have to worry about that annoying stop-start viewing that happens so often during peak capacity times. That awful “buffering” message that appears is all most people need to completely switch off the video.
The NBN is going to be a whole new frontier for the Internet in Australia. Overseas it’s known as Fibre-To-The-Premises or Home (FTTP/H). Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China are already enjoying superfast Internet and it’s being rolled out gradually across the U.S. and Europe.
Contemplate this!
Did you know that Australia has amongst the slowest available broadband speeds in the developed world? This will disadvantage our country when multinationals consider setting up business here as, without the NBN, technologies will become so outdated as to not be viable. Our average Internet speed of just 1.7Mbps is less than a thirtieth of the average speed available in Japan and around one third the average speed in the U.S. Internet speeds are actually faster in the Slovak Republic and Turkey than in Australia!
With the NBN will come incredible applications. Internet and technology commentator Stil Gherrian says that companies will be able to employ staff who live in remote locations and yet, with full, high-definition video running both ways, it will be almost as though they are sitting in the same office. It will no longer be grainy, jittery video such as what we currently experience with Skype.
It will become possible to cut down on employee transport costs and potentially eliminate relocations as remote operation of equipment becomes a reality. Think mining, think surgery, think underwater welding. All of these things will be able to be executed from afar once the task’s initial setup has been established.
Large workforces will be able to be supervised via video links with company headquarters. Labour shortages will be remedied, and consider the colossal savings in carbon emissions with the massive reductions in transport miles being travelled every day.
Costs to consumers
Yes, the NBN is expected to cost the Australian government – and indeed, taxpayers – around $27 billion. It’s a truly necessary advance for a first world nation, to remain competitive with other developed countries. The wonderful news is, it won’t cost householders any extra to install and telcos will be running a tight race to sign up customers, so expect some exciting deals.
At Surge Media, the NBN can’t come soon enough because a superfast information hub will be a world-changing development in video and file sharing and viewing.