The NBN is set to achieve world-leading download speeds of 1Gbps by the end of 2013, equalling Google Fiber’s achievements in Kansas, US. 1Gbps is around the upper limit of the current fibre to the premises/home (FTTP/FTTH) architecture of the NBN.
While the speeds are frankly astonishing, most users really won’t see the benefit for years to come. The current max speeds of 100Mbps that the NBN is offering is more than enough for even the most bandwidth hungry personal user with today’s online services available in Australia.
Where the speeds will really come in handy for now is for business users. 1Gbps connections can handle a huge number of simultaneous users without becoming congested with too much traffic.
In the future, however, with increased internet-based services it’s not too difficult to imagine 1Gbps straining to keep up with an ever increasing amount of ‘smart’ technologies. Already TVs, air conditioners and even some kitchen appliances like fridges and ovens have joined the smart revolution, sending information back and forth over a home WiFi network. Graphene research is already promising to push the limits of what can and can’t be easily turned in to a functioning computer and screen at the push of a button and within the next 10 or 20 years Australians can expect to start seeing some pretty cool stuff.
That is, cooler than the quad-core, touch-screen, wireless broadband devices with built-in cameras that we already carry around in our pockets every day.
By now everyone’s aware of what super-fast 1Gbps broadband speeds can do for them right now that 100Mbps can’t. For the average user that information generally boils down to faster movie downloads and… not much else. What’s important to take note of is that this is an infrastructure being built not just now or the next few years, but the next few decades. When building a road it’s usually wise to design it with the capacity to handle increased traffic that’s sure to come in the future, otherwise you have a costly road that ends up being insufficient to meet the public need within a short space of time.
It’s similar for internet traffic, but the road analogy isn’t exactly perfect. As time goes on, not only are more people using the internet for more services, but new services are requiring faster connections per capita, simply because the products they offer are far more detailed and data heavy than even just a few years ago. This is generally not a problem that one encounters with cars. While the number of people on roads increases, as car technologies improve we haven’t seen a push for speed limits to be increased, or for drivers to carry larger loads.
Interestingly enough, our measly, and not even guaranteed, 1Gbps NBN is already set to be left in the dust by countries like Japan who are working on a 2Gbps infrastructure. It appears the age of the internet is barely upon us. With such an internet-reliant world it’s fun to think of the innovation and new technologies that may be right around the corner.
Source: SMH
Alex Angove-Plumb
Digital Content Editor
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