Australia to build 100mbps broadband infrastructure
From the Australian government’s press release:
New National Broadband Network
The Rudd [Australian federal] Government today announced the establishment of a new company to build and operate a new super fast National Broadband Network.
This new super fast National Broadband Network, built in partnership with private sector, will be the single largest nation building infrastructure project in Australian history.
This new National Broadband Network will:
* Connect 90 percent of all Australian homes, schools and workplaces with broadband services with speeds up to 100 megabits per second—100 times faster than those currently used by many households and businesses
* Connect all other premises in Australia with next generation wireless and satellite technologies that will deliver broadband speeds of 12 megabits per second
* Directly support up to 25,000 local jobs every year, on average, over the 8 year life of the project.
[Slightly later:] Here are responses by Benoit Felten and Paul Budde.
But on the other hand they are censoring their Internet like no other western country
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia
Yes, and the attempts at censorship are encountering just the kind of technical infeasability and political backlash issues you’d expect:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/home/technology/conroy-backtracks-on-internet-censorship-policy/2009/04/01/1238261622790.html
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet/442
This is just noise from the previous conservative administration.
The new initiative might make up for 1995 when, with the Internet literally blooming underfoot, the Keating government unveiled its “Creative Nation” initiative to jumpstart the country into the 21st century via…wait for it…interactive CDROM’s.
Can I have my cheap cloud computing access now?