MOST homes will have broadband communication speeds up to 100 times faster than what is currently available, under the Rudd Government's plan to wire Australia for the 21st century.
Federal Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy told The Sunday Age that early discussions on the Government's promised broadband network indicated that it would be much faster than previously thought.
"This is going to revolutionise the way Australians live their lives," Senator Conroy said.
Before last year's election, Mr Rudd promised to contribute $4.7 billion to help build a national broadband network accessible to 98% of homes, with a guaranteed minimum speed of 12 megabits per second.
But by deploying VDSL, (also known as Very High Speed DSL) technology, Senator Conroy said the new network would be able to carry up to 25 megabits per second.
Most broadband users currently receive only 256 kilobits per second — 100 times less capacity than 25 megabits — using ADSL technology.
With internet speeds like 25 megabits per second, people living in the same house will be able to use the network simultaneously for different purposes.
This could include a broadcast-quality video telephone call , while someone else watches high definition internet television, and another person plays online gaming.
Pay television would also be delivered through internet cable, with people able to watch different channels at the same time in different parts of the home, while a feature length film was also being downloaded to a computer hard drive in another room.
Other applications such as "smart" electricity meters, which say how much electricity is being used and at what price, would also be instantly available.
"Labor would welcome the newer VDSL technology as part of its broadband network. This will greatly enhance Labor's current plan, making available a wide range of applications at the same time and begin to fundamentally change the way people live," Senator Conroy said.
"The extra speeds will simply allow more bandwidth-hungry applications to be run at the same time without shutting each other out."
The Rudd Government's broadband network will be built using a "fibre-to-the-node" network design.
This means laying new fibre-optic cables and extending them to the telecommunications pillars found on many street corners. These are called nodes.
Technicians will then attach the fibre-optic cables to the existing copper wires that run out of those boxes into telephone subscribers' homes.
"People imagine that the really hard part about this is digging the trench and laying the new cable," Senator Conroy said.
"That's actually the easy part — the more difficult task is connecting it to every copper line that runs into every home," Senator Conroy said.
On Tuesday, Senator Conroy is expected to announce who will sit on a special expert panel that will assess the bids from Telstra, Optus and other telecommunications consortiums that are competing to build the new network.
The expert panel will assess each bid and make a recommendation to Senator Conroy by July.
"I expect to be able to give final Government approval by the end of August or early September, and hope construction will commence before the end of the year," Senator Conroy said.
The new services would be available progressively, as the new network was rolled out over the next five years, he said.
"It's not like in five years I will stand at a switch and turn it on. New services will be available to people as it is installed in each neighbourhood," Senator Conroy said.
What is VDSL? VDSL stands for Very High Bit-rate Digital Subscriber Line technology. DSL technology transfers data digitally using standard telephone system copper wires at a much faster rate than the old analog modem connections. It is the fastest DSL service available. Its main advantages are speed and the fact that it is always "on" and does not tie up the phone line.
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