Faster broadband promised. Yet again
Posted 1/04/2009 3:58:00 p.m. by Daniel in Computers
Seems like this has been promised again and again for New Zealand. And so far there have been very few improvements. And off goes John Key promising “quantum faster” internet speeds (Stuff article). And yes, I agree that it’s great. Hopefully something happens this time.
But there’s still a few problems here.
New Zealand isn’t the most connected country in the world as it is, and we don’t exactly have huge “pipes” to the global internet backbone. Key is talking about 100mbps connections in homes and businesses which is great apart from the fact that most content isn’t in New Zealand. Instead we’d all be squashed into the Southern Cross cable decreasing speed to international resources.
But the biggest issue is data caps. New Zealand ISP’s love giving out low data caps for high prices, which is bearable at best with lower internet speeds. But if we’re connecting to the world at 100mbps, that 10gb plan of yours isn't gonna’ last too long.
Things have changed from the one shared computer per household of the 90’s and early 2000’s. Hardware is cheap – so it’s becoming the norm for people to have multiple machines accessing the web concurrently and for longer periods, meaning that more data is being transferred. For example I flat with 3 other people, we have a 10gb cap and we each have at least one computer. Our cap is gone long before our billing period is over, but it’s cheaper to pay the extra data costs than upgrade to the 20gb plan.
Think about your average YouTube video for example – they’re roughly 5-10mb in size. And that’s for a low definition stream. Add that up between the people in your household based on the number of videos they watch, it’s not too hard too see where your usage is going in just this area alone. Never mind general web surfing. And what about general downloads? Faster speeds make downloading big files (Game trails etc) painless, so it’s instantly more appealing to do so.
Or what about when you want to work from home (Something that Key is also pushing) via VPN? You need a consistently fast and stable connection. You wouldn’t want to wake up one morning to realise you’ve been restricted to 56kbps for breaching your data cap. Or get your internet bill to find you owe $100’s in extra data costs. And in the world of large files, this becomes a problem.
It also makes you think twice before using “cloud computing” applications. I love Live Mesh and use it on all my machines and it saves a lot of hassle. But while at home I have to be a bit more careful with my usage. For example I saved a large file into my documents at work recently by accident. When I got home I fired up Mesh only to realise it was trying to pull down 500mb. Luckily I stopped it at about 5mb, but they point is that 500mb shouldn’t matter. It’s the 21st century.
So my message to the government is this: Gives us fast internet sure, but before/when you do, do something about the miserable data caps ISPs enforce on us. Fast internet is nothing if we can’t make use of it.
Comments welcome
Posted By broadband in London on 29/04/2009 5:26:23 p.m.
Hello, Here UK an London the government has actually committed to ensuring everyone in the country has access to broadband speeds of two megabit per second by 2012.Posted By Melayu Boleh on 27/05/2009 8:36:30 a.m.
Yes, i am absolutely agree with you. The government must provide a good infrastructure for internet speed. Internet is not a technology anymore, it is a need in our culture. They should improve the infra as that is why we vote for them in the election.