Australia’s $31 billion National Broadband Network (NBN), a project announced by the Federal Government earlier this year, will catapult the country from 21st to 8th place on the world’s most fibre broadband-enabled countries worldwide by 2013, according to analyst Strategy Analytics. The government-backed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based solution aims to deliver 100 Mbps service to 90 percent of Australian households, schools and businesses over the next eight years.
“The future of broadband is clearly in fibre,” says analyst Ben Piper, a director at the company.
“The existing Telco xDSL infrastructure is reaching the end of its useful life. Soon it will no longer be able to support increasingly bandwidth-heavy consumer applications.”
Rankings just released by Strategy Analytics show that eight of the world’s top ten most fibre broadband-enabled countries are Asian and Eastern European. At the end of 2009, 51 percent of South Korean households will have a fibre connection, making it the most fibre-connected country worldwide. Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Lithuania round out the current top five in the firm’s rankings.
Singapore will overtake South Korea for the number one position by 2013, says the company.
Part of the Singaporean Government’s “iN2015” initiative is the construction of a 1 Gbps FTTP.
Not only will there be high speed fibre internet to the premises, there will be free wireless coverage across most of Singapore. Many areas are covered by wireless already - major shopping centres and many public areas such as public buildings, even some commonly used open space areas such as parks. The high speed internet roll out started a few weeks ago, with finalisation slated for the end of 2012.
Australia is clearly not among the top 5 players, but will be doing ok if the NBN ever gets up momentum and coverage improves.
Singapore is making a major effort to be both wired and unwired. And a new breed of cafe sitters, along with their computers and PDA phones haunt major coffeee shops around the island. Not a bad option when it is 32C outside - and an iced latte is at hand too.
Australia needs to hurry this process of higher connectivity and internet speed or we will be left behind - again. Without this access Australia will not be considered appropriate for a regional finance centre or other businesses that inreasingly rely on electronic communications.
[partially sourced from Electronics News Australia]
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