While the two major Australian political parties are at logger heads over high speed Broadband for Australia, one thing is for certain, a new fast Broadband network will have a major positive impact on our nation. To reiterate on a article I recently wrote titled 'Broadband Future' back on Aug 10 2007, it appears that more and more people are starting to see the potential positives that a high speed Broadband network will have on Australia once it's established.
A recent Nine MSN article and expert government executive 'Matt Healy' have stated that very fast Broadband will give people more than just IPTV, Video-on-demand and High definition TV, it will give the nation the ability to work from home - even from regional and remote areas. However, even the fastest Broadband network will need to be affordable in order to make these predicitons reality.
According to Matt Healy, napredictionstional executive regulatory and government with Macquarie Telecom (a member of the G9 group competing with Telstra for the right to build the national fibre network), it's not the sexy services like high-definition TV on demand that will have the biggest impact, it's the ability for people anywhere - even in remote areas - to work from home.
Video-conferencing is another area that holds great promise, especially in healthcare and education. Doctors in city hospitals could assist with the diagnosis of cases in remote areas via a video link, providing treatment recommendations long before a patient could get to a specialist.
Read the entire Nine MSN article here