Internet Society of Australia
A Chapter of the Internet Society
ACN 076 406 801
27 October 1999: The Internet Society of Australia has called for urgent action to provide customer access to bandwidth in its comments to the National Bandwidth Inquiry.
`Bandwidth will be as fundamental to Australia's future in the next millennium as the telephone, electricity and oil have been during the current century', said Mr Tony Hill, Executive Director of ISOC-AU.
`Our submission puts forward a timetable for establishing universal access to megabit bandwidth by December 2001 and calls for a national inquiry into separating transmission from communications services.'
Bandwidth is the speed with which data can be communicated between computers and is measured in the number of data bits that can be transferred per second.
Australian home Internet users are currently able to access data transfer rates up to 56 kilobits per second using dial up modems.
The integrated services digital network (ISDN) provides some businesses with access to higher kilobit rates and last year, the Government introduced ISDN into the universal service obligation for telecommunications carriers, such as Telstra.
`Unfortunately, Australia's policy on data services is still well behind the situation in the USA where access to megabit data rates is now common through cable modems and a technology called ASDN or asymmetric digital subscriber line', Mr Hill said.
A recent discussion paper by the Government's National Bandwidth Inquiry has stated that Australia is around two to five years behind developments in the United States.
`Five years is a very long time in this fast moving area. Five years ago barely a few hundred World Wide Web sites existed.
`Australia needs an urgent national effort to deliver universal access to megabit bandwidth as soon as possible.
`Right now we don't even have a research network that is capable of supporting megabit transfers between industry and researchers.
`Australia has some different needs to more populated countries and we need to develop our own technology and policy solutions, for instance by providing satellite based services to regional and remote areas to promote competition.
`ISOC-AU welcomes recent technical initiatives by Telstra (including data mode of operation and ADSL) to increase the availability of high bandwidth but is concerned that these may continue to be priced at a level where they are not widely available.'
ISOC-AU was established in 1996 and aims to provide a voice for Australian Internet users. It is a chapter of the global Internet Society (ISOC).
Contact:
Mr Tony Hill, 0412 128 755, ed@isoc-au.org.au
Mr Leni Mayo, 0418 377 937, media@isoc-au.org.au