This afternoon Delimiter posted an article from Exetel’s CEO about Ageing Australia not being interested in seeing broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
During the election campaign, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy revealed the NBN would support speeds of up to 1Gbps, instead of the 100Mbps initially planned — after NBN Co chief executive Mike Quigley informed him the upgrade would cost no extra.
But in a blog post published today, Linton — who leads one of the few ISPs to provide broadband in Tasmania over the fledgling NBN network in the state — said it was “the unthinking and just plain stupid” who were excited about the additional speeds.
“Pretty much along the same lines as the stone age cargo cult dwellers in the jungles of New Guinea are excited about the next ‘goods drop’ from the strange coloured bird,” he wrote.
Linton added Australia’s ageing population — who he said didn’t “play online computer games or get a surrogate sex life from pornography” had no interest in terabyte broadband plans (such as have been recently released by some of Exetel’s competitors on ADSL) and speeds that could never made a difference to the internet applications they used.
“They are going to be the ever growing percentage of Australians who are going to drive the percentage of residences that don’t have any sort of wire line connection to their home,” he said.
Linton has been a long-time critic of the NBN and a supporter of the incoming generation of 3G mobile broadband and wireless solutions as an alternative.
Click here to read the full article.
When EFA posted the link, Twitter became very active about Linton’s comments:
- @diskincluded: Why on Earth would we want to be able to compete with the rest of the world? There’s none of the pressure when you’re last.
- @nightkhaos: He’s right in that 1Gbps is “too much” now but to presume to know what the market will be like in 10 yrs? Foolish and shortsighted.
- @masterhearts: who gives a toss about the oldies. i want speedy internet dammit.
- @prkaye: Isn’t Linton known for his lack of clue? Does anyone think much of most of his ‘Industry’ comments?
- @cindyleigh: Older generation has little patience for slow technology, they got better things to do with their time than slow net
- @Martin_Eddy: My elderly neighbors are happy paying $5/month for dial up.
So what do you think? Is Linton right or wrong? We would particularly like to hear from those that feel they identify themselves as one of Linton’s Ageing Aussies.
Please leave a comment below