Australia trails with broadband
Australia trails with broadband
The IDC has released a report about Australia trailing other developed countries in its pursuit of spreading broadband across the country, despite recent government funding.
"The Australian Broadband Market Services and Equipment Analysis and Forecast, 2003-2008: Playing Catch-Up, but Catching-Up" report predicts that Australia will have a broadband penetration of just 13 percent by 2008.
IDC has discovered that most broadband subscribers in Australia have access download speeds of 256 or 512Kpbps, which limits the delivery of content and hinders initiatives for content services such as TVoVDSL and VoIP services.
Landry Fevre, research director of telecommunications at IDC said. "IDC estimates that the total broadband number of subscribers was 727,440 in 2003 and predicts the number to reach 2.8 million subscribers by 2008. While IDC expects the strongest growth in 2004 to be in the residential market and the market to grow three fold by 2008, the bulk of broadband revenue will be coming from residential broadband subscribers, at about twice the corporate market by 2008.
"Looking at the International broadband market landscape, some markets enjoy very attractive triple bundle which consists of voice, broadband and TV services over the same network. For example, France's second largest broadband service providers, Iliad, offers free national phone calls. 2Mpbs ADSL and 100+ TV channels for about the third of the price for what you would get in Australia. There is still a long way to go for Australian consumers to get a decent deal."
This follows a recent report by the META Group, which has revealed that Australian money invested in broadband dwarves the amounts spent on broadband in Asia.
The Australian federal government recently spent AUD $142.8 million on the National Broadband Strategy, to help Australia become a world leader in broadband. But this is a small amount compared to AUD$33.7 billion spent on the Korean government for its Cyber Korea 21 initiative.
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