Australians will be happy to learn that the federal government has found it worthy to spend an extra $15.6 million in order to expand and boost speeds and accessibility of satellite-based Internet services. This expense would be in addition to the $18.4 million already budgeted last week for the speeding up of Internet services for rural users in remote areas.
About 9,000 extra households, farms and small businesses in regional and remote areas will benefit from this move, even though new customers will be screened via strict eligibility requirements. Generally speaking, the subscriptions from this system shall be for those who have no access to any other broadband method.
"The eligibility requirements will be scrutinized very carefully," said Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. "This will be for people who genuinely have no access to any alternative method of broadband."
The National Broadband Network, with its 44,000 users under its Interim Satellite Service, is now so congested that during peak periods, users experience significant slow-downs akin to dial-up speeds. With the new program, there will be a boost of 10 kilobits per second per user, from the original 30 kilobits to 40 kilobits. A 'fair use' policy, of course, will be in place, along with tools to monitor usage, in order to ensure that the program benefits the most individuals and outfits.
This shows Australia's glaring need to soup up its broadband Internet services, since the Interim Satellite Service, which was just a stop-gap measure to be used before the government starts using its Ka-Band Satellites in 2015, nevertheless came at a cost of $351 million in 2011 and has been servicing about 250,000 regional and rural homes, business and schools. Yet it was still not enough.
The temporary service that has been set up was designed to service only about 50,000 users. It ballooned when NBN allowed schools, hospitals, and rural areas to be connected via the service.
"We had initial forecasts from our perspective that would be sufficient to take us through to the long-term satellite," said Gary McLean, NBN Co chief technology officer. "We were never going to be exactly right in our forecast of 48,000; it was our best estimated back in 2010 when we concluded the contracts."
"The Interim satellite was an expensive project," McLean further elaborated. "I think we can agree that was a significant amount of money to spend on a service for the amount of services so there was always a limit to how much we could justify that."
This new interim program is replacing the Australian Broadband Guarantee, established in 2007, which used to provide up to $6,000 worth of access per customer in areas that don't have access to fast broadband speeds.
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