Re:As an Australian and a geek, I have to say. (Score 1)

I agree that there are probably higher priorities, but I think it's fair to say that this is necessary infrastructure for the 21st century.

Think of what it might enable for example - want to cut greenhouse gas emissions? How about installing the infrastructure that will make it much much easier for a significant proportion of the population to "telecommute" and work from home. And once people no-longer have to live near their workplaces, and with high-speed internet access being ubiquitous, they might move to regional centers, improving rural economies and taking pressure off the resources in our cities.

Okay, that might be a bit of wishful thinking, but it's certainly the direction we need to be heading in.

As for what you have...luxury. I live in a suburb of Hobart - 15 minutes drive from the CBD. I have no cable in the area, no ADSL since I'm too far from the exchange - my bloody dial-up modem would only connect at 28.8k because of the shitty phoneline - the ONLY solution for "broadband" (in the loosest possible sense of the word) is wireless 3G, which I pay Virgin $50 a month for 5GB, which sometimes gets whopping download speeds of 400kbps, but is usually closer to 120kbps. I could have paid much more to go with Telstra's NextG, but I generally don't like being raped by them.

Some places in Australia do have usable broadband. A lot of places still don't. And I measure "usable broadband" by the criteria of being able to watch a video on YouTube without having to press pause first and let the whole thing buffer...