Malcolm Turnbull Can’t Imagine Need For Speeds Faster Than 25Mbps


Malcolm Turnbull’s high-speed vision includes the “near term objective that everybody has access to not less than 12Mbps, and within four years…not less than 25Mbps.” But in a comment that could echo Bill Gates’ alleged “640K ought to be enough for anybody” quip from 1981, Turnbull said “it’s difficult to think of many applications of interest to residential users that would not be perfectly well serviced by the speeds I’ve described.”

He added that “It’s hard to know what you miss out on.” Hard, unless you have an imagination, watch industry trends, read research, or look at history to know when it may be repeating itself. More: Why Did Intel Release A Sci-Fi Book With Douglas Rushkoff?

Stilgherrian over at on ZDNet’s podcast jumped in and disagreed, and the conversation became a hypothetical debate over an average family’s possible use of four simultaneous HD video conferencing streams. It was a decent example by Stilgherrian, but Turnbull wouldn’t have it.

Like I’ve said in the past, this isn’t even about politics anymore. I tuned into the podcast because I’m truly interested to hear what Turnbull’s alternative would be. I’m interested, but we still need more details please. [ZDNet]


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