Australians are not ready for super-fast broadband, NBN chief says

AUSSIES are just not ready for super-fast broadband and would not use it “even if we offered it for free”, the head of the NBN claims.

Australians don’t want to pay for super-fast NBN.

AUSSIES are just not ready for super-fast broadband and would not use it “even if we offered it for free”, the head of the National Broadband Network has claimed.

NBN Co chief executive Bill Morrow made the comments at the company’s half-yearly results on Thursday, and also revealed Australians couldn’t even access the system’s fastest speed of 1 gigabit per second.

According toThe Courier Mail, Mr Morrow said there wasn’t “that big of a demand out there” for it, and overseas providers found consumers weren’t making the most of high-speed downloads.

“Even if we offered it for free, we see the evidence around the world that they wouldn’t use it anyway,” Mr Morrow said.

He said things like augmented reality or artificial intelligence could drive demand but no spike had been seen yet.

He also revealed two NBN retail service providers trialled super-fast speeds but decided not to offer it.

At the moment the highest speed offered is 100 megabits per second, despite the NBN spruiking speeds of 1 gigabit per second since 2013. Customers can choose from many different service providers, but a plan with Telstra would cost households $95 per month.

Accessing even faster speeds would cost significantly more than that.

According to the latest State of the Internet report from Akamai, Australia is currently ranked 51 in the world when it comes to internet speeds, with an average speed of 8.5 Mbps.

This compares to the number 1 ranked South Korea, which has an average speed of 27 Mbps.

Speeds in South Korea have increased by 17 per cent year-on-year, compared to Australia, which saw speeds increase by 6.8 per cent.

Even New Zealand had a higher average speed of 10.6 Mbps, and this grew by 26 per cent across the year.

Last financial year there was a 100 per cent spike in complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, many of them about slow download speeds.

Internet Australia chief executive Laurie Patton blamed the NBN’s “flawed” pricing model that only made it attractive for internet providers to offer slow speeds.

“This is massive spin,” he said.

“Morrow is trying to justify the fact that he’s building an inferior network that’s not capable of delivering fast speeds.”

NBN Co charges telcos including Telstra, Optus and TPG Telecom to access the network, and they resell the service to their customers.

NBN CEO Bill Morrow says Australians wouldn’t use super-fast speeds even if they could access them.

Meanwhile, NBN expects to more than double its current revenue, with the network expected to reach 5.4 million premises by June 30 and to have 2.3 million users.

As of December 31, there were 1.6 million users and the NBN was getting revenue of $43 a month on average per user.

However, its net loss widened to $1.83 billion over six months to December, up from $1.24 million a year earlier, as the company continued to spend money on the network, marketing and staff costs.

More than 70 per cent of the project’s construction has taken place in regional and rural areas so far, with construction set to ramp-up in metropolitan areas this year.

— With AAP