Net addicts may not notice the difference

THE NBN will be a boon to internet addicts, downloaders and hopefully people in rural and regional areas who have long suffered a chronic lack of service provision.

But if you're a regular or even moderately heavy internet user who browses, sends emails and perhaps works online from an urban area, you may not notice a great deal of difference.

The Australian trialled the NBN at the home of one of seven mainland households connected to the Gillard government's $36 billion fibre-optic network when it was officially switched on in Armidale, NSW, yesterday.

Sites of newspapers such as The Australian, The Times and The New York Times loaded almost immediately; videos on YouTube loaded quickly and played without interruption. But there was no satisfying sense of having scratched an itch that had gone unscratched for a long time - perhaps because internet connections in most metropolitan areas, and indeed mobile broadband services, are already pretty good.

Stephen Stroud, who kindly lent The Australian his computer yesterday, reported download speeds of 2-3Mbps before being connected to the NBN - that's sufficiently slow to make video playback annoying, but not to obstruct basic browsing or email. Yesterday, his download speed clocked 89Mbps.

There is no question that is a substantial increase. But is it necessary? The laptop I used to write this article is connected with a Telstra 3G modem, which breezes along at over 8Mbps in Armidale - that's fast enough to browse, email, send a high-resolution photo in about 30 seconds and video conference with someone in Europe. Mr Stroud's neighbour, Tony Ker-David, reported similar speeds on his Optus 3G connection, and pointed out the convenience of being able to take it anywhere. The Australian already has speeds of more than 90Mbps in the office.