Usain Bolt on Day 14 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on August 19, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Source: Getty Last week, the NBN expressed its angst at Telstra’s world-first launch of a 4G LTE mobile network that could deliver data 10 times faster than the NBN — at 1Gbps — in test conditions.
An NBN spokesperson told Business Insider at the time that 1.5 million Australian premises were already capable of receiving 1Gbps speeds. But no retail internet service provider is yet offering such a product to end consumers.
Now NBN chief executive Bill Morrow has explained why — reportedly claiming that such high speeds are useless and people are not actually requesting it.
“We have a product that we can offer the retailers should they want to sell it,” Morrow said, according to iTnews.
“A couple of retailers have signed up to our trial base where they’re looking at what a 1Gbps service might look like but they have chosen not to offer it consumers.
“I presume there isn’t that big a demand out there for them to actually develop a product to sell to those end users.”
Telstra, Optus, TPG and one unknown retailer has tested 1Gbps NBN in the past year. According to the ACCC, there were 17 of those services in testing for the quarter ending December 31.
Morrow said during Thursday’s half-year financials briefing that the company had consulted other telcos around the world on their experience with gigabit speeds.
“We asked the question ‘has anyone actually used that amount of bandwidth?’ and the answer was unanimously no,” he said.
Morrow added that there currently aren’t “that many applications” that justify a speed above 100Mbps, which is the fastest level available to the consumer on the NBN.
“We know there are things on the horizon that are going to increase the need for demand. All of these could drive up consumer need, but we haven’t seen it as yet.”
Read the full story on iTnews.
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