The world of high-speed broadband holds possibilities that Australians can only dream of.
The home of the future
Find out how broadband technology has created the home of the future in Korea.
e-health: what broadband can do for health
In a country as sparsely populated as Australia, e-health has significant potential to improve patient care.
High-speed broadband facilities provide life-saving diagnosis of stroke patients in Georgia, USA. When a patient has a stroke, doctors have about 3 hours to determine the cause. Getting a stroke victim from rural Georgia to an urban hospital is often impossible in this time.
Georgia’s REACH (Remote Evaluation of Acute Ischemic Stroke) program uses high-speed broadband to allow doctors to examine the patient, determine the type of stroke and prescribe the correct medicine all via video conference.
Remote diagnosis and monitoring rely on high-definition video-conferencing and broadband technologies. Limited bandwidth is the key obstacle to maximising these kinds of e-health opportunities in Australia.
Read more about the benefits of high-speed broadband for e-health:
IP TV: the latest television revolution
IP TV is television delivered over the internet – sometimes called TV over broadband – and it is already available in some countries.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates has told the World Economic Forum that the internet will revolutionise television within 5 years; due to an explosion of online video content and the merging of PCs and TV sets.
The rise of high-speed Internet and the popularity of video sites like Google Inc.'s YouTube is already leading a worldwide decline in the number hours spent by young people in front of a TV set.
AT&T (www.att.com) in the United States released its U-verseSM system last December, which it says represents the future of communications and entertainment delivered over its “fibre-rich network”.
U-verse includes access to 300 channels including 25 high definition channels, and includes high-speed broadband internet.
AT&T expects to reach nearly 19 million households as part of its initial fibre deployment by the end of 2008, and is adding about 40,000 miles of fibre to bring services closer to customers' homes using fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) and fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technologies.
This is just one new piece of the technology pie Australia won’t be having for quite a while.
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Tele-working: what broadband can do for you and the environment
Tele-working or tele-commuting is using telecommunications to avoid travel to and from work.
The benefits to business and the community are wide-ranging.
Productivity and morale
Tele-workers report increased productivity and morale. Employers who provide the tele-work option reduce absenteeism, lower their overheads and have an easier time attracting talent.
Environmental benefits
There are also environmental benefits. 1 minute spent travelling in the car uses up to 12 times as much energy as 1 minute spent in buildings or the home.
If every employee in the United States tele-worked just one day a year, it is estimated this would save nearly 550 000 tonnes of pollution.
According to Sun Microsystems, employees who tele-work save around 18,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year from petrol alone. With reduced office space and equipment the company estimates the total saving is closer to 29 000 tonnes of carbon.
One of the barriers to the spread of tele-working is adequate technology.
High-speed broadband is critical to maximise the opportunities the flexible workplace presents.
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