My friend, world traveler, Steve Clift just sent me a great article on broadband access in Australia (Australian Broadband Guarantee Announced). In it, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, announced that Australians will now be able to access broadband services regardless of where they live thanks to the Australian Government’s $163 million (approximately $128 million USD).

The Australian Government has come up with an Australian Broadband Guarantee that will provide an affordable broadband service to all households and small businesses.

This program will replace the Broadband Connect – incentive program, which “aimed to provide registered Internet Service Providers with incentive payments to supply higher bandwidth services in regional, rural and remote areas of Australia at prices comparable to those available in metropolitan areas.” It also replaces the Metropolitan Broadband Connect program, which sought to improve access to broadband services in metropolitan Australia.

It will be fun to see how the program is implemented. At almost 3 million square miles Australia is clearly much smaller than the US; but it is much larger than Minnesota, which is 87,000 square miles.

I can actually remember back when Australia connected to the Internet via a 56K connection. Although I think that the US backbone at that time was either 3 T1s, or a T3.