It had to happen – Australia needed to have a cheaper option to Foxtel and Optus and since the big guns from the US have entered the market, we have seen a dramatic drop in service fees for cable TV.
Video-on demand services like Netflix and Stan have changed the game, pushing prices down and increasing our accessibility to online movies and TV shows. The problem is that high definition, streaming videos need fast internet connections and the normal broadband ADSL won’t do – you need the faster NBNs to cope with the load.
Are the new NBNs the real deal?
What if the new NBNs can’t cope with the loads? Remember when NBN was first banded about and the government was going to build completely new infrastructure with fibre optics to support NBNs? Then, they changed their mind and decided to upgrade some of the copper wire lines and mix and match the rest to make the whole process quicker and cheaper?
Is the old copper system a liability to NBN?
Well, this brings into question the ability of the new NBN to actually deal with the faster internet speeds needed by streaming videos on such a vast scale. As more and more people sign up for these video on-demand services in Australia, won’t the entire system just collapse?
NBN CEO Bill Morrow is also concerned about this very same issue and is set to trial some new and upcoming technologies, which should hopefully boost internet speeds over the old copper wires. Clearly, without a fibre optic infrastructure to support the requirements of these video on-demand services, something needs to be done to provide capacity for faster internet connections and download speeds to Australian consumers.
What sort of speeds do you need?
Netflix and the ShowBox APK can both be streamed in standard definition, HD and as 4K (this needs a lot of bandwidth). The problem is that 4K streaming needs at least 25Mbps and most Australians struggle achieving speeds of 10Mbps. On the other hand, if you are happy with HD streaming, then you should get away with 5Mbps speeds, but some days even that seems to be asking too much of the internet infrastructure for many Australians.
Hopefully, the new NBNs should reach 50Mbps, so there is plenty of room to move there, but as we all know – the NBN is only available in a few select areas in Australia and the progress is slow.
In the end, if you decide to sign up for Netflix, check your bandwidth speeds with your ISP and then make sure that your plan includes unmetered Netflix data or else you will be charged for all of your downloads – which can result in a hefty bill.
So, check out the National Broadband Network in Australia provided by iiNet and choose from their basic standard definition plan, their HD plan or their 4K plan – all for less than $20 per month.
