Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) lauded the Australian government's National Broadband Network could be a good model for other countries to follow.
"The attitude a couple of years ago was 'oh my gosh, Telstra is really letting us down and they're expensive and they're slow and they're not making Australia number one in the world [for broadband],'" Wozniak said during the Australian Chambers Business Congress on the Gold Coast.
The NBN is being built as an open access wholesale service network that the Australian government believes will facilitate greater competition by allowing any of In the process of building this network, Australia's dominant carrier Telstra agreed to sell its copper-based network infrastructure to the government for $11 billion.
However, Wozniak, who said he who said he can't get a wireline-based broadband connection in his own home, remains less than optimistic that the U.S. will ever be able to obtain the same speeds or have a nationwide broadband network.
He believes that the only thing U.S. government leaders, including President Barack Obama, do is nothing more than talk a good game to expanding broadband availability.
He believes that Barack Obama's pledge to have 98 percent of US homes connected to a broadband connection by 2016 made during his State of the Union address is just more political rhetoric.
"Every ... president since the start of the internet ... said you've got to have broadband, we've got to get broadband to everybody! They all say it, but nothing's ever happened to bring it to me!
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- ZDnet has this article
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