Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to Senator Coonan, the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts. I refer the minister to her claim on the AM program this morning that WiMAX is the broadband technology of choice around the world. Given that the minister has now backflipped on her opposition to picking technology winners, is she aware that wireless broadband performance declines with distance, bad weather, hilly geography and the number of people using the service at any one time? The OECD has found that many of the claims about WiMAX performance are:

… overly optimistic and rely on theoretical maximums rather than what users may be able to typically expect.

Given this, can the minister indicate what speeds the WiMAX network will actually deliver for Australians in rural and regional areas? Can the minister guarantee a minimum speed of 12 megabits for all users of the new WiMAX network?