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

I thank the senator for his question. The Gillard government is committed to building the NBN to meet Australia's current and future broadband needs. Those opposite have no similar commitment. The member for Wentworth continually denies there is a need for speeds above 25 megabits a second—he is continually in denial. Let me give you just one description of a typical family by an executive of a European technology company that disagrees with Mr Turnbull. The executive said:

Between 8 and 10pm, the mother is watching a 3D movie, which uses about 30Mbps; the father is doing two things at once: uploading his weekly work at 5Mbps upstream, and watching the World Cup on HD IPTV, which consumes about 15Mbps. The daughter is streaming her university courses from her university website at about 10Mbps, while the other 2 kids are playing a streaming game that uses 5Mbps and uploading a video of their last football match to Facebook, again at 5Mbps upstream. Combining these gives a total download of 60Mbps and 10Mbps upload - that still leaves 40Mbps for other new usages.

So who is this technology executive, Mr President—I hear you ask? It is of course Jean-Claude Bourgoint, the Director of Fixed Access Networks and Services at French Telecom. Mr Bourgoint is explaining why the bandwidth of fibre to the home is essential. There are so many uses for broadband households. They will not do only one thing at a time, as Mr Turnbull is trying to tell them they can only do. Mr Bourgoint went on to say:

Whilst I have not yet seen— (Time expired)