Telstra: Better broadband needed for artificial noses

According to Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo, it won't be long before Aussie households are demanding 100Mbps connections, while applications like artificial noses and thought recognition could stretch broadband speeds even further.

Speaking today at the Communications Day Summit in Sydney, Trujillo hinted that the speeds promised by Australia's planned fibre-to-the-node network — 12Mbps to 98 percent of the population — could soon be outpaced by Aussies thirst for online video.

"Today the quality of the videos we get on the Internet is roughly a quarter of a standard definition service... the next evolution, standard definition, will require bandwidths of at least 12Mbps in the average household," he said.

High definition TV will need in the region of 25Mbps, according to Trujillo, with "High definition virtual reality" needing double or even triple that bandwidth, "bringing the average requirement per household to in the region of 100Mbps".

While consumers may be spending their connections on video in the future, Trujillo said businesses are already working on next generation applications that will necessitate a high bandwidth future.

According to the Telstra head, "holography, haptics, thought recognition, artificial noses and wireless sensor networks" will see "widespread use" in the future.

"Some might be chuckling," he told delegates, "but it's not that far out. We have real customers talking to us about delivering things like that."

Trujillo also sees greater use of videoconferencing in the future as consumers seek "more interactive interactions" but he did not know if the telco would offer asymmetric broadband lines in the future.

"Everything is about market demand," he continued, comparing symmetrical broadband lines to uploads on its Next G network. "We're seeing uptake and use but it's not overwhelming yet."