The decision, by the Advertising Standards Authority, raises an interesting issue for the various regulators, such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and NSW Fair Trading, which have not acted to date against ISPs who bill services at 256 kbps as "broadband ADSL".
The move comes only a month after world leaders in the communications sector referred to Australian broadband services as "fast narrowband" and told delegates at the Australian Telecommunications User Group (ATUG) 2003 Conference that "fiddling around" with technologies such as ADSL would see Australia fall behind in the broadband stakes.
Researcher John Papandriopoulos, postgraduate communications researcher with the centre for ultra broadband information networks (CUBIN), said, however, that broadband was in the eye of the beholder.
"These things are quite subjective, and also depend on the context and situation. If you asked me this a year ago, I may have said yes--that's definitely broadband. If you ask me in a year, I may say it's definitely not," he told ZDNet Australia.
Definitions can be a little bit tricky - network congestion can often render end point connection rates irrelevant, Papandriopoulos said.
"It's all very well to have a 1mbps pipe straight to your house, but if you can't achieve those [transfer] rates because of network congestion what's the point?"
Telstra, which includes Australia's largest ISP, defines broadband as "high speed or fast 'always on' Internet services with a download speed generally greater than 200kbps".
Telstra spokeswoman Kerrina Lawrence says that it's unfair to compare Australia's broadband performance to world leading countries--for example South Korea--due to Australia's sheer geographical size and sparse population spread.
"There's a whole range of reasons why comparisons with those countries are not appropriate," she said. "They don't take account of the geographic size of a country or population density. South Korea has five cities with a population density greater than 2,500 people per square kilometer, whereas Sydney has 341".
As per usual, the system we aussies are stuck with
is Second rate... and most of the punters that have chosen to go Broadband will be locked into 12 to 24 month contracts.