Telstra has been chastised for comments it made earlier this month in which it claimed that Australians aren't demanding broadband because they can't afford it.

Ninety seven percent of ZDNet survey respondents said the telco heavyweight is merely trying to avoid the cost of broadband rollout.

The survey came on the back of an Internet Industry Association conference, where Telstra CTO Hugh Bradlow said that broadband deployment in Australia depends on user demand and that "[Australian] users are not saying that they're desperately demanding faster transmission speeds."

Bradlow said that dial-up Net access is a cost-effective competitor to ADSL - but only 50 out of almost 1700 responses from ZDNet readers thought dial-up was an adequate service in comparison to ADSL.

"We have the lowest cost dial-up solution in the world," Bradlow told ZDNet this week, which gives Australians "less incentive to move to a broadband network than in Europe".

Snail's pace?
Telstra has been widely criticised for its slow deployment of ADSL but Bradlow claims the telco giant has been deploying broadband in accordance to "the type of demand they're seeing".

Industry analysts claim that Telstra's high ADSL service fees are keeping demand down.

"It's true that there's no demand if you price it too high," independent telecommunications analyst Paul Budde said.

Budde claims that there's a pent-up demand for broadband in Australia and he estimates that about 25 percent of residential customers would be willing to pay for it if it cost about AU$50.

"If you charge AU$100 or more, demand is not there," he said.

"Every single country in the world that's rolling out ADSL have a waiting list of people who want to have it," Budde said, pointing out that Australia is no different.

"The demand is here, Telstra is simply not willing to roll it out."

ADSL could be offered at 80 percent of the cost of current services, according to Budde.

"In the corporate market prices could drop 60-80 percent," he said.

"Telstra is just saying, 'we'd like to keep the profits high therefore we won't invest in broadband'."

"It's criminal," Budde added.

But Bradlow insists that price is not the major issue in determining demand for broadband.

"[Australians] are not saying they don't want it because they can't afford it."

"I don't believe there's evidence to suggest that it's a pricing issue even in the residential market," Bradlow said.

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