I am surprised by how often I am told that broadband should be just treated like our other utilities such as electricity, gas, water and (of course) sewers.

Marc Andressen, founder of Netscape, explained this better than anyone else back in February 2014.

As this twitter post so graphically describes, the extreme growth in applications and uses of broadband make it most unlike other utilities. Unless of course we install a future proof deep fibre network that will, with relatively minor upgrades, cope with the extra demands!

By the way this was part of a longer twitter exchange involving Tim Berners-Lee and others on aspects of Net Neutrality that are relevant to Australia’s NBN debate. It is well worth a read including the referenced articles to keep up to date with this important topic.