The National Broadband Network (NBN), the new Australian high-speed network, has kicked into force this year. In a couple of areas of Melbourne, including the Lacrosse development in Docklands, the service is already available and the NBN’s Facebook page totted up 1,000 ‘likes’ at the end of August.
A small café in Melbourne is using the public's curiosity about the NBN to build a new customer base. The Hungry Bird café is offering free Wi-Fi to patrons and the response has been almost overwhelming.
An opportunity to sample the new high-speed broadband service has people rushing through the doors to sample the Ciabatta rolls and espresso coffee. The owners of the café have found the service to be a profitable strategy in spite of the price they had to pay to have it connected.
Its customers seem to belong to two basic groups - One containing IT professionals, who like the idea of checking the new network's performance in an informal setting, and the other consisting of people who are thinking of having the service connected and want to give it a trial run first.
However, David Ramli, the manager of local printing company Distinction Printing, said in August that the copper ADSL cable installed at the moment was capable of exceeding his company's internet needs and the cost of connecting to the NBN was too much. As many enterprises still see the internet as peripheral to their core business, they do not see any advantage in the extra investment.
