It seems very likely that Australia is heading to a fibre to the node future. But is the technology fast enough to accommodate the applications we’ll be using over the next few years?

This week the Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI) announced the winners of their Apps for Broadband competition. Opening the event on Monday chairman Malcolm Long talked about the organisation’s role in “encouraging the development of new kinds of products and services driven by high bandwidth connectivity”.

Amongst the winners was Tutor Bee, a private tutoring app that provides an online classroom that the founders hope will help to improve educational standards, particularly in regional Australian. ACBI Director Colin Griffith says it’s an example of using “new browser technology to make collaboration and conferencing much more every day and much more natural.”

Chris Ryan, MD of Attend Anywhere, says teleconferencing has come on leaps and bounds with the widespread use of WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication). Chris has been involved in the facilitation of online medical consultation and says it won’t be long before we’ll be hooking up with our GP on a regular basis.

Then there our educational uses. We hear from Foxtel’s CTO Robyn Elliott who says it’s not just a question of streaming content, we are now also using second screens to make TV viewing more social.

Add to all this gaming and web-browsing, and you can see how simultaneous use of applications will demand more and more bandwidth. And many new applications have important roles that demand reliability. Can a FTTN solution meet all of these needs?