The government is spending billions of dollars of our money to put ultrafast broadband through most of the country. I've been wondering how this is really meant to practically help individuals, or the country, to become more competitive, happier, more successful, etc. This article is interesting.

I can see that having the internet is very helpful, and broadband is essential these days. Modems are too slow to do anything much with, even surfing Wikipedia would be very slow on one these day. But how is having a 100Mbps connection (which incidentally I don't rate as ultrafast) significantly better than having say a 2Mbps connection. As it happens I already have a 15Mbps down/2Mbps up connection from Telstra, which admittedly is only available to a small fraction of the population.

But how is UFB meant to help us now? Remote learning? Maybe that'll help 1% of the population, honestly school is at least 50% about the social aspect, learning how to interact with people. Remote surgery? Please, give me a break. Telecommuting? Nope, very few employers are open to it, though hopefully this will change in future.

The only practical advantage that I can think of for most people, that will be available in the near future, is that one day we may be able to stream TV and movies to our homes on demand. As nice is that is I can't see that it really helps anyone all that much. It might make online gaming better too, for the small fraction of people who do it, though unless the peering situation in NZ is sorted out latency will nix that.

Can anyone think of any practical ways UFB will help enhance lives or help the country become more affluent?