The internet that Australia is missing out on

Australians who have experienced the rest of the world's broadband can often be heard complaining about the slow speeds and low data caps available to us. Whilst I sit here in Sweden with my (girlfriend's) 100mbit connection my friends at home max out an an effective 7mbit. There are numerous technical, environmental and commercial reasons why the speed of our internet has lagged behind but here I would like to examine some of the services that Australia misses out on either partly or entirely due to the speed of our internet.

• Spotify: This is a music service that streams songs, entire albums and playlists written by you or friends on demand. Simply search for a song or artist, play the songs you want and now and then an advertisement will play. If you don't want to hear the ads then pay to subscribe and they're gone. There isn't anything else available in Aus that compares to the functionality and simplicity available with this service. Now why wouldn't it work in Australia: 5 hours of listening to medium quality songs (160kbs) would equal 2.8GBytes of data. That's 10% of my cap at home in less than 1 day of listening to music!!
• BBC/4OD: Both the BBC and Channel 4 in the UK stream all of their programs to UK residents. As with broadcast TV the streams have adds at the start and sometimes during the show, but unlike broadcast TV you can watch what you want, whenever you want.
• Streaming Movies & TV (and some more) in the US. To download a 2 hour movie at the lowest quality (500kbs) would chew through 3.5GBytes of limit and for most people cut a third out of their bandwidth. Leaving anyone who wasn't watching the movie with genuine 2002 speeds.
• And MOG: a music streaming service that is not quite as good as spotify but still worth looking at.

Of course the federal government is attempting to build the National Broadband Network and they are doing their best to convince the public it's what they want but the spruking is in the hands of one of the least respected members of the government so I don't hold much hope.

All I've heard so far is stories of rural tourism firms that want to upload movies and high res pictures. Who is that convincing? The tiny number of people in the country who want fast internet? Innovators should be hearing about the amazing opportunities for new entrepreneurs (Spotify), the large media corporations should be hearing about the way to win back lost viewers (on-demand TV streaming) and the rest of the public should be hearing about the way in which entertainment will once again be enhanced with the new technology.

The problem is listing the services available to others doesn't really help. It's like telling someone the wine they're drinking is horrible, if it's all they've ever had they would have to have great faith in your judgment to change. Just telling people about the services available won't convince them that its necessary, that comes through experiencing the difference.