In the early 90s, we couldn't grasp the revolutionary potential of the World Wide Web. Two decades later, the Coalition is brushing off the need for faster download speeds, writes Emma Alberici.

Before refrigeration, people died in the summer from eating spoiled food. In 1842, American physician John Gorrie designed the first system to refrigerate water to produce ice, but it took another 80 years or so until fridges were being mass produced and cheap enough for ordinary consumers to purchase.

Instead of buying and eating food the same day, shoppers were suddenly able to stock up, making savings by buying in bulk and storing it for long periods. Milk could be kept for days, not hours.

Just as the ability to keep food cold and fresh is now taken for granted, so is the ability to speak to someone on Skype or send them a photo in real time. Some might well argue that the internet has also been able to save lives (think Telehealth/robotic surgery).

But the World Wide Web was all but ignored when it was unveiled by the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1991.

Those who did react were sceptical that the web would ever entangle more than a few academics across the world and few could imagine that anyone would ever read their news on a computer.

Just 22 years later, billions of people around the world are sharing data, photos and videos in close to instant time. The internet has killed a lot of businesses (think newspapers, Kodak and the Borders book store chain) but it has also spawned entire new industries. A recent study by Google and Deloitte Access Economics estimates that there are now 190,000 people employed in online-related companies in Australia.

The advent of universal fibre optic cables delivered straight in to homes (FTTH) opens the possibility that many more will join them.

It's not altogether clear exactly what FTTH will be used for. There are currently no applications anywhere in the world that require the full one gigabit download and upload speeds offered by FTTH, but there will be.

In 1998, Nielsen's Law of Internet Bandwidth correctly predicted that bandwidth for high-end home users would grow by 50 per cent every year. Since computer processing power is increasing faster than bandwidth speeds, Nielsen noted that the user experience is ultimately limited by bandwidth and that as computers get faster, so will bandwidth. Experts forecast that many households will begin demanding gigabit-per-second internet speeds within 10 to 15 years. This is roughly the equivalent lead time between the launch of the web and the development of its now ubiquitous services - Skype (2003), Facebook (2004), Twitter (2006), Instagram (2010).

They call Chattanooga in Tennessee "Gig City". In 2008, it became the first American city to embark on a one gig-per-second download and upload speed internet offering for every home and business. The average internet speed in Australia is 4.2 megabits per second which is 238 times slower than that. Chattanooga's fibre to the home project was conceived by the local council-owned power company EPB (Electric Power Board), which managed to secure $112 million in federal stimulus funds to build the network.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 27 minutes 54 seconds 27 m Anthony Albanese and Malcolm Turnbull debate the NBN on Lateline.

EPB believed that lightning-fast internet was becoming as important as the development of electricity was 100 years ago. In a city plagued by black-outs brought on by frequent storms, EPB wanted a highly automated power distribution system that communicated in real time and could heal itself when lines went down.

By 2010 it had laid 9,700km of fibre optic cables reaching 170,000 homes and businesses. Power is still delivered using the same aluminium and copper conductors but a new fibre optic infrastructure following the same path as the electricity lines has allowed them to add smart sensors and devices along the grid. Those network additions are now communicating with each other, with EPB headquarters and with their customers. They allow EPB to assess the health and performance of the electric grid via remote and in near real time. The sensors and control devices can resolve problems with little to no human intervention.

One example EPB provides is the re-routing of power. In many cases, the smart devices know when a part of the grid has been damaged and can instantly re-route power around the damage. Critically for EPB, a recent power outage that would have resulted in more than 11,000 customers losing power was restored in just over six minutes instead of the six hours it would have taken previously. EPB boss Harold De Priest claims the improvements in productivity return $100 million back to the community each year. Four hundred road sensors are being installed so Chattanooga's traffic lights will soon be able to respond in real time to changing traffic patterns. Traffic signals will adjust vehicle flow through the city in real-time, based on traffic congestion, weather, and other factors that thousands of connected sensors throughout Chattanooga will be able to read and analyse every few seconds. Garbage is already being collected more efficiently.

Those wanting the full 1 gigabit of download speed pay $300 per month (66 times less than the $20,000 Malcolm Turnbull claimed on Lateline that Australians will have to pay).

The rest of the Chattanooga population subscribe to the basic service where they pay $58 per month to get 50 megabits per second - 10 times the average American internet speeds (and Australia's). At the local library, children are taking geography classes "flying around" the globe using Google Earth with no lag time. US officials have connected with students using high definition video conferencing to explain government policy. A local group of radiologists built their own application so doctors could view digitised scans wherever and whenever. One local doctor reports that he's been able to reduce his diagnosis time from 24 hours to 15 minutes which also speeds up treatment plans and/or peace of mind for patients. Another company is using the Chattanooga fibre network to allow employees to telecommute. That company has indicated that they're not only seeing those workers' productivity increase, but the staff are happier too. Two musicians were able to collaborate from 3,400 km away from one another.

Chattanooga has become a tech hub to rival Silicon Valley. EPB says it has "added fuel to an enthusiastic entrepreneurial community". Computer geeks are being given cash incentives to move to Tennessee's fourth biggest city - $10,000 deposits on mortgages and $1,200 to cover relocation expenses. Two Google developers have already taken up residence there. Volkswagen has shifted its headquarters for North American manufacturing to Chattanooga and Amazon.com chose to locate its new distribution centres there. The Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce says business investment in the city has soared by $400 million as a direct result of its "city without (internet) limits" marketing drive. In the three years since FTTH was available in all homes and businesses, 3700 new jobs have been created in the city.

In 2010, Google announced that it planned to build one of more community fibre networks. More than 1,100 local governments proposed their areas as suitable locations. Kansas won and Google is now fast on its way to becoming a phone company offering 1 gigabit-per-second per second speeds in what it's calling nominated "fibrehoods".

The FTTH Conference and Expo in Tampa Florida begins on the September 30. It's run by FTTH Council America which is a not-for-profit organisation set up in 2001 to represent industry in technology and applications. Its mission is to accelerate deployment of all fibre access networks.

In the United States, one in every five households is within reach of fibre. The goal was to have 100 million homes receiving 100mbps by 2020 but in January, the Federal Communications Commission's chairman, Julius Genachowski revised his ambition. He now wants to see one gigabit speed broadband services in all 50 states by 2015.

"American economic history teaches us a clear lesson about infrastructure," he said in a statement, "If we build it, innovation will come. The US needs a critical mass of gigabit communities nationwide so that innovators can develop next generation applications and services that will drive economic growth and global competitiveness."

Respected analyst Jake Brewer, who has worked on a number of US Government campaigns on everything from Veterans Affairs and Immigration to next-generation internet strategies, wrote a thoughtful piece for the Huffington Post earlier this year with the organisation US Ignite which describes itself as responsible for the development of applications "that will impact how we work, live and play". Incidentally, the board of directors of US Ignite is made up of some of the most well respected members of the telecommunications industry including C. Link Hoewing who is assistant vice president of internet and technology policy for Verizon which is one of America's biggest telecommunications companies. US Ignite sees a future with 1 gigabit of upload and download speeds like this: Instead of navigating to a retailer's webpage or downloading an app, people will walk in to virtual stores and pick up sample products, sensing their weight and shape with haptic devices. Your local pharmacy will not only be the place you pick up prescriptions, it will also be where you will go to "see" a doctor in a private "health pod" through the combination of secure, ultra-high definition two-way video, health sensors and tactile feedback.

Instead of downloading a YouTube video to watch a course lecture and uploading homework assignments, students will enter digital classrooms where interaction with their teachers and fellow students happen in three dimensions and in real-time just like in the classrooms of today. At the White House launch of US Ignite in June 2012, Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of the Ethernet, described the historical context of where we are in the development of the internet: "Build the next generation internet, and they will come, but not without encouragement and a willingness to be surprised. In the 1970s, many doubted there were uses for even 50-kilobit-per-second Internet. But soon application explorers came up with remote login, file transfer, and email. Pioneers have since found new worlds in telephony, television, publishing, commerce and social interactivity. Today, while investing in gigabit generations of Internet, we are again sending out our application explorers."

China is working toward 100 megabit per second offerings by 2020. By then, 90 per cent of Sweden is expected to be covered by fibre optic cables. In Hong Kong, many consumers are already accessing 100mbps to 1 gbps at a cost of $75 to $280 per month.

The single most important social and economic change that universal superfast broadband delivers is Telehealth. High definition videoconferencing could give doctors the possibility to consult with patients hundreds and potentially thousands of kilometres away. Specialists will be able to diagnose and treat by remote using robots as virtual physicians. In 2006, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was predicting that personal robots would be "the next big thing" after the mobile era. He was speculating that the market in these high-tech friends would be worth $50 billion by 2025.

In 2006, Microsoft's head of development, Craig Mundie, spoke to me at APEC in Sydney. The new age R2D2 would soon become an alternative to assisted living environments for the elderly. Instead of paying an average $80,000 per annum to keep someone in an aged care facility, a robotic companion would be able to help lift things, observe and monitor nanna's health and help her get up if she falls down.

"Let's say that I can have such a robot and it cost $30,000. If it costs you $80,000 to put nanna in an assisted living facility or $30,000 to let her stay in her home, maybe you'll buy the robot... and she might be far happier," he said.

The remote delivery of healthcare is being trialled widely as a way of trimming health budgets which are spiralling everywhere. In 1960, healthcare represented 3.6 per cent of Australia's GDP. Today health spending as a proportion of GDP is 9.3 per cent. In the US it has already reached 18 per cent. As the country's elderly population grows, its health care system is facing cost pressures and a shortage of doctors, nurses and orderlies.

Shifting some of the less rewarding jobs to robots makes financial and practical sense. There are about 1,000 in US hospitals now carrying towels to the laundry and meals to patients. They are voice-activated and able to navigate busy environments. iRobot Corp has announced it is making a major move in to the health care sector.

The company is known best for its Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner. iRobot brought in half a billion dollars in revenue last year, most of it from the US military. Thousands of specialised robots are being used to defuse bombs and help navigate hostile environments and warzones. InTouch Health Inc is making video-enabled robotic devices that have been approved by the Food & Drug Administration in the US and which can connect doctors to patients in rural areas via videoconferencing. Doctors can check on patients in a way they couldn't do before. FTTH will add High Definition videoconferencing and, with that, further health benefits.

The online gaming industry will soon start to demand higher bandwidth speeds too. The computer gaming industry grossed more than $65 billion worldwide in 2011. This compares to global box office movie receipts amounting to about $20 billion. The stereotypical gamer cast as a young adolescent male is also out of date. The average age of players in the US (the biggest market) is 37 and 42 per cent are female according to the Entertainment Software Association. Gamers prefer FTTH because it gives them special advantages – "lower latency and much faster upload speeds" according to Europe's FTTH Council. The effect of pulling the trigger with FTTH is about a third of a second sooner than their online competitors using VDSL connections.

Rather than being the world innovators, the Coalition's communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull doesn't want fibre taken all the way to the home until it's absolutely necessary. But in an election campaign that was dominated by debates about costings, voters didn't have a chance to properly compare the two broadband proposals. The Coalition's NBN plan wasn't submitted to the Parliamentary Budget Office at all. To be fair, it wasn't considered part of Labor's budget plans either. The country's 21st century telecommunications infrastructure is listed as a capital expense that builds a business that will bring the Federal Government revenues rather than purely an expense on the budget.

What might become a crippling cost under the Coalition's approach is the maintenance of Telstra's copper wires which is already estimated to be $1 billion a year. Those who do want the fibre taken to their homes will still have that option under the new Government but it will come at a hefty cost. Mr Turnbull hasn't given an exact price yet but he doesn't baulk at the UK comparison. Next year Britain's BT will begin to offer an all-fibre line on demand at a cost of between £750 ($1,278) and £3,500 ($5,960) depending on your distance from the node.

The question the Coalition will need to answer now they've taken Government is whether digital innovation will be moving faster than Australia's capacity, through their cut-price NBN infrastructure, to benefit from it. Mr Turnbull has long argued that he can deliver 100 mbps by running the fibre network to a "node" 400 metres away from every premises. The existing Telstra copper wires will be used to take the data/videos and anything else all the way to the home. In our recent Lateline debate between Mr Turnbull and Labor's Anthony Albanese, the Coalition spokesman said "the reason you keep that last 200 or 300 or 400 or 500 metres of copper is because you save three quarters or more of the construction cost and three quarters or more of the time [to build]. You can nonetheless deliver very, very high speeds. .. speed is only of value to you in so far as you have applications that need it".

Malcolm Turnbull often points to the BT example as one which Australia should heed as if fibre to the node is the sum of the British government's ambitions. Last year, the then culture secretary Jeremy Hunt was adamant that that is not the case: "where fibre to the cabinet (node) is the chosen solution, it is most likely to be a temporary stepping stone to fibre to the home". That aside, Mr Turnbull is adamant that it's "very unlikely" Australians will need 1 gigabit of download speeds. That's what they said about the World Wide Web.

* Editor's note (September 9, 2013): An earlier version of this story referred to a headline and editorial in The Sun newspaper that was in fact a spoof. The Drum regrets the error.

Emma Alberici is a host for ABC's Lateline program. View her full profile here.