With Australia’s fabled National Broadband Network (NBN) remaining a pipe dream this Christmas with the Australian Government having failed to introduce promised NBN related Telstra split-up legislation before Parliament rose for the summer break, new news out of America raises new questions on the future success of the NBN.

US telco Verizon yesterday tested the XG-PON fiber technology in its labs and to a customer home that delivered 10 gbps downstream over its FiOS network and 2.4 gbps in upload speeds.

From the media release:

The test, conducted recently in southern Massachusetts, sets the stage for Verizon to meet the emerging customer demand for a wide variety of devices and applications that require a network capable of transmitting large amounts of data at very high speeds. The devices and applications could include unicast HD video streaming, ultra-high-definition video, 3D video, user-generated content distribution, video conferencing, and new high-speed data services for medium- and large-business customers.

In case you missed those numbers again: Australia 100mpbs by 2018. Verizon (be it at testing, but possibly available within a few years) 10gbps…which is actually 10000mpbs, that is, 100x faster that what the Australian Government is talking about delivering to Australian homes by 2018.

To be fair to the Australian Government, the NBN (despite a lack of firm details) could in theory be upgraded to 10gbps in the future, but on that basis so could the Telstra and Optus networks as well; both haven’t agreed to sell their networks into the NBN yet, with both saying they’ll go it alone if they don’t get good terms.

The overall problem with the NBN remains one of foresight: the Australian Government is investing AU$42 billion in a network that by the time it’s switched on will be behind the rest of the world on data speeds, as it is even compared to some places today.

I’ve said previously that I’m not dead against the NBN, and the split up of Telstra is welcomed, but the lack of real vision, combined with a dodgy (actually no) business plan and the strong possibility that it will be redundant and bypassed before it’s finished continues to cast a serious doubt on the viability of the proposal.