Located 32Km from the Brisbane CBD, the Fernbrooke housing estate sounds like paradise. Clean air, less traffic, cheap homes - even the marketing spiel on the web site has us daydreaming of a greener, fresher existence: "There's a place where the air seems clearer and the sky so much bigger"
The Fernbrooke web site also promises a place "where dreams are being built", and where you can enjoy your "big life", under a "wide sky". It also turns your mouse cursor into a handglider, but we won't hold that against them.
And while some Fernbrooke residents will be enjoying those beautiful vistas, we know what others will be doing: downloading furiously at speeds the rest of us can only dream of.
Fernbrooke is one of a dozen planned projects where Internode says it will be delivering Fibre to the Home (other announced sites include Lochiel Park and Northgate developments in South Australia).
Internode is offering several speeds over Fibre, including 25Mbps, 50Mbps and 100Mbps. Prices start at $49.95 per month for the 25Mbps service, and a 5GB download quote, which could be a little stingy we think, considering how fast you'll be sucking down the data.
The ISP is also talking up the comparison between fibre and ADSL2+, saying the downstream speeds are "actually delivered to the home's Ethernet port, unlike the 'best effort' speeds provided by traditional ADSL2+ services".
And while moving house to get better broadband speeds might be a little extreme, at least you'd be getting what sounds like a reasonable deal. Packages on the Fernbrooke site start from around $332,500 for the "Whiteley", a three bedroom, two bathroom house.
Australia's download speeds mightn't be world-class, but it's nice to know that in some areas, we can match Korea.
