CANBERRA, Australia (AP) â€" Australia's parliament on Monday endorsed the government's contentious plan to roll out a 36 billion Australian dollar ($37 billion) fiber optic national broadband network that will be among the world's fastest.
The House of Representatives vote was the final hurdle for the network, which was a major campaign issue ahead of elections in August that returned to power Prime Minister Julia Gillard's center-left Labor Party government.
The conservative opposition had promised to deliver a smaller, slower â€" but much less expensive â€" AU$6 billion network with a range of technologies including optical fiber, wireless and DSL.
The measure won the support of rural-based independent legislators who argued that the network will overcome some of the disadvantages of living in remote locations.
"We are being provided with one of the most important move-forwards we will see in our lifetimes," independent lawmaker Bob Katter told parliament ahead of the vote.
The network will deliver broadband speeds of 100 megabits per second to 90 percent of Australian homes, schools and businesses through fiber-optic cables connected directly to buildings.
The new speeds are 100 times faster than most Australians currently get â€" enough to watch multiple high-quality downloads of movies or television shows at once from the same connection.
A handful of countries â€" South Korea, Japan, France and Germany among then â€" currently have comparable speeds.
The plan to make Australians one of the most wired people in the world with uniform Internet access is made more challenging by the vast and scarcely populated Outback that separates the major coastal cities.
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