Our very own competition tsar Graeme Samuel may well go down in history as the man who changed the definition of the term "internet superhighway".

Speaking at a luncheon in Melbourne recently, the ACCC boss showed he was keen to redefine what the rest of the world regards as broadband.

Mr Samuel asked those in the audience at the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce function to raise their hand if they had a broadband service, and then to "keep their hand raised if the speed of that service was more than 10 megabits per second".

He said those who put their hands down did not in fact have a broadband service at all, but rather they had a "wideband service".

Apparently internet service providers have mislead more than three million Australian consumers into believing that they have broadband when in fact they have something called wideband.

Who's misleading whom?

Millions of Australians have signed up to internet speeds of 256 kilo bits per second over the past couple of years. Authorities around the world classify that as "broadband" including the hundreds of regulators who work for Mr Samuel at the ACCC.

Our friends at BigPond say those speeds are fine for the sort of activities most customers get up to at home these days and for the more advanced there is a cable 'Extreme' plan offering speeds up to 17 mega bits per second.

We suspect Mr Samuel has spent too long gazing into the future - bunkered down in talks with Telstra's Phil Burgess as they negotiate a way to build a 21st century high speed Fibre to the Node Network (FTTN).

That new network could offer speeds of between 10 and 14 megabits per second.

But with current investment-killing regulations proving almost impassable, many Australians may well be stuck with what Mr Samuel calls "wideband" for some time to come.

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