Australians love to complain about our internet speeds, but the national broadcaster obviously thinks things are improving if it can recommend a minimum connection speed of 1Mbps for its new internet television service.

ABC's Playback service is hungry for bandwidth.

When the ABC first began offering video online it allowed for a lowest common denominator of 256kbps, which was bumped up to 512kbps a few years ago. If it's ready to launch a service requiring 1Mbps then it obviously thinks Australians are ready.

Take a look at Whirlpool's Broadband Choice and you'll see almost anyone in Australia can get more than 1Mbps via cable, DSL, wireless or satellite. It's not broadband infrastructure that's holding back services like video on demand, it's the outrageous pricing plans from Australia's largest ISPs. Providers such as Telstra, Optus and Dodo are clearly more interested in making a fast buck by ripping off Mums n' Dads than offering value for money.

Unfortunately most Australians get ripped off by these ISPs, who prey on the fact customers don't know any better. Only a year ago a third of Australian homes with broadband were on pitiful 256Kbps connections, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Internet Activity Survey. To make matters worse, most of these homes would be Telstra BigPond customers stuck with pathetic 200MB monthly download limits. Even BigPond's next plan up only offers 400MB per month at 1500Kbps (for a long time it was at 512Kbps). This is fraud-band - 200MB works out at 6.66MB a day, which is barely enough to check your email let alone do anything interesting like internet telephony or video on demand.

To make matters worse, the ISPs offering the worst value plans tend to be the ones that count uploads towards your monthly limit and inflict the most outrageous excess usage charges. Optus betrayed its loyal customers last year by denying customers faster data speeds unless they switched to its new rip-off plans.

A year after those ABS figures were released, I'd guess at least half of Australia's broadband-enabled homes still don't have the speed or monthly download limited to use the ABC's new service. Not surprisingly the ABC has plastered the new service with warnings about using up your download limit and getting slugged with a massive bill from your ISP. Despite such warnings, you can expect to hear bill shock horror stories when the service is opened up to everyone.

Australia's greedy ISPs are holding this country's online future to ransom and I think the ABC is to be commended for pushing the envelope, which should drive demand and hopefully pressure the ISPs to offer better value. Meanwhile, downloader beware.