Nice to see you come out from under your rock, how many years have you been living under there? Think about it. How many people have the internet in australia, how many people are using it at one time and can get decent speeds, it adds up quickly.
HFC (cable) has DOCSIS3 and Telstra offers 100/2 mbit/s, I'm sure optus has similar offerings on their cable network. FTTH isn't new either, Telstra's offered it under Velocity for years (in greenfield developments) with 100/5 mbit/s.
Universities are connected to AARNet who have a very nice network -
http://www.aarnet.edu.au/aarnet3.aspx Internode's network is very good as well
http://www.internode.on.net/pdf/network/internode-international-network.pdf