National Broadband Network

I have just been listening to a story about the National Broadband Network on ABC Radio. A lightweight story - the "reporter" Di Martin clearly has limited knowledge of how the world works and even less about how technology works. A big focus on fibre optics and small focus on business and application. It's not helped by Steven Conroy's confused wandering through the vocabulary. Mike Quigley is competent and articulate - and lots of vested interests get to have their say.

Now I am hoping that the NBN gets rolled out faster than planned - because it will make a HUGE difference to my working arrangements and those of many of my friends and colleagues. This is now - not next year or next political cycle.

It's simple really, aside from all the pie in the sky applications that ABC journalists might imagine - the real *killer app* is it's ability to bring regional Australia into the mainstream and to allow people like me to move to the regions for lifestyle reasons while retaining their higher paying city based jobs. Even some of the smarter ABC employees might want to take advantage of this ;-)

In the short term the main benefit of the NBN will be to improve the lot of regional Australia. And yet regional Australia largely votes conservative - who want to stop the rollout. Not much analysis happening there then - this might be a clue about why the regions have stagnated.

The NBN will help to reduce a range of pressures that are already impacting in the cities - including with population and infrastructure issues.

But the real long term opportunity is with as yet unknown applications. The NBN will deliver on a similar vision to that which was apparent to the planners and builders of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Who could have imagined in 1930 that it would still be providing great social and economic benefit in 2010?

The NBN is an infrastructure investment - and one that requires vision and leadership to complete. Large visionary projects always have to deal with the wowsers, the conservatives and the risk averse, that’s how life is - just get on with it.