Infrastructure for the Australian NBN to be built using economic stimulus funds
The unveiling of what Australias Prime Minister called the largest infrastructure project in the history of Australia back on April 7th was good news for many but nowhere near as large as the revelation that the creation of a broadband infrastructure would be the key focus of the economic stimulus package worth billions of dollars making Australia the only country in the world to use its stimulus in this was.
An investment of $30 billion USD into the Australian broadband infrastructure over the next eight year was announced by Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister, following the admittance that broadband in Australia is falling behind and announced the building of that NBN stating that this would be the only way to “turbo-charge Australia’s economic future.”
The National Broadband Network will be using technologies like satellite and wireless for the more rural areas and fibre optic connections in regional and urban towns. It will be providing its users with broadband connection speeds of as much as 100Mbps, which is far faster than the current connection speeds, and will roll out to 90 percent of the population including schools, businesses and homes.
The broadband stimulus package for Australia is costing $30 billion and is in fact higher than the $29.3 billion that is allocated for non-technology and this makes Australia unique compared to the rest of the world in that it is focusing so heavily on building a better broadband infrastructure.
The author of Connectivity scorecard and one of the most prominent people in the global telecoms industry, Leonard Waverman said “Expenditure on broadband infrastructure is either missing or inadequate on stimulus packages of all governments around the world. I would spend more on communications compared to highways and bridges. Broadband is also construction, but it is not a focus anywhere,” he said. “We need information highways, not just the autobahns. And now is the time to do it.”
Source – www.govtech.com
