Page 4327 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010
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is increasing, but so is the demand for fast fixed line broadband capacity. According to the ABS, downloads have increased in Australia by a staggering 280 per cent since 2008 and, in the 2010 June quarter, downloads have jumped a further 57 per cent.
The demand for fast internet connections is also on the rise. Since last year, internet subscribers of connections with a capacity of over eight megabytes per second have increased by 45 per cent, while broadband connections slower than 512 kilobytes have decreased by 60 per cent. Australians are voting with their feet and their hip pockets for these new services.
This week the United Nations broadband commission endorsed the rollout of Australia’s NBN, arguing high speed internet was a vital engine driving economic growth and crucial for future economic prosperity. The UN commission said that future service delivery in health, education, trade and government would rely on broadband enabled platforms so that countries must plan for a future built on broadband. The UN commission added that ubiquitous high speed internet services are a vital engine to drive growth.
The UN broadband commission was less glowing in its assessment of mobile driven broadband policies like those espoused by the federal Liberal Party. The World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development are also on record as saying that faster broadband and fibre optic networks will promote stronger economic expansion. One recent World Bank study of 120 countries found that for every 10 percentage point increase in penetration of broadband services, there is an increase in economic growth of 1.3 percentage points. Other research by McKinsey and Company similarly concluded a 10 per cent increase in broadband household penetration produces a rise of 0.1 to 1.4 per cent in GDP growth. Just yesterday, IBM claimed that Australia’s gross domestic product could be increased by 1.5 per cent, or $19 billion, if broadband enabled smart technologies were installed across the country’s electricity, water and transport grids.
You do not have to look to the future to see the sorts of companies that high speed broadband can nurture and support. They are here in Canberra right now: companies like Lucy Media, the winner of recent awards for exporting innovation. Based in Canberra, Lucy Media own and operate a portfolio of websites with a global audience of over 10 million unique visitors each month. Or eWAY, a dynamic, young Canberra company that is rapidly cornering the online payment gateway security space. Not only is eWAY a success in its own right, but it is providing the systems and wherewithal for many other small businesses to make the secure step into online commerce.
Then there is Bonobo Labs, another young Canberra company led by a young Canberra entrepreneur, which is carving out a successful niche in the iPhone and iPad apps building business. With offices in Sydney, Perth and Melbourne and development partners in Europe, Bonobo Labs will flourish with the capacity that NBN will deliver. Or Simmersion Holdings and its Mycosm virtual 3D world technologies, another Canberra company that was also one of the first recipients of commercialisation funding from the new commercialisation Australia initiative. The download speeds and support that NBN will provide will take the company to new heights.
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