Broadband vital for jobs, economic prosperity says Conroy

Peter Dinham
Monday, 27 July 2009 08:28

IT Industry - Market

The Minister for Broadband, Communications & Digital Economy, Stephen Conroy, has laid Australia’s future economic prosperity very much at the doorstep of the ICT industry and the development of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

Launching National ICT Careers Week in Melbourne this morning, Senator Conroy said broadband was vital to Australia’s economic prosperity, and he made the point that almost every aspect of economic activity and everyday life was now influenced by ICT and will become even more pervasive.

The Minister cited what he said was a growing body of evidence internationally that broadband is “the vital platform for future job creation and economic prosperity.”

He referred to a study by the European Commission that found that broadband had led to the creation of 105,000 new jobs in Europe in 2006 alone, and, here in Australia, IBM and Access Economics forecasts that the adoption of smart technologies in electricity, irrigation, heath, transport and high speed broadband were expected to add more than 70,000 jobs to the economy by 2014 alone.

IBM and Access Economics had also predicted broadband itself to generate 33,000 jobs by 2011, Conroy said.

The Minister told the audience at the National ICT Careers Week launch that the ICT industry was the “engine room in which to build our digital skills and grow our digital capabilities to fill these new positions.”

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