Praise all round (almost) for Government's new telecoms strategy

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 07 April 2009 11:03

IT Industry - Strategy

Both the Australian Information Industry and the Australian Computer Society looked beyond the FTTN to call for an immediate focus on the services that it would make possible. ACS chairman Kumar Parakala, said: "There remains a missing link – a national strategy for the development of our digital economy. With the pipe in the ground, there will be opportunities for the development of value added services which propel our future economic growth, such as e-health, e-education and e-commerce.

"These e-services will ultimately provide Australia with a platform to increase its participation in the global market. The flow-on effects from access to high quality infrastructure are estimated to increase GDP by 1.4 percent after five to six years, which is $15 billion in terms of GDP from 2007-2008 GDP figures."

AIIA CEO, Ian Birks, told iTWire. "It is a bold and creative solution. We believe it has a lot of merits...We just want this to be got on with as soon as possible and we think this is the start of the conversation we need to have about the valued added services we can have as a result of [building the FTTN]. We want to focus on the eHealth, smart metering, telecommuting opportunities, etc."

Internode CEO, Simon Hackett, on Whirlpool, said: "This is the first national wholesale only broadband network, not controlled by Telstra (or anyone else). Solves once and for all the core problem with privatisation, blocking competition due to failed policy around Telstra and network access. This draws a line under a decade of a policy of neglect... If they do what they promise, they've actually got it right, and we might just turn into a broadband front-runner country ten years from now... after all."