Government to show off NBN in public demo

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 03 June 2009 11:01

IT Industry - Strategy

The benefits to the Australian community of the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) have been touted many times since the federal government announcement of its NBN plans, and an event tomorrow will endeavour to show just us how services might be accessed through the high speed broadband network once it’s up and running.

Former Shadow ICT Minister, Senator Kate Lundy, will demonstrate the ability of the NBN to deliver what she calls “improved social and educational outcomes for Australian” when she connects from Canberra, by broadband, with the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children (RIDBC) in Sydney, and a family in Darwin who use the RIDBC’s teleschool’s services.

Locating herself at the new Canberra offices of Polycom tomorrow, the senator will connect, using Polycom’s telepresence suite, to Jocelyn Ho, a teacher at the RIDC in North Rocks and the Watson family in Darwin, who, with their three-year-old daughter, Jesse, use the institute’s teleschool service.

A five minute video of the RIDC’s teleschool service will supposedly show us just what’s possible, and the good senator will then talk about how the service can be improved even further, eventually reaching more families through a high speed national broadband network.

And, Senator Lundy will also take the opportunity to officially open Polycom’s Canberra office and the newest addition to the company’s global telepresence network in the city’s Hotel Realm complex.

Meanwhile, debate goes on about the merits or otherwise of the much-touted NBN, not least of all what the ultimate cost to the government and taxpayers might be to build the broadband network, what private sector investment might be forthcoming, the degree of involvement by Telstra and other major industry players, and, of course, benefits to the community such as improved e-learning and e-health services, and whether the cost to consumers to access to those services  through the NBN will be within the reach of the average punter.

Generally, the government’s NBN plan has been pretty well received by the industry, including the new management of Tesltra.  And, while there’s a level of expectation from the community at what the high speed network can ultimately deliver, right into their homes, the jury is still out on what the cost of access for users will be, given the massive cost of building the NBN.

Only a couple of weeks ago, the Minister responsible for the NBN, Senator Stephen Conroy, was on the front foot, claiming the actual cost of the NBN would be “significantly lower” than the $43 billion originally estimated by the government when it announced its plans. There’s plenty of skeptics who are not so sure of that, and we’re still a long way from knowing just what it will cost users, like the deaf and blind institute, or the Watson family of Darwin, to access services over the NBN.

Time will tell and the debate over the NBN will continue for much, much longer, even right up the point when the network is scheduled to start feeding services directly into the homes of millions of Australians.