Alcatel-Lucent gives the NBN a YouTube plug

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 14 October 2009 09:53

IT Industry - Strategy

Alcatel-Lucent has produced a video, posted to YouTube and "targeted at mums and dads" in which it "seeks to overcome the widespread misunderstanding that the NBN is just about 'faster Internet' and in which it tells views that the NBN is "every Australian's right."

Alcatel-Lucent's external communications manger, Lisa Poninghaus, told iTWire "We're keen to help educate Australians about what the NBN really means and start explaining why it is a key part an underlying digital infrastructure, as important as water and electricity. And that it will support many exciting and innovative applications, new business models and new ways of doing things for Australians."

The 4.5 minute animated video says that "The NBN is the foundation on which we will build an entirely new way of life," and promises that "Life changing and unheralded and economy-building services will originate from [the NBN's] unheralded and seamless connectivity."

It's delivered in a light-hearted, non-technical manner and overall gives a good and accurate overview of what the NBN could mean, with a particular emphasis on benefits to rural Australians with poor Internet access today.

However, it claims (against a background representing of ADSL, dialup and cable Internet access services, that "Australia's current network is a patch of different technologies that don't talk to each other very well," and says that the "small minority" unable to use FTTP will receive "similar access" from other technologies.

(In fact the size of this 'small minority' as a percentage of the whole is comparable to the 'similar' bandwidth they are planned to receive as a percentage of that available to the FTTP connected members of the population. The Government expects FTTP to deliver 100Mbps to 90 percent of the population and other technologies 12Mbps to the remaining 10 percent.)