Time to end the obsession with broadband numbers

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 01 May 2007 03:06

Opinion and Analysis

The EIU says that: "When a country does more online...the premise is that its economy can become more transparent and efficient." It claims that: "Our ranking allows governments to gauge the success of their technology initiatives against those of other countries. It also provides companies that wish to invest in online operations with an overview of the world's most promising investment locations."

The 2007 report has just been released and the top positions were: Denmark, USA, Sweden, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Singapore, UK, Netherlands, Australia.

That is illustrious company and Australia should be pretty pleased with its ranking. However the worry is that we have slipped down one notch since last year: despite our impressive growth rate of broadband on OECD rankings.

Considerable analysis would be required to determine the exact reason for this, but if Australia was as serious about the importance of such indicators we might be asking similar questions as the US Government about the methodologies used. Not to mention doing our own research to benchmark ourselves against other nations.

However the Government's only initiative in this direction has been to tell the ACCC that it need no longer collect its, very basic broadband uptake data because the Australian Bureau of Statistics is doing a better job. That job however is only on the level of what the OECD gathers. As the Forrester and EIU studies show. This is not enough.