Minchin marshals survey results to attack $43B NBN plan

Stuart Corner
Wednesday, 15 April 2009 11:14

Opinion and Analysis

Minchin also cites a separate study by Charles Sturt University: Household Technology Survey, which saw data collected from around 700 households nationally in August '08. According to Minchin, "It found that 67 percent said higher speed broadband "is not a priority in our household budget [and] Only 11 percent of households said they were certain or almost certain to upgrade to a higher speed broadband service over the next 12 months, despite 55 percent saying their households could afford to do so. The same survey found that just 18 percent felt the Federal Government's broadband initiatives would help their household."

He really should go back and read his own party's pronouncements on broadband before he starts sounding off about the uncertain demand for the stuff. In its last major policy statement on the matter before it lost power in November 2007 (The Broadband Blueprint of September 2006) the Howard Government said it "recognises that ubiquitous, multi-megabit broadband will underpin Australia's future economic and social prosperity."

But not only did the Blueprint fail to spell out a clear vision of how this important goal was to be achieved, it could not even set a goal in terms of the desired or needed speed. Instead, it came out with this classic cop-out. "Neither industry nor government can say precisely what the 'real' broadband of tomorrow will be...With ever-increasing consumer demands one thing is certain; what may constitute real broadband today will not be considered real broadband tomorrow...Real broadband can be characterised as whatever speed is required to meet the needs of the various markets for broadband...Real broadband as a concept cannot be used as a target—it is a value ascribed by individual consumers and limited by where we sit on the technology continuum today—not where we will sit tomorrow."

The means by which this uncertain goal of Real Broadband were to be achieved were equally uncertain. Read my comments at the time and you will see what I mean.

At least with Labor we have definite goals, and even if they cannot be justified by demand metrics we have the satisfaction of knowing that most of the developed world has come to the same conclusion and is pursuing similar goals. And, so what if they are overly ambitious: better that than being too modest. Plans are not set in concrete; they can be changed, delayed or abandoned altogether if technology, market demands or other factors change dramatically. Better these than no plans at all.