Australia's NBN: Conroy's digital economy roadmap

Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy released the government's roadmap for Australia's participation in the digital economy last night at an event at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The report is now available from the government website.

This ZDNet article outlines some of the reactions from Industry at the launch.
iiNet regulatory officer Steve Dalby raised the important point that we need applications that make use of the 100MBPS speeds, not just the speed itself. Brad Howarth expanded on this on his blog. A couple of his points:

• "Enterprise Connect, the digital literacy programs and small business online programs will assist with takeup of the NBN, but there seems to be no cohesive strategy for developing broadband-enabled services themselves.
• "The work needs to be done now to equip businesses and business associations with the skills - and potentially the seed funding - to begin developing next-generation broadband services today, so that they will be ready when the network begins to go live. Failure to do so means that the benefits from the network will not be realised until quite some time later, meaning our investment in infrastructure may be quickly leapfrogged in economies where the focus has been on infrastructure and services, as opposed to just infrastructure."

IBM has ideas in this area, communicated in their Smarter Planet campaign.

I really hope we don't end up with more obtrusive rich online advertising and increased piracy (has the RIAA started lobbying against NBN / putting together a case to sue the Australian Federal Government yet?!!)

Is 100MBPS enough to support human teleportation services? Now that would be cool...

Comments

[Caesar Wong]

Good points. Regarding taking advantage of the NBN, I think there are some business models that are pretty much ready to go: online movie delivery, digital TV, etc. and businesses that are ready to utilise it: Blockbuster, Bigpond Movies, Tivo. Then there are the ones that we can simply import: Hulu (yes, please!), NetFlix, etc.

Then on the non-consumer side there's medical imaging, stuff to do with geography :-) and pretty much whatever requires high resolution media.

Don't forget the possible social media outbreak if cheap bandwidth becomes available. Youtube will barely be able to contain the Aussie-flood or user generated content, coupled with new mobile technologies such as the video capable iPhone 3GS.

[Ro]

Sam just came up with a good one too - "Holographic 3D web navigation for Web 3.0" - so we can throw away our keyboards!

Might help solve the RSI / back & neck pain problems caused by sitting in front of our keyboards & computer screens all day.

[Ro]

Jeremiah Owyang just posted three videos showcasing potential augmented reality ideas that would eat broadband!

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/09/20/three-videos-of-augmented-reality-for-business/