Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner says the $43 billion national broadband network will have a major impact on Australia's small and medium businesses.
He told SmartCompany this morning that the network will transform the economies of many businesses. "This will help revitalise many parts of regional Australia, influence locational decisions and enable people to do more things online."
He says it will indirectly reduce transport costs and carbon emissions and improve education and health services because of the capacity to transmit data. "This is essential to the Australian economy," he says.
Tanner says the decision by the Government's NBN advisory panel to build a more advanced "fibre-to-the-home" network that will cover of the population was driven by a sense of urgency.
"The fibre-to-the-node model was a stepping stone to the full fibre to the premises model. It was the view of the panel that we move straight to the final proposition, and we have resolved to do that."
Tanner says Australia was lagging in the bottom half of the OECD ladder in access to broadband, and its cost was higher than in most comparable countries.
He also says that countries such as Singapore, Korea and Malaysia are moving ahead with fibre to the premises very rapidly.
"The Government formed the view that this is the enabler of next-wave productivity, that we should move to the full version and not delay."
Tanner, who was the shadow minister of communications between 2001 and 2004, was an early advocate of the importance of broadband.
"Having first become an evangelist for broadband seven years ago, and lived through the issue, moving from being a computer-need issue to a mainstream business and consumer issue, it is enormously gratifying that the Government understands the importance of broadband," he says.
Tanner says that previous governments in other countries rolled out electricity, gas, road and rail networks. "This is the 21st century equivalent of these rollouts," he says.
The Government has declared the network will be open access, giving all telecommunications providers the opportunity to get access to the network at the same price.
See also: Federal Government will build national broadband network
