Broadband Reform: Getting it right

Australia could learn from Canada what a meaningful public consultation on broadband reform looks like.

The Commonwealth’s decision to build the National Broadband Network (NBN) provides an opportunity to fix the policy failures of the last two decades. Despite liberalising the telecommunications industry in the early 1990s, Australia fell well behind similar nations such as Canada in the deployment and take-up of broadband services by the early 2000s. Many believed that Telstra was responsible for the slow deployment and adoption of broadband, but recent statistics suggest otherwise. On many counts, Australia and Canada are on par for average prices and speeds, but at June last year, Australian households were still 12% behind their Canadian counterparts.