The Winds of Change Will Not Wait for Rudd’s Broadband
This article is re-published here with the kind permission of it’s author Chris Berg, Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs and Editor of the IPA review. It was first published at Crikey.com.au on 7 April, 2009
The failure of the National Broadband Network tender to find a sensible and willing private sector company is not surprising. But the failure cannot be blamed on the global financial crisis — the economy may look pretty dismal, but the government’s broadband policy was never very good anyway.
Partly this is because technological change has boxed the government into a corner. Earlier this year, while the NBN expert panel was dithering about looking for a firm to make good on the Labor Party’s election promise of a 12Mbps network, Telstra announced that it was planning to upgrade its already-existent cable network to 100Mbps, without a scrap of government support or subsidy.
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Chris Berg is a Senior Research Fellow with the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub, a Senior Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs, and an Academic Fellow with the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance.
