Realising our Broadband Future

Just last week, Thursday and Friday to be more precise, the Australian Government held an open industry forum, “Realising our Broadband Future“, to brainstorm services and applications that the forthcoming NBN (National Broadband Network) may potentially enable. As the forum was heavily over-subscribed, many people, myself included, virtually attended via the live stream broadcasts and participated via the online wiki services and twitter. This is my summary of the event, with a particular focus on the areas that I believe are important strategically for the future of communication services in Australia.

First, what is the Australian NBN?
Before embarking on a more detailed analysis, it may help to highlight some of the key characteristics that make the NBN more than just another FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) network deployment. Chief among these are:

• The NBN will provide broadband services to 100% of the Australian population. This complete elimination of the digital divide alone is fairly key–when broadband penetration is so total,one of the primary blocks to service deployments vanishes. You can always assume access capability and hence business cases become merely a function of utility versus cost.
• 90% of Australians will receive a minimum 100Mbps access capability via G-PON and the remaining 10% a minimum 12Mbps access capability via satellite or other wireless. These are committed minimum’s only–in time they will most likely increase with demand and technology. Whilst some consumers are able to leverage and utilise greater capacity, it is very likely that these minimum capacity limits will offer significant utility for quite some time.
• The NBN will only provide wholesale service capabilities. These wholesale services will be available to any access-seeker at open and fair prices–it is anticipated that this combination will stimulate a vibrant and competitive retail market place for value-added services and solutions.

So, keep in mind that this is a truly ubiquitous broadband network that aims to deliver network access services, in an open fashion, to every Australian citizen. This is regardless of whether they live in the center of the city or out on a rural property, potentially 100’s of kilometers away from their nearest neighbours.