An enduring characteristic of human nature is our inability to understand and accept the rate of technological change and its impact on society.  In 1876, William Preece, Chief Engineer of the British Post Office said: "The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys“  and in 1943, the Chairman of IBM famously said: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."  It is easy to laugh at these comments and dismiss those who said them as relics of the past.  But a similar array of laughable throw-away comments pervade the public debate on the planned fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) National Broadband Network.

A breath of fresh air comes from Julia Gillard and Stephen Conroy, who highlight the benefits of new broadband technologies and have correctly pointed out that building Broadband Network will have the same kind of transformational impact as the railways in the 19th and 20the centuries. But doubters and naysayers seem intent on living in the past.  For example, Kenneth Davidson’s (the Age, August 2, 2010) described the railway analogy as “bollocks”.   But the information age has only just begun, and broadband technologies are poised to transform society in ways that we don’t yet fully understand.  Only a few years ago, many people were perfectly happy with incredibly slow dial-up modems.  And in some Asian countries Internet users are now demanding 100 Mb/s and beyond.

Davidson argues that an alternate approach is to use “very fast broadband based on mobile technologies and existing fibre”. This really is bollocks, and it defies the laws of physics.  The reality is that very fast broadband – 50 Mb/s and above - cannot be delivered to the entire population using wireless and existing fibres.  In fact, it would require numerous mobile telephone towers to be placed along every suburban street, and it would require new optical fibres to be installed down every street to connect to these towers.  The net result would be thousands of kilometres of new fibre - much the same as will be required for the NBN – and ugly streetscapes across the nation.  What’s more, the mobile network would consume about 200 megawatts more electricity than a fibre-to-the-premises network and would require new power stations to drive it.

FTTP and wireless technologies are complementary, not competitive.  FTTP can provide data rates well beyond what wireless can deliver.  On the other hand, wireless provides a degree of mobility that FTTP cannot provide.  Fortunately, the screen size of small mobile devices is quite small, and video on these devices does not require nearly as much bandwidth as fixed video screens.  Wireless provides a convenient access to limited data. FTTP provides the full power and capacity of the Internet to a fixed location. Both technologies have their place.  Neither technology will make the other obsolete.

A recent report commissioned by the City of Seattle found that a fibre access network would produce indirect benefits of more than $1 billion per annum.  In addition, energy efficiency improvements in industry and the reduction in usage of private and public transport would result in greenhouse emissions reduction of 600,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum.  Scaled to a country the size of Australia, these benefits would amount to more than $5 billion per annum.  Looking at these indirect benefits from fibre-based broadband, the $43 billion price tag on the NBN starts to look like a bargain.

For the first time in history, Australia is poised to be at the cutting edge of Internet technology.  But we are teetering on losing a once-in-a lifetime opportunity.

 
Rod Tucker is a Laureate Professor and Director of the Institute for a Broadband-Enabled Society, University of Melbourne