Fibre to the everywhere: Australia's new plan for broadband

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08 July 2009Kevin Rudd has likened it to the building of the Snowy Hydro and the Sydney Harbour Bridge as ‘an historic act of nation-building’. Announced on 7 April, Australia’s new $43 billion plan for broadband will deliver 100 Mbits/sec download speeds to 90% of Australian households within eight years via optical fibre lines running all the way to their homes, schools and workplaces. The network will be built and operated by a new company in which the Commonwealth will be the majority shareholder. Rudd’s new plan replaces the one Labor took to the 2007 election, promising to spend $4.7 billion on a network delivering 12 Mbits/sec to 98% of the population, which replaced the Coalition’s $1 billion plan for improved broadband in non-metropolitan areas. This talk considers the origins of the new plan and asks who will benefit and who will pay for it.

This talk was presented on 30 April 2009.

Permanent URLhttp://apo.org.au/node/17668
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