[AusNOG] NBN Legislation

[Bill Walker]

 Anyone read this, it questions the worth of NBN, thoughts?

 http://www.stuff.co.nz/technology/digital-living/4403408/Benefits-of-broadband-questioned

 Benefits of broadband questioned

 The Australian federal government has been accused of misusing research 
 to build the case for the national broadband network in an international 
 study that finds the claimed benefits have been ''grossly overstated''.

 Released in London before the vote today on legislation paving the way 
 for the NBN, the study found that the evidence to support claims made 
 for fibre-to-the-home networks was ''surprisingly weak'' and cited 
 Australia as a key example.

 ''All else equal, faster is better,'' noted the study, prepared by the 
 British telecommunications consultant Robert Kenny and Charles Kenny 
 from the US Centre for Global Development. ''But faster technologies 
 don't always triumph; think of passenger hovercraft, maglev trains, and 
 supersonic airliners.

 ''Concorde (if it hadn't retired) would still be the fastest passenger 
 aircraft today, having first flown in 1969. It turned out that the 
 incremental benefits of speed to most customers were not worth the extra 
 cost.''

 South Korea, cited as the world leader in providing fibre to homes, 
 enjoyed productivity growth of 7.6 per cent per capita per year in the 
 decade before it began the program and 3.8 per cent in the decade since.

 ''Many factors played into the growth slowdown,'' the study says. ''But 
 maybe the massive increase in online gaming, facilitated by the 
 broadband revolution, played a role.''

 In launching Australia's broadband network in 2009, Prime Minister 
 Kevin Rudd said 78 per cent of the productivity gains in service 
 businesses and 85 per cent in manufacturing flowed from information and 
 communications technology.

 The study traced this claim back to two papers from Australia's 
 Communications Department referring to gains of 59 to 78 per cent and 65 
 to 85 per cent.

 ''What was an upper bound in the research has become a mid-point in 
 Rudd's speech,'' it says.

 ''But more importantly, the research was looking at all technological 
 factors. Thus the figures cited include the benefits of everything from 
 biotechnology to the rise of containerised transport.''

 Also, the research cited by Mr Rudd covered the periods 1985 to 2001 
 and 1984 to 2002, ''when the internet was in its infancy and broadband 
 was pre-natal''.