Word: australia
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...goes the nation. In April, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a $31 billion plan to build a National Broadband Network (NBN) that will bring fast fiber-optic connections into 90% of the nation's homes, even to towns with as few as 1,000 residents. In doing so, Australia may leapfrog South Korea, which is widely acknowledged as the world's most wired country but where just 44% of residences currently have fiber connections. Less than 5% of U.S. households are wired with fiber-optic cables. (See the 50 best inventions...
...Rudd launched the NBN construction program as part of government efforts to stimulate Australia's economy, but the network will provide more than jobs. It promises to transform the way Australians work, play, learn and communicate over the eight years it will take to complete. Once the rest of the country catches up to Fernbrooke, Australia will be at the forefront of the digital economy, capable of delivering digital TV, video on demand, e-health and education initiatives, and a host of as yet undreamed of applications. "It will open the floodgates for entrepreneurs," says telecommunications analyst Paul Budde...
...billion that Australia is spending on the NBN dwarfs the $7.2 billion earmarked in the U.S. stimulus package for broadband network construction. Budde says the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is taking an "enormous interest" in the NBN initiative because it may hold lessons for America, where U.S. phone companies enjoy competitive advantages similar to Telstra's. "The warning signs are there for AT&T and Verizon," says Budde. "Things won't change overnight, but open networks are coming to America. If the stimulus package works I'm 100% sure they're not going to stop there...
...first miles of Australia's new network will be laid in Tasmania as soon as July. The rest of the nation will follow early next year, with the emphasis on tackling black spots and bringing faster connections to rural areas. Ultimately, the network will be capable of data-transmission speeds of up to one gigabit per second, says John Lindsay, carrier relations manager at Internode, an Internet service provider that delivers broadband to Fernbrooke and across Australia. "The network will evolve over a 40-year period," he says. "Fiber is a pretty future-proof technology...
...been greeted with near unanimous praise by Australia's information-technology industry, but it is not without critics. The opposition Liberal party has slammed the high cost to taxpayers and uncertainty over how the network will be built and financed. But Telstra is a supporter. Two weeks after the NBN announcement, Telstra managing director of communications David Quilty hailed it as "bold and ambitious...