A Broadband Services Typology

Soon after Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on 7 April 2009 the Commonwealth Government's intention to build a fibre-to-the-premises broadband network, several senior members of the opposition roundly condemned this initiative. The debates about national broadband policy over the previous decade, and especially during the Rudd government tender process that preceded their fibre-to-the-premises proposal, primarily centred on possible infrastructure choices, prospective stakeholders, investment and regulatory practices. Issues about possible applications and services for the new broadband network, and the related consumer behavioural demand factors, were largely ignored or relegated to secondary policy consideration. This general approach to broadband policy had also been the case with the Rudd government's predecessor, the Howard government (1996–2007), which struggled to come to terms with a credible national broadband policy especially too in terms of demand issues. It would be a herculean task to attempt to undertake a systematic cost-benefit futures analysis of the present national broadband network (NBN) project, given the extraordinary range of variables in terms of network-supply-side technological complexities and related possible consumer demand factors. At the time of writing, major vexed issues relate to the proposed architecture of the new broadband network by NBN Co, the company created by the government to build and run the network, and the extent to which existing broadband suppliers, notably Telstra, could migrate their current services across to NBN Co when it becomes operational. This article focuses on broadband consumer demand issues, with special attention given to select international experiences, and proposes a framework for a fuller examination of NBN broadband applications and services