Australia's broadband battles
This week we are considering the broadband battles that have raged recently in Australia, culminating in this week's government policy backflip. Karon Snowdon brings you Radio Australia's Correspondent's Notebook.

The prime minister released a 2 billion Australian dollar plan on Monday to provide fast, affordable broadband internet services to all of Australia. It was a long time coming and will take several years to deliver its promise.

John Howard: "It's not possible for every part of Australia to have a fibre optic network and the wireless speeds, which will be up to 12 megabytes per second, are way in advance of anything which is now available."

What prompted this talk was a comment made to me after the announcement.

A colleague noted that Vietnam's system was better and how ironic that Australia's Telstra had helped to develop it.

It didn't take much checking to find that most of that statement was not true but it did highlight the fact that Australia's broadband system is so poorly regarded that a normally well informed journalist could believe it.

For years critics have complained of slow, unreliable, expensive broadband. Those living outside major cities often have no access at all. Business suffered.

The former government-owned monopoly, Telstra, said it was doing its best, competitors said Telstra was blocking their efforts, the government said it was not its role to get involved in commerce. After all, it had sold off Telstra years ago.

Paul Budde, a well known commentator, says Canberra's lack of vision held back important infrastructure development and left Australia far behind some of its neighbours and competitors.

"At two minutes to 12 it suddenly said 'oh my God, there's also a national interest involved, how are we going to solve this problem'. But the government is scrambling back into policy making and even putting money back into telecommunications. But you know I think some people in Asia must actually be laughing a little bit because that's what a lot of these governments in Asia did five or ten years ago."

Australia's system is four years behind the rest of the developed world. It ranks only 16th out of the 30 OECD countries for the penetration of broadband. The Government's plan should get us back on our feet in a couple of years because there is so much pent-up demand.

A joint venture partnership known as Opel will get almost a billion Australian dollars from the government to build a network to cover over 600,000 square kilometres providing high speed wireless especially to rural areas. A later scheme will build a fibre-to-the-node network in major cities. One of the 50:50 partners is Optus, the Australian wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore's telco Singtel.

Australian companies are thin on the ground. A recent tender for delivering fibre to homes in Singapore threw up 12 companies competing for the job. Hong Kong's open economy has delivered a wide range of competitive services. Korea and Japan have some of the highest broadband subscriber numbers in the world. While it hasn't always been problem free, arguably their bigger share of global innovative businesses is due in part to the availability of such an important business tool.

And what of Vietnam? It's a latecomer to the internet and still with a central government not 100 per cent comfortable with citizen access to all the internet has to offer. Last year broadband subscriber numbers tripled, internet users now total almost 20 per cent of the population. And that in a country where the internet first appeared in 1997, with broadband not until 2003.

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