This is about a road, an electronic one. NBN costs about $10bln/year over 4 years investment to build. Considering it's nation wide, that'll be about the cheapest piece of infrastructure that's ever been built. It's an absolute bargain. There are a few new tunnels and bridges in Brisbane that cost multiple billions each!
NBN is not primarily for the "lucky" people who live in the right suburbs of the major population centres, it's for everybody. It means people can live elsewhere and do high tech jobs, but it also means farmers are able to upload the videos of their cattle to sell. That's a real need now, a satellite downlink to the outback can't deliver that.
This e-road delivers something very very valuable, namely ability to make a living outside the major population centres - it affects lifestyle (for all of us), education, health, use of resources, and more. Quite possibly the people who came up with it didn't even realise that ;-), but it's huge.
Then we can also look at other countries, many "3rd world" nations have faster, more reliable and cheaper Internet connectivity than we do. And I know, because I've had people in those countries as my colleagues and the connectivity/bandwidth is what enabled the jobs.
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NBN (nature of), cost & benefit
Date: 2010-08-07 08:39 am (UTC)NBN costs about $10bln/year over 4 years investment to build. Considering it's nation wide, that'll be about the cheapest piece of infrastructure that's ever been built. It's an absolute bargain.
There are a few new tunnels and bridges in Brisbane that cost multiple billions each!
NBN is not primarily for the "lucky" people who live in the right suburbs of the major population centres, it's for everybody. It means people can live elsewhere and do high tech jobs, but it also means farmers are able to upload the videos of their cattle to sell. That's a real need now, a satellite downlink to the outback can't deliver that.
This e-road delivers something very very valuable, namely ability to make a living outside the major population centres - it affects lifestyle (for all of us), education, health, use of resources, and more.
Quite possibly the people who came up with it didn't even realise that ;-), but it's huge.
Then we can also look at other countries, many "3rd world" nations have faster, more reliable and cheaper Internet connectivity than we do. And I know, because I've had people in those countries as my colleagues and the connectivity/bandwidth is what enabled the jobs.