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July 1st, 2013 
Peter Nolan
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The Federal Government has thus far failed to sell the NBN. New Communications Minister Anthony Albanese would be wise to bring facts back to the debate, writes Nick Ross.
This morning, Alan Jones was again ranting against the NBN. His main three themes are that the whole concept is too expensive to take on without doing the due diligence of seeing whether it was needed in the first place; that it would cost up to $94 billion; and that it’s not needed when wireless is the future.
The latter two assertions wither under the face of scrutiny, but the former holds merit. Indeed, we’re now some three years into the project and arguably most of the country still does not know what the NBN is for or why so much money is being spent on it. Part of this is due to what must surely be the worst media coverage ever in Australia. But part of that is down to the very poor marketing by the government.
But if you’ve seen those ridiculous NBN adverts on TV and heard Kevin Rudd recently say that the NBN is primarily for the future generations, it’s looking pretty clear that the government and its marketing people don’t actually realise what the NBN will actually do, either.
A cost-benefit analysis
Former communications minister Stephen Conroy refused to do a cost-benefit analysis for the NBN. His prime reason was that it was too complicated. However, in the years since he started saying that, Australia has embarked upon numerous Telehealth trials and aged care trials which are using the NBN to help people monitor their chronic health conditions while letting them talk to doctors and specialists from their own homes.
We’ve also seen New Zealand start to roll out their own NBN and they did do a cost benefit analysis. It showed that it would save-or-generate New Zealand enough money in healthcare, business, education and, erm, dairy, to pay for Australia’s NBN.
Many people still side with Malcolm Turnbull and think that the primary use of internet is for watching YouTube. However, the Australian health trials have not only saved lives and dramatically improved the standard of living for many people, they’ve slashed usage of ambulances (several thousand dollars per journey), hospital visits (thousands of dollars per admission and around a thousand dollars per patient per night) and meant that seniors can stay in their own homes for longer without being admitted to expensive care homes. Healthcare companies rely on the NBN’s reliability and upload speeds for most of the benefits. One company told us that if NBN isn’t available they try and use 4G, then 3G. They keep clear of copper due to its unreliability. That’s a very significant difference in broadband policy applications.
Australian healthcare spending hit $130 billion in 2011 and $134 billion in 2012. It’s set to rise to the point where the South Australian government recently said that, at the current rate of growth, by the mid 2030’s, health spending will equal 100 per cent of the State’s budget. This is largely due to the aging population: currently just over 10 per cent of the population is aged over 65. By 2050 it will be almost a quarter.
With aged care taking up such a high proportion of a ballooning annual heath spend, a cost-benefit analysis would make the NBN a much more palatable policy if it showed simply that the NBN could save tax payers around 1 per cent of the annual health spend through aged care efficiency improvements alone: they would pay for the entire rollout.
I wonder what Alan Jones, who champions seniors’ healthcare in Australia, would make of that!
Of course, validating claims that the NBN would be worth over a trillion dollars to Australia over the coming decades would probably help too.
The Coalition’s plus point
There are many Coalition NBN claims that wither under scrutiny, but one that seems to hold water is that those people who have the worst broadband should be targeted first. We’ve not seen many people disagree with this.
At present the rollout map is chosen by using an algorithm which selects an equal number of locations in rural and metropolitan areas equally across the states. The rollouts then fan out around them – from the 121 points of interconnect – according to local infrastructure – for engineering reasons.
Would it be possible to factor a priority ‘point’ into the algorithm for people in proven broadband blackspots? I think everyone would like to know. It might prove unworkable due to local infrastructure and engineering issues but if, at the very least, it put those people with the worst connections a bit further up the queue, that would be universally popular would it not?
Better marketing
Holographic frogs flying up the road. Faster download speeds. These are key features of the woeful NBN adverts that have been floating around. They don’t justify the NBN at all and suggest that the people who came up with them, and the people who approved them from within government, don’t know what the NBN will do.
The less-well-known aspect of marketing is Public Relations, which should actually be called Press Relations as it’s the back-door route from companies to journalists.
NBN media coverage is diabolical. There are likely many reasons for this, but a major one is PR. If, after three years, the media is blanket-ignoring every positive story you put out (and many positive press releases have landed in my inbox over the years) then your approach to this important area has failed.
Poisonous discussion
In February last year I wrote The Great NBN Fail which criticised the marketing of the NBN. Almost 17 months later, I don’t think the public discussion has advanced at all; it’s become utterly poisonous. The facts need to be brought back into the limelight – if the NBN really will revolutionise healthcare in Australia (and save billions each year in the process) then losing it must surely be a national disaster. It’s time for proper studies and facts to return to the discussion and for the toxic politics to be left at the door so that the public can make an informed decision at the election and that they – and the politicians – all know the pros and cons of keeping it or binning it.
Nick Ross is the Editor of the ABC’s Technology and Games online gateway. View his full profile here.
Topics:
information-and-communication,
government-and-politics,
elections,
federal-elections,
internet-technology,
computers-and-technology,
science-and-technology,
internet-culture,
federal-government
Source Article from http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-01/ross-nbn-politics/4791824
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