NBN could provide boost for rural growth

The National Broadband Network (NBN) could provide an incentive for city dwellers to move to underpopulated regional and rural areas, an online poll has suggested.

Broadband comparison website Compare Broadband asked site visitors “Would an NBN high speed internet connection encourage you to relocate to a rural area?” Of the 541 respondents, a surprising 213 respondents said Yes, to make up 39%.

Adam Wajnberg, spokesperson for Compare Broadband, said: "This is really quite significant. We ran a similar poll asking if people would consider an area’s broadband penetration as a factor in choosing to rent or buy, and the result in that was even more encouraging, where nearly 80% of respondents said it was a factor. This poll is asking a lot more - complete relocation out of the city – and yet broadband availability is still a major consideration."

Rural and regional customers are currently in a situation where low-cost alternatives to Telstra are not available. The major network providers – Optus, TPG, iiNet, Internode and iPrimus – usually do not wire their network points to remote areas, leaving only Telstra Wholesale as an option.

Not only will the NBN bring more competition and universal pricing to regional areas, it will also guarantee fast, reliable connections, making telecommuting a more realistic prospect. The high proportion of positive responses to Compare Broadband's poll suggests many people living in urban areas would consider a sea change if the infrastructure was in place.

This would fit in with Government policy in some states, such as Victoria, where the Government is encouraging young people to stay in or move to regional areas.

A Victorian Government spokesperson said: "All Victorians would benefit from improved productivity, potential government service delivery and social equity through access to high-speed broadband.

"The NBN alone does not address all telecommunications services that are critical for regional and rural Victoria.

"However, it is the Commonwealth Government's responsibility to ensure that all Victorians have access to adequate telecommunications services."

Key drivers for regional expansion with high speed broadband

Co-location services - Major international sites like Amazon and Google store enormous amounts of data that can take time to access with the international internet. By housing data centres in regional Australia, they can provide Australians with their services more quickly and efficiently, and help create a digital economy in affordable areas

Telemedicine – Regional hospitals have to service vastly wider areas than metro hospitals. High speed, symmetrical broadband (high speed both upstream and downstream) can facilitate remote medicine, where imaging and pathology equipment manned by a small staff can upload images and data to large hospitals for diagnosis. This service would require high speed connections at both the patient and hospital ends

Distance education – Current broadband speeds affords this option to many already, but remote students often don’t have good enough speeds to afford this option, thereby passing over those who would most benefit. With the much higher speeds of fibre-to-the-home, education by distance could also move beyond downloading lectures and short videos to fully immersive conference call environments. These would more accurately simulate the real-life interaction of students and teachers.