Despite the Australian NBN being a central issue for the last seven years or so, have we really missed the point?

Sadly, it seems we have and too often the conversation devolves into simplistic arguments comparing the relative advantages of Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) and Fibre-to-the-node (FTTN). And while we continue to debate technology, countries around the world are quietly rolling out significant new infrastructure.

I therefore humbly propose that it’s time for us all to largely rethink our approach to the Australian NBN.

You can’t measure innovation in megabits per second, and by focusing on the journey and not the destination we’re missing the real opportunity to shape our digital future.

The advance in telecommunications over the past fifteen years has been simply breathtaking. Access technologies have improved in availability and cost to such a degree that we have seen connectivity to the public Internet grow from 28.8 Kbps dial-up modems to 1 Gbps fibre-based connections. That’s a multiplier of about thirty-six thousand times in that fifteen-year period. It is the equivalent finding out that your car has a top speed much higher than the day it rolled off the production line. Network infrastructure, unlike cars, gets better with age and network evolution strategies require constant re-evaluation to ensure that they reflect the latest developments.

It is also worth remembering that although increasing bandwidth can simplify the delivery of new services, it is the very lack of bandwidth that has often triggered breakthroughs in communications including Skype, Twitter and Peer-to-Peer protocols such as Bit Torrent.

While an NBN might be a facet of an innovation agenda, it is not a precursor to innovation and technology continues to move faster than policy. Instead, we should be asking how we could use an NBN to accelerate these innovation plans where more bandwidth is needed most.

The Australian NBN in itself is an impressive feat of engineering, but it is not capable on its own of delivering necessary business model innovation. This is due to the simple fact that the NBN is limited in scope to a wholesale access network provider that connects your home or business to a Retail Service Provider (RSP). NBN only has one service; it moves Ethernet frames across the country to one of 121 Points of Interconnect (POIs). If anything the NBN works to maintain the status quo in the Australian telecommunications market by defining the set of wholesale products that shape all of the retail services on offer in the market. This tight control of product definition acts as an inhibitor to future business models supporting innovation and investment.

Contrast this with overseas examples of new models. Google Fiber offer a low cost anchor product designed to encourage service take up. Google offer a ‘Free Internet’ plan where the payment of a USD$300 connection fee includes seven years of unlimited access (5/1 Mbps). The business model is designed to encourage consumer take up during the construction phase reducing the cost per premises connected and provides a significantly lower barrier to future uptake of a higher-tier service. As a new entrant into the broadband market, Google is taking a disruptive approach.

While technology might enable these disruptive changes, to fully leverage high-speed connectivity we need to ensure that Australia builds a complementary culture of innovation. Following a digital ‘field of dreams’ strategy in Australia without focus on how to shift our behaviour is a foolhardy at best.

Of course, an NBN isn’t only about productivity or innovation. The recent internet.org announcement demonstrates how networks can still inspire us to achieve something truly world changing. Connecting the five billion who don’t currently have access to the Internet might seem like a mission impossible but is undeniably worthy of our time and energy.

When networks have the power to change lives so dramatically, it seems petty to think that we’ve become so focused on the micro-politics of mbps. So let’s use our imagination and see where it can take us.

Richard Bayliss spends his days thinking about broadband and innovation. He is also Chief Architect for Edge Solutions at Juniper Networks.