The Australian Federal Election 2010 is upon us and I’ve just seen a video of Tony Abbott, leader of the oposition party being quizzed on his plans for an alternative broadband solution. When asked about this policy his response is “I’m no Bill Gates here, and I don’t claim to be any kind of tech head”, and when pressed further to explain if he knew what “Peak Speed” was he replied “…again if you’re going to get me into a technical argument then I’m going to loose it.”

Is it really technical?

So here’s the thing Tony. Maybe about 10 or 15 years ago technology infrastructure could be considered amongst general society as purely technical concepts but we’ve come a LONG way since then. These days technology is interwoven into society that it is a critical part of our day to day lives and it’s EVERYWHERE! As a small business technology coach I find your perception of what is technical and what isn’t technical is severely skewed and slightly annoying.

The peak speed question relates to the maximum speed achievable based on the capacity of the network. Think of it in terms of cars on a freeway. More lanes means more cars and greater traffic flow i.e. more data flowing through at a higher speed. In a debate about technology, the idea is to convince people that you have the better infrastructure and this involves knowing how it will benefit Australians. You don’t need to know the technology specifics. Again bit like explaining how a car works – an engine burns a combination of fuel and air which drives the wheels. That’s not technical is it? Wouldn’t an average person understand that?

The alternative

Now onto Labour’s National Broadband Network (NBN) plans. I watched a Current Affair a couple of weeks ago when they interviewed the recipients of the new NBN in Tasmania. MY GOD I was stunned. The program featured a young couple who were thrilled with the new speed, stating they loved the ability to download movies a lot quicker and play online games and get rid of their phone line. We’re shelling out 43 billion dollars so that people can download movies quicker?!? You’ve got to be kidding me…

The program did feature a business owner’s perspective of the NBN. A physio therapist who could now go out and visit a patient, video them and then come back to their office and send the video onto a specialist for further examination. Sounds great but you can currently do this already with our existing network without spending 43 billion dollars on an upgrade.

NBN is meant to be fundamentally important to business growth in Australia as it provides much needed infrastructure to allow us to leverage technology better to save time and money in our business, but it’s being sold as “quicker movie downloads” and “play online games”. I was seriously confuzzled.

I needed to clear things up so last week, when I had breakfast with the Federal Minister for Small Business - Dr Craig Emmerson, I asked him exactly why the NBN was being touted as a business solution yet being rolled out into regional areas that wouldn’t maxmise bang for buck from day one. His crowd pleasing response was “Tasmanians are special people” and then he followed up with the proper answer that it needed to be close to the exchange and regional enough to measure the overall impact of the new technology on people’s lives. Which is a fair call but then he said something that really drove it home for me. He said that no one really needed to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge but they did and people used it. Touche`

So to summarise, in the red corner we have Tony Abott, a potential leader of a country who doesn’t understand the difference between technical and non technical items in a society that technology is so tightly intergrated into; versus the blue corner, Gillard and Co, who are building a network critical for business but selling it as a pleasure tool. Oh and then you have Conroy floating around somewhere screaming digital murder at Google and wanting to filter everything.

Anyone want to buy a bridge? Slightly used…

ICT Guru~