Future Medium thinks BIG on the web – but maybe Kevin Rudd thinks even bigger!

What does the National Broadband Network proposal mean to consumers and suppliers of internet content and services?  Well,  when it all comes down to it, as providers of website and web applications we’re essentially concerned with two things:

1. content delivery, and
2. service provision.

The web as we know it is subtly changing every day. I like to think of it as an organic creature that grows and evolves to consume available resources in new and interesting ways (and yes I hear Terminator noises and picture Skynet as I write this . )

What does this evolution mean to us?

• To the consumer it’s an ever changing way of communicating or accessing services.
• To the business it’s new opportunities to access customers – be it enhanced service functionality or simply new business methods becoming viable.

We’re not looking at an overnight change here though.

Right now there isn’t much rich content available – unless downloading illegal movies is your hobby – so we’re looking at an investment that probably won’t see revolutionary differences to consumers in the first few years if at all; think of it as an essential evolutionary step instead.

The National Broadband Network has the potential to be the backbone to a far more effective way of communicating and doing business.

What’s of interest to us is the relative haste with which internet content has improved in line with available bandwidth over the years.

Go back only a few years and recall the relatively simplistic content available on the web – and compare that to the richness we have now.  Take YouTube as an example, a short while ago such an application would have been far less interesting given the time it would have taken to access content.

With super fast broadband our clients can put their hand on their heart and say “yes let’s go ahead and build a more interactive experience” knowing that 90% of the country can access it properly. That’s really exciting!

Take the tourism industry as an example.  Imagine tourists being able to have convenient access to uploading high definition videos of their own experiences in our state.  We would gain access to immediately relevant content that could be virally shared – ala YouTube – to promote our tourism industry.  Similarly, our tourism operators could deliver rich multimedia experiences that reduce barriers to purchasing/booking. Reducing barriers to rich content sharing – in this case – can offer great economic returns. The National Broadband Network can make this a reality.

Whether or not the business case is there for this being a financially sound investment in the long term vs. wireless technologies is certainly another discussion.  I’m not going to get too wound up in that sort of debate.  Instead, I’ll look at this as a major step in the right direction and work with our clients to find ways to leverage this new power.

I’m reminded of Tim the TOOLMAN Taylor in this and recall his “ugh ugh hmmmph – powerrrrr” sort of outbursts.  I wonder what Jeremy Clarkson would make of this pursuit that he’d probably call “the quest for more internet’s”. (Plural intended).