While Australian officials promote the noble aspects of its new fiber-based National Broadband Network to power commerce, health care, and education, one content and applications developer says the prospect of improved “adult entertainment” options will drive demand for fiber broadband adoption in Australia, just as it has in many other countries.

Jennifer Wilson, project director for The Project Factory, took discussions about the decidedly-adult topic of online content private to be certain it did not overshadow the more virtuous-aspects of the fiber network.

“The single most important factor is the porn factor because pornography has always been at the cutting edge of technology,” Wilson said. “If we cannot get porn on the NBN than we will have trouble getting consumer acceptance and uptake.”

Australia is just starting a debate about the appropriateness of adult entertainment on a publicly-owned network — a debate familiar to community broadband providers who face scrutiny over adult video content often found on municipally-owned cable systems.

Access to adult content and keeping it away from children is now evolving into a secondary debate about the NBN, and some politicians are considering placing adult content controls on the network.

For Wilson, that would be a major mistake.

Speaking at an Australian Computer Society (ACS) forum in Sydney, Wilson said giving parents the tools to control viewing options was perfectly appropriate, but a national policy banning pornography on the NBN would be a disaster.  Wilson believes adult content has always “stimulated” digital growth, and even, in her view, forced a final decision on which high definition DVD format would become the primary standard — Blu-Ray or HD.

“The main reason Blu-Ray took off was because the adult entertainment industry chose the format over HD,” Wilson said. “No one is going to install the NBN on the basis that one day they might need e-health services but they will use that as a justification for getting the service in order to download movies and watch TV.”

Australian technology evangelists of all kinds favor an agnostic approach to content, keeping government out of the viewing rooms of individual NBN subscribers.  Some have gone as far to say adult content will represent an enormous revenue opportunity — one that will help pay off the expense of constructing the network.

That moral dilemma — porn accelerating profit for the NBN, has politicians in a quandary over whether that represents government promotion of adult content for financial reasons.

“Which is exactly why the government needs to stay as far away from this debate as possible,” Jeffrey Maindonald, a Unitarian Universalist tells Stop the Cap! “Give people the tools to make personal decisions for themselves and their families, but stay out of the content and leave that to the authorities when it crosses the legal line.”

Maindonald, a retired minister, accepts adult content has driven everything from home video recording, film cameras, the Internet, and now the possibilities of what can be done with fiber broadband.  For him, it’s an extension of the inevitable debate between “good” and “evil” mankind deals with everywhere else.  Enforcing self-defined moral laws online is a highly subjective business, Maindonald says, one that will simply lead to endless debate and clashes.

“Thankfully, the new network has virtues that extend far beyond a virtual red light district,” Maindonald says, hoping the debate won’t derail the country’s fiber broadband future.

“A colleague of mine, an Anglican archdeacon, told me he was amazed that the most modern technology was being used to still obsess over God’s miracle of the human body,” Maindonald adds. “It won’t stop with the NBN.”

The state of Virginia released its latest broadband availability map today, and it shows much of the state’s well-populated areas have access to one or more providers, but also identifies significant gaps in service for rural communities and several smaller towns.

The map is a collaborative effort between the Center for Innovative Technology, Virginia Information Technologies Agency’s Virginia Geographic Information Network, and Virginia Tech’s eCorridors Program.  It hopes to identify areas of significant gaps in coverage with the help of ordinary Virginians crowdsourcing the veracity of the data.

While mobile wireless provides service in some areas where wired providers do not, the stringent usage limits on service don’t make them very useful for home broadband replacements.  Outside of large population centers, telephone company DSL predominates.

“This new map will play a vital role in our efforts to ensure that all Virginians have access to affordable, reliable broadband services. Having the ability to identify and closely analyze unserved areas, gives us the opportunity to strategically align resources and pursue collaborative efforts between public and private organizations to expand broadband coverage across the Commonwealth,” said Secretary of Technology Jim Duffey.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Engadget Broadband in Europe.flv[/flv]

Rick Karr at Engadget delivers a sweeping indictment of America’s broadband duopoly in a special video presentation that explores Europe’s leapfrog advancements in broadband penetration, speed, and pricing.  It’s all made possible by technology policy.  In Europe, open access is guaranteed.  In the United States, telecommunications companies won the right to keep competitors off their networks.  The result is a staggering decline in America’s broadband ranking, now below Portugal and Italy.  So what happened to let Europe spring ahead of the United States?  Government regulation.

The game-changer in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands has been government regulators who have forced more competition in the market for broadband.

The market in the UK used to be much like ours here in the U.S.: British homes had two options for broadband service: the incumbent telephone company British Telecom (BT), or a cable provider. Prices were high, service was slow, and, as I mentioned above, Britain was falling behind its European neighbors in international rankings of broadband service.

The solution, the British government decided, was more competition: If consumers had more options when it came to broadband service, regulators reasoned, prices would fall and speeds would increase. A duopoly of telephone and cable service wasn’t enough. “You need to find the third lever,” says Peter Black, who was the UK government’s top broadband regulator from 2004 to 2008.

Starting around 2000, the government required BT to allow other broadband providers to use its lines to deliver service. That’s known as “local loop unbundling” — other providers could lease the loops of copper that runs from the telephone company office to homes and back and set up their own servers and routers in BT facilities.

Today, the UK’s broadband marketplace resembles America during dial-up Internet days, when customers could choose from a dozen or more providers and get substantial discounts or service tailored towards specific needs.  Today, that choice isn’t available from cable and phone companies.  There’s typically just one of each, and your practical choices usually end there. Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Corey for sharing the story with us.

The video lasts 16 minutes.

While North American ISP’s call 3Mbps DSL “revolutionary” for rural America and dream of Internet Overcharging schemes like usage caps and consumption billing everywhere else, Australia is poised to take broadband to a level North America can only imagine.  Watch this documentary on Australia’s fiber-based National Broadband Network future and how it will transform their economy and culture, and then ponder what your Internet Service Provider is doing these days.

While we scratch our heads wondering how to wire West Virginia for slow speed DSL, Australia is planning to rip out copper wire networks everywhere.  While we fight over communities trying to get their citizens 21st century broadband speeds from community-owned providers private companies want to ban, Australia will deliver the same fiber speeds to 90 percent of the country, whether it’s ‘economically viable’ (to investors) or not.  As we watch a handful of giant telecom companies try to mess with broadband pricing to further increase their profits without delivering any improvements in service, Australia is going to rid itself of artificial limits on broadband usage.

But Australia’s NBN goes much farther than just delivering fast broadband.  It builds a foundation to transform virtually every aspect of Australian life:

• Rural Australia’s economic viability is guaranteed a future with the availability of fast and reliable broadband for businesses large and small;
• Telemedicine means patients seeking routine care and follow-ups can conduct them from the comfort of their own homes;
• Telecommuting means less energy consumption, less traffic, and reduced costs in roadway maintenance as workers do their jobs away from the office without wasting precious time in traffic;
• Telelearning provides rural students with access to the same high quality education city students receive, and ongoing education can be managed anytime, anywhere, even for those with existing jobs and families;
• Australian businesses can reach new customers across the world, increasing sales, whether they sell a digital product or one that leverages online shipping and tracking tools to complete delivery anywhere;
• Millions of Australians will have access to the same high speed broadband, delivering a platform for the development of large-scale, next generation applications that don’t make sense in countries where broadband is a patchwork of speeds, service, and basic availability.
• It means a broadband network so far advanced above that found across North America, it could change Australia’s standing in global commerce, and impact our own.

Embarrassed yet?  Worried about America and Canada becoming broadband followers instead of leaders?

You should be.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Australia’s NBN June 2011.flv[/flv]

Australia’s National Broadband Network  (38 minutes)

Australia’s march towards an all-fiber future took an important step last week when the government announced a wide-ranging agreement with Telstra, the country’s largest phone company, to use Telstra’s existing infrastructure to help construct a national fiber network.

After two years of negotiations, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Thursday announced an $11 billion deal between Telstra and NBN Co to allow NBN to use Telstra’s existing conduits, poles, and network facilities to provide a foundation for the construction of the all-fiber network and the removal of existing copper wiring.

The deal is expected to save the government millions by not having to construct redundant facilities.

The network is expected to take a decade to complete, and will provide optical fiber broadband to at least nine out of ten Australian households.  The project will make Australia a global broadband leader, far ahead of the United States and Canada and most of western Europe.

As part of the deal, Telstra agreed to pay $2 billion for upgrades to its own infrastructure in preparation of migrating customers to the NBN.  Telstra’s CEO, David Thodey, said the agreement ended the uncertainty surrounding Telstra’s possible association with NBN and will allow his company to focus on customer service.

Gillard and Communications Minister Stephen Conroy turned on Australia’s first connection to the NBN in May at the Presbyterian Ladies College in Armidale in the east Australian state of New South Wales.

The town is one of five test markets where the NBN will first operate.  Areas in Melbourne, Townsville, coastal New South Wales and South Australia will also be switched on in coming months.

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Nine Network NBN Switched On 5-11.flv[/flv]

Nine Network in Australia covered the opening of the country’s National Broadband Network in Armidale earlier this year, and what it means for Australians as fiber broadband replaces older technology.  The opposition gripes the government is spending too much on the network.  (7 minutes)

Liberal opposition to the NBN has been fierce in some quarters, with Opposition communications spokesman Malcolm Turnbull claiming the government is overspending on a network that delivers fiber straight to the home.  Gillard accused the conservative opposition of seeking to rip installed fiber straight out of the ground if they were to come to power, a charge Turnbull rejects as ridiculous.

 

He prefers a “fiber to the neighborhood” approach, similar to AT&T U-verse, which he says will bring good enough speeds to Australians faster and cheaper than an entirely fiber based network would.  But fiber proponents claim the costs will come down as the network construction ramps up, delivering economy of scale.  The government also believes fiber to the home is more upgradable and more reliable than a hybrid fiber-copper network.

Most of all, Australians are celebrating the imminent end of usage-based pricing, fair access policies that reduce speeds of heavy users to near-dial-up, and the fact they are likely to be among the top-five ranked broadband nations globally when the network is complete.

[flv width=”640″ height=”500″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Sky News ABC NBN and Telstra Achieve Deal 6-23-11.flv[/flv]

Sky News and ABC report on the government’s deal with Telstra to retire the nation’s copper wire network and work together to build fiber to the home to virtually every Australian. (7 minutes)