This article notes:
In recent weeks, the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany, Spain, Portugal and Finland have all included measures to expand broadband access and to bolster connection speeds in their planned economic stimulus packages. Australia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Japan and South Korea have announced separate broadband plans, according to a compilation by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development...
While analysts agree that investing in communications technologies makes economies more competitive, they are skeptical about whether the promised gains will materialize quickly enough to make the spending packages - ranging from €11 million, or $14 million, in Hungary to $7 billion in the United States - effective recession-busters.Indeed. Count me as a skeptic when it comes to claims about how high speed internet to the likes of the back of Bourke is going to supercharge the Australian economy. According to the article:
...investments in telecommunications typically generate positive returns, said Olivier Pascal, an analyst at Analysys Mason, a consulting firm. Complex economic models show that every $1 spent on network improvements increases the gross domestic product by $1.30, he said. And that does not include the increases in productivity that such investments generate, he added.When I can download lunch, print it out at my desk and eat it, I'll be a little less skeptical.He said that the same models showed that "allocating spending to telecoms will create far more jobs than giving it to, say, agriculture."
Of course, I like high speed internet as much as the next time wasting internet junky, and it's nice to develop it for rural populations. It's the claimed benefits to the economy that I doubt, especially when it's just about ramping up speed to cities which already have relatively good speeds. At least one company in France has a similar view:
A top executive of Vivendi, which controls SFR, the owner of French fixed and mobile networks, said recently that faster connections would simply worsen the problem of online piracy, undermining Vivendi's music, movie and games businesses.
"Today, fiber serves no purpose," Philippe Capron, chief financial officer of Vivendi, was quoted as saying by a French business paper, La Tribune. "There is no new revenue stream and no supplemental service to offset the considerable investment. All that it does is to encourage the illegal downloading of films."
2 comments:
Don't know how this pans out for other countries, but in Oz, I don't see how throwing money into high speed broadband for the whole country - which was already an ALP commitment - is any worse for boosting economic activity than painting school gyms across the country or giving away pink bats.
At least the multiplier affect would kick in with every dollar invested in broadband. Where's the multiplier coming from for ceiling insulation and other minor construction works? For that matter, where are the workers coming from for all of those minor and major building works?
You may have a point. I'm not saying that upgrading broadband is a bad thing, just that it is sold with a dubious justification. (And the Liberals plan was just as good and cheaper, if I recall.)
Post a Comment