Australia needs to make a decision on its broadband infrastructure future before it’s too late to join the Network Economy.

Australia is still at the cross roads in this debate. Government investment in the necessary fibre infrastructure for the future is waning with the NBN brownfields fibre rollout coming to an end. Instead the government is funding a massive re-engineering of existing copper telephone and cable TV infrastructure to try and squeeze as much broadband speed out of the existing assets as possible. It is unclear whether sufficient fibre will be installed close enough to the customer in this re-engineering exercise to enable Australia to be a part of the global Gigabit network community.