Aust broadband must get down to business - News - Communications

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Aust broadband must get down to business

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
July 30, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/communications/soa/Aust-broadband-must-get-down-to-business/0,130061791,120266988,00.htm

There are a lot of export opportunities in the Asia-Pacific business broadband market, which will yield more immediate returns than the home market, according to Dennis Muscat, managing director of local ISP Pacific Internet.

Providing content to Australian home users will be a difficult market to break into, and companies wishing to do so are looking at a long timeframe, Muscat told ZDNet Australia. However, Australian businesses, he said, are well placed for attacking the Asia-Pacific broadband market if they play to their strengths.

-The [Asian] business market is the one with the most immediate opportunity, because the timeframes aren't as long," Muscat said. -The benefits are quite tangible."

However, Muscat pointed to the low penetration of broadband in Australia as a major hindrance to Australian companies looking to obtain business with Asian trading partners.

-It's about being able to communicate with those markets and exchange information," said Muscat. -Like 10 years ago, if you didn't have a fax machine you were at a disadvantage, the Internet is no different and broadband is the key here because you're able to transfer information instantaneously."

-For example, if I was a building company tendering for a huge engineering proposal in Hong Kong, I'd be sending over a proposal that is many, many pages. They'd be shooting huge amounts of data back to me, and if I've got a 56K modem and they've got a two meg connection, I won't be able to cope."

Muscat believes to achieve critical mass in the broadband market the ratio of broadband to narrowband has to approach one-to-one, and that Australian governments at all levels need to take a leadership role in encouraging the uptake of broadband.

-Ultimately, if they are interested in developing markets which are rich in content for home markets or very strong in business markets...government needs to be more proactive," he said. -It's not a case of throwing buckets of money at it but showing strong leadership. The countries where broadband has developed the strongest markets are those with strong competition and deregulation."