The federal government launched a program to offer funding to regional, rural and remote organisations to hire a broker to help aggregate demand for broadband in their communities.
The Broadband Demand Aggregation Broker Program will allow not-for-profit, local education or health service providers, local governments and other local associations, to apply for funding to hire the aggregation brokers. The brokers will help the organisations to co-ordinate possible users of broadband, identify appropriate services and technologies and use the information in negotiations with service providers.
The government described the program as a "key element" of the AU$142.8 million National Broadband Strategy Action Plan.
Demand aggregation has been useful in the past in convincing service providers to provide broadband to communities which might otherwise be considered unviable to service. Last year Dairy Farmers arranged an aggregation deal for its members, and the Queensland government is using the aggregated demand of its departments to encourage the supply of broadband and mobile phone services across the state.
Telstra has even gone so far as to launch an ADSL Demand Register to discover where there is enough demand for broadband to roll-out the service.
Community Based Broadband Demand Aggregation Broker documentation is available from the 'view tenders, current' section of the AusTender website at http://www.tenders.gov.au or by e-mailing the National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) at contracts@noie.gov.au.
