Will Sydney be the National Broadband Network headquarters?
Posted on May 13, 2009 by by valerirojas
The popular three day IT conference CeBIT Australia kicked off on tuesday 12th at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre – Darling Harbour.
New South Wales Premier Nathan Rees opened the event where he said, Sydney was the “logical” location for the National Broadband Network (NBN) headquarters, with its excellent infrastructure and availability of world-class technical skills. He noted that Sydney was headquarters to 80 per cent of ICT companies operating in Australia, and was a regional financial services hub. CeBIT Australia
Mr Rees also announced the formation of a cross-department NBN Taskforce, with the first priority of making New South Wales and Sydney the NBN headquarters location.
Other speakers included Federal Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner, Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and Senator Kate Lundy. You can read Senator Kate Lundy’s speech on Improving ICT infrastructure and the Opportunities for Australian Business and Society at www.Katelundy.com.au
Web expert Laurel Papworth has put together a list of Top Enterprise 2.0 Apps at CeBIT Australia
7 Comments to “Will Sydney be the National Broadband Network headquarters?”
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I am concerned about the whole idea of a ‘headquarters’. Australia must break with this tradition of central control. A headquarters is all about command and control, not about participation, experimentation and community learning. They just don’t get it. Luckily, the NSW Government has appointed a person to conduct the community engagement who does know what it is about . But this grandstanding about HQ is absolute nonsense! Power shifts with the node in modern communications networks. Sydney is not so spectacular that it will always be the centre of everything (Sydney or the Bush, so to speak), and this attitude is just plain wrong. Might have to blog about this one!
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The way I see it, if the NBN goes ahead then it should be located in Canberra, why? because that is where most if not all federal public services departments are.
Good try Mr Rees..
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Michael what an excellent idea. The department of Broadband could be looking to use Broadband in its own operations and what better way than to start as a distributed “virtual” organisation where the HQ is its website.
I am disappointed that the NBN is going to be a private/government partnership. Why doesn’t the government issue everyone in Australia with equal shares in the company and one of the incentives to become a citizen is that you get shares in the company (which you can sell).
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Im not a fan of the govt owning such things..
specially something like the NBN, specifically when they wish to control and filter the internet we will receive from it.
They should let bussiness do what they do….which is bussiness.
and govt’s should worry about what theyre meant to do, which is govern.
at the end of the day, they will put the NBN HQ where ever they need to buy the most votes.
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Seems that Ballarat has joined the bandwagon. Hopefull this will take on a life of its own: http://tinyurl.com/p33nk6
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ruddnet will replace telstra. base it in alice springs. then no-one will complain about services up north…
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Ballarat or Alice Springs? which one will be the Sillicon Valley city of Australia?
Cities wanting to be the NBN ‘headquarters’ sounds to me like wanting to be the next Sillicon Valley of Australia.
For the past 6 months or so more and more investors and IT businesses from around the globe have been focusing on what Australia is doing and how to develop their applications here, so it wouldn’t surprise me if we see a Sillicon Valley city in Australia soon, specially if we will get a fast speed broadband network.
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