NBN to be ‘enabling platform’ to drive innovation, productivity in Austrralia: Stephen Conroy

Australia's minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy Stephen Conroy has likened the National Broadband Network (NBN) to the Apple iPhone, saying it was impossible to know all the applications that would use the high-speed connectivity engine before it was built.

Conroy was speaking during day two of the Realising Our Broadband Future forum, where told delegates that the NBN would enable applications that had not yet been imagined.

''The iPhone is an enabling platform in the mobile market in the same way as the NBN will be an enabling platform for Australia in the years and decades ahead,'' he said.

Extending the analogy Conroy said the 85,000 downloads available from the App Store were applications that nobody would have imagined when the iPhone was first developed.

He asked the audience whether Apple should have waited for all the applications to be developed before it built the platform. He added that probably without the platform the applications could not have been built.

He pointed out that the NBN would offer flow-on benefits in other areas including health, education, water management, energy efficiency and regional infrastructure. He said that the NBN would be Australia's first national wholesale-only, open access, high-speed broadband platform.