The web enables access and community at the touch of the keyboard: it's a radically democratic and inclusive technology. So what does unprecedented access to information and communications mean for Australia?
A BBC survey last year on attitudes towards Internet access found that Australians are among the most firmly convinced that Internet access should be a fundamental right, with 85 percent agreeing that this is the case. I believe that one of the key opportunities for Australia, now and in the future, is making smart and strategic investments in high-speed broadband. We need a world-class infrastructure to anchor our digital economy. Bringing super-fast broadband to people across Australia will open up huge opportunities for individuals, communities, and businesses.
One of the primary benefits of high-speed broadband is speed. But why does faster internet matter even more than the access we have already? The answer is this: speed drastically affects our experience of web sites and services. It turns out that we do much less online when internet speeds are slow. I know I get frustrated and leave, but even if you’re more zen than I am, traffic data shows that you will spend less time on websites when they’re slow.
According to Aberdeen Group, a one-second delay in website load time means that 11 percent more people leave a website than they would otherwise. Imagine how many leave after three or five or 10 seconds? This works in reverse, too; people spend more time on websites when they load quickly. We shrunk the Google Maps home page by 30 percent so it loaded faster; traffic was significantly more. All of these milliseconds and percentage points really add up to success or failure for businesses and website owners.
Access to broadband becomes all the more important as Australia’s companies move online and find new ways to do business and reach customers. Take, for example, livestock auction site Auctions Plus, which allows farmers to view, bid on, and transport livestock with the click of a mouse. This isn’t what usually springs to mind when we think of online shopping, but it’s a beautiful example of what the digital economy and high speed Internet access can mean.
In a country as big as this one, a site such as Auctions Plus makes a big difference to farmers, who can now buy stock from their smartphones in the back paddock and avoid a three or four day round trip to the stockyards. Or Sydney-based Freelancer.com, the world's largest outsourcing and crowdsourcing marketplace for small business, now with hundreds of thousands of customers around the world. These entrepreneurs have been turbo-charged by the Internet.
From health and education, to tourism and manufacturing, to resources and energy, companies who invest heavily in web technologies are statistically more successful. Small businesses who leverage the internet make up the digital economy: a platform for growth for the entire Australian economy.
There's yet another and arguably bigger opportunity where we can be pioneers and developers of this technology that will underpin future decades of economic prosperity. I believe that there's never been a better time to be in IT and to be an entrepreneur. Firstly, your audience is more connected than ever before. They are both looking for you, and are open to new opportunities to collaborate and connect.
We know that having a website, for instance, is as important as having a phone number in today's business landscape. Secondly, we now have unprecedented access to new platforms upon which to run businesses. Fifteen years ago when I founded NetMind, my first start-up company in Silicon Valley, we had to build everything. We developed almost all of our own software, built our own IT infrastructure, scaled our own servers and had no platforms upon which to monetise the business easily.
Now, in contrast you can re-use open-source components, outsource your infrastructure to a cloud provider and use online advertising tools with minimal time and money. Today, entrepreneurs can focus on the essence of their business and be very nimble: they can achieve global reach and really concentrate on the problems they're trying to solve.
I hope that budding entrepreneurs will be able to realise more and more great ideas enabled by technology. I'd like to see Australians in first place not to just take advantage of the products and services that stem from high-speed Internet, but also to be developing and commercialising them.
Fast broadband is a transformative and disruptive technology: in many ways, it's a lot like electricity. Many people didn't anticipate the myriad applications that would stem from its use until it was ubiquitous and connected to every home.
As Vint Cerf, my colleague at Google, likes to say, 99 percent of the applications of the Internet haven't yet been invented, so you can imagine the possibilities that are just around the corner. I believe that people in Australia are and will continue to be very enthusiastic about the potential of super-fast Internet connectivity.
I know firsthand that technology can change lives for the better, and faster broadband is a vital part of the technology mix to allow that to happen in Australia.
Originally posted as an opinion piece in The Australian.