Broadband pays

New research released by Ericsson, Arthur D. Little and Chalmers University of Technology today shows that doubling a country's broadband speed boosts its GDP by 0.3%, and that the benefits accrue with subsequent doublings.

What does with mean for Australia with its trillion dollar econonmy ($1039B in 2009, $925B in 2010)? According to Measurement Lab, the median download speed in Australia is a mere 4.23Mbps. This means that Australia could double its broadband speeds four times (4 -> 8 -> 16 -> 32 -> 64Mbps) and still be under the 100Mbps download speeds that the National Broadband Network (NBN) will deliver. Such a 16-fold increase in broadband speeds would amount to ~1.2% of GDP growth stimulus, or ~$12B per year. If so, the $43B NBN would pay for itself in under 4 years. Even a modest 0.5% increase in GDP (~$5B/year) would pay for it within a decade.

For those of you still wondering what we're going to do with all that bandwidth, take a look at this chart plotting TV image resolution by year.

This shows the evolution from the original 405 line system in 1936 to 1080p in 2004, a 10-fold increase in image size from 0.2 Megapixels to 2 Megapixels (data here).  What's interesting is that the real action has happened in the last decade, with the advent of high definition (HD) TV, first 720p and more recently 1080p. Further, the TV/video industry is hardly about to stop innovating any time soon; the next standard, is likely to be so-called "4K" with whopping 12 Megapixel images!

And video will be just one of many applications that benefit from faster broadband.

Read More Here...

Net speed the key to transforming lives

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.

Read More Here...

An Aussie's take on Google I/O

I spent last week at Google I/O, Google’s annual conference for developers held in San Francisco. This conference is all about making the web a better place -- the nuts and bolts of software development that most folks don’t ever think about when they add apps to their Android phones or when they log into their Gmail. What’s interesting about all these developers getting stoked about building the apps of the future is that they take one thing for granted: high speed Internet connectivity. That’s not to say they don’t recognise that sometimes connectivity is slow or erratic -- they do, and we’re all trying to find ways to make sure our apps can work in those situations. What I mean is that their starting assumption is that high speed connectivity is fast becoming like electricity or running water -- never far away when you need it, and plenty of it. I love this optimism -- and it’s this optimism that is bringing the National Broadband Network to Australia.

Out of all the exciting announcements that came out of Google this week, every single one of them relies on high speed broadband. YouTube movie rentals -- tick. Syncing your music library and movies from Android Market across your PC and your Android tablet and phone -- tick. Using a Chromebook, where your apps, games, photos, music, movies and documents will be accessible wherever you are and you don't need to worry about losing your computer or forgetting to back up files -- tick. These products will run on the networks we we have now, but just imagine their potential -- and the potential of the ideas of all the developers in Moscone Center and those around the world watching Google I/O streamed over YouTube -- when we have high speed Internet everywhere.

Most of us in the Google Sydney office wish we had a dollar for every time someone asked us about the NBN, “Yeah, but what are you going to do with all that speed?” or “What’s Google’s vision for how to use all that bandwidth?” I think we saw a taste of it at Google I/O.

Originally posted on the Google Australia blog.

Read More Here...

The possibilities of an Australian Digital Economy

I read an article recently about an Australian livestock auction site, AuctionsPlus, which allows farmers to view, bid on, and transport livestock with the click of a mouse.

It’s a unique kind of online shopping, but one that I can imagine in a country as big as this one, 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.

The digital economy can be a nebulous concept and while there’s lots of talk about it - much of this is in future tense. What makes the sheep auction site fascinating to me is that it epitomises beautifully the digital economy.

It’s using the Internet as a platform for industry. It’s innovating. And it’s happening now.

The digital economy is a platform for growth for the entire Australian economy. Industries old and new are moving online, and finding new ways to do business. This is true for tech companies -- Australian start-ups like Atlassian are growing up -- but it is equally true for companies working in more traditional industry sectors, too. From health and education, to tourism and manufacturing, to resources and energy, and for businesses large and small, companies who are moving into this space are statistically more successful: recent UK research reported that small businesses who leverage the internet report sales growth four times greater than those who don’t.

The digital economy connects Australia to the global movement online; but it’s also specifically valuable for Australia. It allows Australia to confront the challenges of the tyranny of distance by connecting us to the rest of the world in real-time. And it takes advantage of our strengths -- particularly our highly skilled, net-savvy and innovative population -- and keeps them at home, rather than shipping them overseas. Over twenty years ago I left Australia to work in Japan and then in Silicon Valley in the US: young engineers at Google can now work on global platforms while looking out the window at the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

If you’ll permit me to labour my agricultural analogy for a minute, consider the digital economy as the farm of the future. Generations of Australian farmers have worked the land to build an agricultural sector that more than a century on is still a significant economic contributor. The digital economy is a platform that can support this and other sectors of our economy to grow into the future -- it’s a platform for future-proofing our economy. But like the land, we can keep planting but we need all of the elements to work together for a bumper crop.

1. We need to improve the soil quality

If any country knows about the importance of soil quality, Australia does. You need healthy soil for a garden to grow, and we need world-class infrastructure to anchor our digital economy. The ubiquitous, high-speed broadband of the National Broadband Network will position Australia well to grow the digital economy and to enable a range of innovations and opportunities which would be limited by out-dated infrastructure.

2. We need to water the crop

In the same way that we fund scientists to research new medicines and treatments, we need to support new ideas and new innovations in the digital space with finance, in the form of venture capital and private sector investment. There’s an absence of ‘smart money’ in Australia to support new start-ups here -- ‘smart money’ is venture capital that comes with the added value of advice, experience and contacts. Funding isn’t the only thing a start-up needs to succeed, but it’s critical to getting a good idea off the ground.

3. We need to feed our crop

You can fund all the good ideas in the world, but you need people to have the good ideas in the first place. Strong universities capable of effectively partnering with industry are critical to a vibrant ecosystem. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has calculated that their alumni have founded more than 25,000 companies with a combined annual revenue of more than USD2 trillion. Australia has some excellent universities but we can do much more to develop the relationships between the university sector and industry to support the commercialisation of ideas developed in universities -- from classroom to customer -- and we must continue to support and inspire students pursuing education in the fields of science and maths.

4. We need to refresh our seed stock

The interchange of people and ideas stimulates innovation. Large companies need start-ups to partner with, and conversely small companies need larger companies to reach customers, and to grow with. Large international companies should also be encouraged to invest in the digital economy here, in skills and in research, to further seed new ideas and new collaborations.

5. It needs oxygen to grow

And we need keep the Internet open. The Internet thrived because it is open -- with engineers being able to build on each other's work, each iteration improving, and driving the web forward as a whole. To flourish, the web needs oxygen; online, oxygen is openness. As Tim Berners-Lee said recently, the whole idea behind the internet was that ‘any person could share information with anyone else, anywhere.’ Online, the fastest way to move things forward is to share and iterate -- again, and again. Closed systems are all or nothing bets -- but in contrast, an open web is constantly being improved upon by the entire community. It gives oxygen to innovation.

6. We need to tend the crop

The lines in the middle of the road weren’t necessary when we travelled on horseback, but when we started driving cars we adapted. We came up with a simple and practical solution which greatly improved road safety: the road line. Online, we need to adapt to the changed environment; we need to evolve the rules of the road. We need to ensure privacy, safety and security are respected in this new environment, but we should look for the best ways to do this that fit the environment. We need to empower people with the skills and knowledge to be safe, smart and responsible when they’re online, so everyone can navigate the information super-highway with safety.

Our digital economy crop is growing well, but it’s early in the season. If we create the right conditions for growth, Australia’s digital economy can look forward to many bumper crops to come."

Alan Noble, Director of Engineering, Google Australia & New Zealand.

Originally posted at ITNews. Cartoon courtesy of ITNews.

Read More Here...

The opportunities of the NBN

Port Augusta, in my home state of South Australia, is staring down the detractors of rural and regional Australia.

It's a town with a fascinating history as a crossroads in our vast country, connecting West to East and back again. In 1917, Port Augusta was the beneficiary of the pre-Federation promise to the West Australians of a Trans-Australian Railway. The railway physically connected Perth, through Kalgoorlie, to Adelaide, providing new opportunities for businesses and individuals to prosper. This was a visionary project: a nation-building venture.

Nearly a century later, and Port Augusta is again the beneficiary of a nation-building venture. The town will again be linked to Australia and the world through inclusion in the National Broadband Network's fibre optic coverage plans.

Being a major hub for telecommunications networks has served Port Augusta, its people and its economy well; unlike many rural and regional towns across the country, Port Augusta's population has grown by almost 7 per cent since 2001. The impact of better services through the delivery of super-fast broadband to the town will cement Port Augusta's achievements. The National Broadband Network will provide towns across Australia with new opportunities to grow.

At present, there is a lot of discussion about the implementation and construction of this vital infrastructure. This is appropriate given the significant taxpayer dollars involved.

But to borrow the words of my colleague Ian Birks of the Australian Information Industry Association, it's "the trains and not the tracks" that present the exciting opportunities.

Just as the trains of the Trans-Australian Railway linked the wheatfields of the Spencer Gulf to the gold mines of Kalgoorlie, and brought passengers through Port Augusta to the east, so too will a super-fast broadband network bring a freight train of innovation to our shores.

The National Broadband Network will be the digital equivalent of the Trans-Australian Railway: linking towns small and large, bringing new life and new opportunities to our economy and our communities.

And these innovations will be driven by users - by the Australian people who are seizing the opportunities online with gusto. More than 80 per cent of Australian homes are already connected to the internet; the National Broadband Network will provide more people across the country with access, and with improved services.

Thirty-seven years after radio came into being, it reached the milestone of 50 million users. Fifteen years after the advent of television it reached the same milestone. The world-wide web reached 50 million regular users after only three years, and it's now estimated that more than 200 million people come online across the globe each year.

As more people get online, users' needs, behaviours and expectations evolve.

How would a new bank fare in Australia today if it didn't provide online banking services? Where ten years ago we would have spent our lunch hour in a queue, we now expect to be able to avoid that hassle, to bank without leaving our desks or our living rooms.

Yet in Australia today, of the nearly two million small businesses who make up a staggering 96 per cent of all businesses, 39 percent do not have a website.

Meanwhile, four out of five Australians research products online; 45 per cent of Australian internet users publish their opinions about products, services and brands and a staggering 86 per cent read other consumers' opinions online. This represents a huge missed opportunity for businesses to find new customers and to participate in the expanding digital economy.

These businesses - plumbers, B&Bs, hairdressers - rely on the Yellow Pages and word of mouth to find new customers and to establish their reputation. Yet today's word of mouth is transmitted as often through Facebook or Twitter, as it is over a cup of tea. Today's users find businesses as often on Google Maps from a mobile phone as from a street directory.

With new and faster technology, our expectations are changing. Now, I expect to be able to search the restaurant I read a review about, call them from that page, and be able to find them on Google Maps. If my expectations aren't met, I may still turn up for dinner, but each expectation not met is a hurdle. And in a growing market which is becoming more competitive, Australian businesses don't need hurdles.

Access to the Internet across Australia today can be expensive and unreliable, particularly in regional areas. Yet we have seen Australian companies take advantage of opportunities to reach new markets both at home and abroad. Australian start-up companies like Atlassian and PC Tools have thrived because of the power of the Internet to reach customers around the world.

If we can get rid of the barriers to business through a super-fast broadband network, Aussie businesses right across the country will not only have the same opportunities as the rest of the world - but potentially a leg up as well. The access provided by the National Broadband Network means that the world is now our marketplace.

The evolution of users' expectations - and the users themselves - are driving innovation.

For example, currently we are witnessing the convergence of mobile and social trends online. These media were quick in the adaptation of their sites to mobile and these days it's hard to find a new phone without Facebook, YouTube and Twitter apps.

We are witnessing this trend, absolutely - but we're also the lead actors in pushing its development forward. Users are driving this bus.

And developers are rising to the challenge.

They are making the most of new technologies - every time our technology improves new things become possible. The openness of the internet is an environment built for innovation, and environment best equipped to meet - and to exceed - users' needs and expectations.

When four engineers in a Sydney suburb came up with the idea that became Google Maps, they needed a printer for those maps to be useful on the go.

Today, rather than dog-earring tattered street directories or print outs, we're pulling up Google Maps on our mobile phones.

Our behaviours have changed: we have evolved with the technology. But we've also driven innovation for greater usability, for personalisation, for a product that works for us.

We're seeing hassle-free upgrades to cloud-based web applications - do you even know or care what version of web mail you are using now? And high-speed broadband promises even greater capacity and new possibilities.

When the user is driving the bus, developers and companies need to respond to what the user wants. And what users want is services and devices that work for them - that adapt easily into their lives, and which improve their quality of being.

The opportunity before us in Australia is the acceleration of this exciting phenomenon. It's mobile phone convenience now - but it will be health, education, small business tomorrow. But more than acceleration - this is an opportunity for innovations we can't yet conceive of. And with the technology to support innovation, users will be in the driver's seat.

Nationwide access and affordability are critical to this, and competition for retail services through the National Broadband Network will be the essential enabler of innovation. Transparency in the delivery of services and devices is also important so that users can make the choices that are best for them. And our regulatory and policy settings must continue to place users at the centre.

We need to empower users to take their rightful place at the centre of this new revolution. We need to educate people, young and old, country and city, to be digital citizens, in the same way that we teach our kids to swim. We need to empower users to be safe online, to act smartly and responsibly - to have the knowledge and skills to take advantage of the opportunities in the online world and the know-how to deal with any risks.

Australia has an opportunity to be ahead of the game, to be in the driver's seat when it comes to innovation, to communication, and to facing and adapting to the challenges of the future.

Super-fast broadband gives us a platform - like the Trans-Australia Railway did - to connect to a new generation of opportunities.

Let's think about the possibilities. And take the opportunity to innovate.

Alan Noble

Originally posted at ABC Technology.

Read More Here...

On Cloud 9 – digital everything

This is the Lightning Talk I gave for Sydney Cloud Camp, held in the Google Australia office last week. It's about convergence of cloud computing and digital everything. It’s a very happy convergence, so I’m calling it “cloud 9”, symbolising a good place to be.

First, what do I mean by “digital everything”? Digital everything is just that, the digitisation of everything, at least, everything that is digitisable. There are of course things that don’t lend themselves to digitisation. For example, it may be some time before humans can ingest digital food! But many, if not most, of our informational and creative needs can be satisfied digitally. Digitisation is a form of de-materialisation, i.e., separating the bits from the material.

We’re already seeing it for media such as music and books, and more recently transit information and newspapers. But what if even more things were digitised? In business and government alike, let's face it, paper processes still dominate. Think of all those wasted directories that you use as door jams, and all that legal paperwork, that has yet to be digitised. The pace will pick up over the next few years, as it becomes main stream to collaborate around rich media, video, and complex business applications. But there's still a bunch of physical things out there just waiting to be digitised!

So where does the cloud fit in? First, what do we mean by the cloud? I'll define cloud computing as the intersection of "software as a service" and "utility computing". SaaS is about deploying applications as a service. Utility computing is about packaging computing resources (compute/storage/memory/network) as a metered service, similar to a traditional public utility.

Digitisation needs both aspects of the cloud. Without the cloud, digitisation means that information gets squirreled away on machines scattered around the globe. It’s pointless. The SasS aspect is what makes digital things accessible and useful and the utility aspect is what makes it scale affordably. The cloud also makes it possible to collaborate using digital information in new ways. For example, how many people ever collaborated using a physical street directory? In contrast, digital maps, naturally lend themselves to collaboration and have given rise to powerful mashups. Google Maps is a great example of this, with over half the traffic now coming from mashups on other web sites.

I also believe that the environmental benefits of cloud computing and digital things are significant. Digitisation is very green, for two reasons. First, and simplest, more digital things means fewer physical things, which in turn means fewer (precious) resources to move those physical things. Second, more digital information means more informed users. For example, when everyone has a detailed understanding of their home energy use or home water use, we can find all sorts of ways to save energy and lower power and water bills. Google PowerMeter is a great example. The cloud itself is also inherently green, because it leverages demand variability to achieve higher computer utilisation, also known as elastic computing. Higher computer utilisation in turn means doing more computational work with fewer machines, fewer idle machines, and lower energy costs, etc.

Digital everything will also profoundly affect education. Any person, anywhere, anytime should have the tools to explore the great works of history and culture. A doctor in the remotest part of Borneo will have access to every medical textbook every written. Or a schoolgirl in the outback will be able search all of Shakespeare’s works. It's "distance learning" on steroids.

Digital everything can also be a powerful force for democracy. Giving people the power to share and search the world’s information will continue to break down barriers and bring communities together. Of course, we need to guard against digital things becoming exclusively the realm of some digital elite or "digerati". Never has the adage, “information is power”, been truer. So it’s imperative that we, as a society, ensure equitable access to the world's information. Here in Australia, the proposed National Broadband Network (NBN) has great potential to level this information playing field, providing we get the regulatory settings right.

The cloud of digital things will improve the environment, education, democracy and more.

What can you digitise that will make lives better?

Posted by Alan Noble, Head of Engineering, Google Australia and NZ

Read More Here...