National Broadband Network will forever change the face of Australia

IT’S the biggest change to Australian society since post-war migration and the women’s movement. Here’s why we’ll never be the same again.

THE Great Australian Dream is about to be swept into the future by the greatest change in decades, predicts social researcher Bernard Salt.

The introduction of high-speed broadband will transform the country on the same scale as post-war migration and the women’s movement, he says in a new report “Towards a Connected Australia”.

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The KPMG partner said: “Migration and the increase in women working are the trends that shaped the past half-century or so. The next 50 years will be shaped by new technology.

“This will have the same sort of impact as when electricity was introduced.”

Life for those born since the late 1990s – GenNBN or GenConnect as Mr Salt dubs them – will be unrecognisable from today.

The eight-hour working day, and the daily commute that comes with it, will be a thing of the past as people choose where and when they work.

Mr Salt says the flexibility created by superfast connectivity will bring a unique and ultimate opportunity.

“The promise of the future is that rather than configuring your life around your work, you will be able to configure your work around your life.”

Despite profound shifts in Australian society over previous generations, there had been one common denominator, “the irrepressible pursuit of lifestyle”.

“The Australian people have taken every cultural and technological development or trend and turned it into delivering an incomparable lifestyle,’’ Mr Salt said.

“From the three-bedroom brick veneer houses of the 1950s that proved so goddamn alluring to the Brits that they came out in boatloads.

“ Then the arrival of Greeks and Italians with the idea of al fresco living saw us switch from the London design of housing to indoor/outdoor living.

“Then there was the sea-change shift of the late 1990s and on to the rise of the inner-city hipster.

“It’s always been about and will probably always be about lifestyle. Australians are obsessed with lifestyle.”

The layout of our homes was likely to change again with the rollout of the National Broadband Network, with family rooms giving way to a communications “command centre” hub, where parents work and kids do their homework assignments.

The traditional solid blocks that made up an average day – get up, commute, work, lunch break, work, commute, dinner, leisure time, sleep – were already being broken down by technology and connectivity.

This would be shattered by this next generation, Mr Salt said.

While people would still want to go to a “workplace” one or two days a week for the interaction, they would be able to frame the shape of the rest of the week to suit their individual needs.

More than 75,000 Queensland homes and businesses have connected to the NBN so far.

Another 90,000 have the option to connect, including parts of Ascot, Aspley, Toowoomba, Ipswich, New Farm, Goodna and Townsville.

Construction is under way to expand it to another 200,000 properties and the next rollout schedule, released this month, will add a further 111,000 including parts of western Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, north Queensland, the Darling Downs and Wide Bay-Burnett.

Modern family has need for speed

NATHAN Scholz says high-speed broadband is a life-changer.

He and his wife Kerri own a coffee roasting business and espresso bar but do their administrative work from their Banyo home, uploading data to the cloud.

They can also connect to the company cash register via an iPad, allowing them to track sales live while giving Mrs Scholz the flexibility to work around the demands of being a mother-of-three.

Mr Scholz also works in public relations and frequently uploads work material at home, rather than in the office because of the extra speed.

“My downloads are five times faster than what they were and uploads are 40 times faster,’’ he said.

There are no more arguments about who watches what on television.

“Now they can connect and watch what they want, when they want to.”

The family hooked up to the NBN as soon as it was available in their area a year ago, paying about $100 a month for 500GB of data at peak times and another 500GB off-peak.

The couple is having the whole house cabled as part of a renovation in readiness for expected future growth in use.