Evaluating the Economic and Social Impact of the National Broadband Network

Governments the world over are developing policy and implementing broadband infrastructure for the purpose of improving access to and availability of broadband for businesses and citizenry based on assumptions that broadband infrastructure will return economic and social benefits. However, little research has been done that evaluates the impact of implementations of broadband infrastructure and/or the community benefit in access to broadband or indeed the potential disadvantage to communities that do not have adequate access to broadband. The Australian government has recently announced that Tasmania will be the first State to deploy the national broadband network (NBN) initiative. Consequently now is an ideal time to establish a baseline against which the economic and social impacts of the implementation in the state might be usefully measured and interpreted. This paper reviews academic and practitioner literature examining the social and economic impact of broadband and presents a proposed research framework for evaluating this important area within the Tasmanian and Australian context.