There’s nothing in Australian technology circles that gets the blood more heated than the debate around the NBN, with each side flaming away, seemingly at will. A crowdsourced effort headed up by the local arm of The Register aims to put some research behind all the hype.
The Register’s position — and it’s one that I broadly agree with — is that debate on the NBN has “gone feral”, with far too much appeal to emotion and nowhere near enough facts.
So they’re trying to do something about it, looking to crowdsource an independent study into the needs, technologies and future of an NBN in Australia, be it FTTP, FTTN or delivered exclusively by little green men from Mars.
OK, maybe not that last one, but this kind of research doesn’t come cheap, and the chaps from The Register (*disclaimer: They’re part of the Aus IT media scene; I know both of them) need $100,000 in order to get the study off the ground. They’ve set up a Pozible fundraiser to try to reach their target, which kicked off a week ago, and at the time of writing had $4,591 pledged.
It’s an interesting idea, and I’m certainly going to support it on the grounds that there could be a lot more information and a lot less hype around broadband in Australia generally.
So, if you’ve had a whinge about the NBN (whether pro- or anti-), why not put your money where your mouth is and support research to find out what we need, rather than the endless back and forth bickering that frames so much of the NBN debate. Because if we’re going to spend 29 billion, 44 billion or even 6,379,221 billion, $100,000 is a bit of a drop in the ocean for some worthwhile facts.
Source: Pozible
Image: Gavin St. Ours