Australian local governments and the early national broadband network roll-out: an online survey

• Main Authors: Tooran Alizadeh, Heather Shearer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: UTS ePRESS 2017-04-01
• Series: Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance
• Online Access: https://learning-analytics.info/journals/index.php/cjlg/article/view/5448

A recent decision by the Australian Federal Government to reassess the scale of the National Broadband Network (NBN) will leave the country with a patchwork of different levels of access to the infrastructure. This intensifies the need to investigate and evaluate the implications of telecommunication at the local level. The paper opens a discussion on the different approaches taken by local government authorities towards the NBN in the early roll-out localities. Building upon the international literature, it analyses the empirical data collected from the Australian local governments involved with the early NBN roll-out using an online survey. The findings reveal an interesting diversity in the approaches taken at the local level, and show how decision-making at higher levels of government can impact local outcomes.