By Paul Budde
With the development of high-speed broadband infrastructure now well and truly underway in many countries it is important to look at what the real value of this new infrastructure will be.
The infrastructure that is now being built offers a range of features such as ubiquitousness, affordability, low latency, high speed and high capacity. It will link billions of devices, such as sensors, that will enable us to manage our environment, traffic, infrastructures, and our society as a whole, much more efficiently and effectively.
This ‘internet of things’, also referred to as M2M, is going to be a real game-changer. It will transform every single sector of society and the economy and it will be out of this environment that new businesses — and indeed new industries — will be born. Many ICT companies are increasing their presence in countries that either already have, or are in the process of developing, high-speed infrastructure.
Australia is a good example of this. Their NBN is an ideal test-bed for such developments. A great deal of attention is being given to cloud computing and the NBN can be viewed as one gigantic cloud.