[LINK] Education, Offshoring and Free Trade to remove ICT Trade Deficit

[Michael Still]

Tom Worthington wrote:

> * Conducive environment for global activities - For Australia to
> continue to be a successful exporter of ICT services, the nation
> requires reliable infrastructure such as high speed broadband, the
> ability of local suppliers to link into global production systems and a
> supportive regulatory environment.

While broadband is interesting for it's educational value, I think it's
a red herring for businesses. It's not like I am going to hang a data
center at the end of a DSL line. However:

 - the expense of data center space in Australia vs the US
 - the expense of electricity in Australia versus overseas
 - the expense of bandwidth (both local, and global)

Will all keep large businesses from hosting in Australia. Without
hosting, you don't have any of the surrounding industry -- hardware
people, network people, manufacturing, operations folks, etc.

Let's face it. It's time to stop subsidizing farmers, and start building
an infrastructure where we can provide all of those things at a lower
cost base than our competitors. Oh, and give Telstra a good kick in the
pants.

(Although I concede that Australia has physical advantages and
disadvantages in the data center space. I can think of geological
stability, network latency to the rest of the world, and ambient
temperatures as issues off the top of my head.)

Mikal