Broadband has been increasingly influential to political life and political decision-making across the globe. This is no secret. A number of municipalities and city councils in USA campaigned, some of them far from conservatively, to attract Google’s attention for an FTTH pilot. City officials in Europe and US include broadband related issues in their political campaigns and operational programs, the Swiss are asked to vote for or against the roll-out of NGA networks before the city councils commit to the projects, etc.
However, recent Australian elections with the consecutive 17 days of limbo-swinging for power, seems to have outweighed all past cases. Labor Government remains in power and preserves a fragile (76-74) minority government with national broadband plan appear as the deciding factors. Tony Windsor, one of the independent MPs backing up of Labor confirmed that “The issues that [...] were critical to this [backing up the labor Government], and possibly the most critical, was broadband“.
That’s not all. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Greens are most likely going to remove ISP network filtering from the original Labor’s national broadband plan.
Don’t think that you are living the dream, because you are. Australians are about to get their fiber with no packet filtering whatsoever.
I really look forward to see what comes next!
[Update] Read also this: NBN a key factor in decision: independents
