High speed Internet key in Australian elections

Australia held national elections last month, and there were several differences between their vote and presidential elections here in the United States. Australia uses a parliamentary system, its campaign season is much shorter, and a central issue in Australia's vote was high speed Internet.

The Labor Party swept into power, and one of its major planks was significantly improving high speed Internet in Australia. The party's platform called for achieving Internet speeds 40 times faster than they are today. The new Labor government will commit $4.7 billion to new high speed Internet infrastructure, including $100 million for Australian schools.

This is an important step for Australia, which leads the rest of the world in the number of websites per capita. Combined with insufficient infrastructure, this creates an online logjam that hurts businesses.

Marty Gauvin, managing director of Hostworks, a leading provider of IT services to Australian businesses, said the country is at a crucial moment, in which its content production is outpacing the ability of Australian networks to move that information efficiently.

Gauvin added that it is important for the Labor Party to live up to its high speed Internet promises, because government intervention is the only way to ensure sufficient high speed infrastructure:

"If we leave solving this problem to market forces, then Australia will just go backwards."

The same is true in the United States. Our government must take a leading role in expanding high speed Internet access. The current presidential campaign is a prime opportunity to bring this issue to the forefront of public debate.

The top Democratic candidates have all discussed the importance of high speed Internet on the campaign trail. But it will take a sustained effort to make sure candidates do more than just pay lip service to this crucial issue and make a serious, comprehensive plan for universal high speed Internet access a key component of their platforms.