KEY POINTS:
Someone at the Digital Future Summit conference had to bring it up and it was best coming from Stephen Tindall, the man who was instrumental in bringing us the last big meeting of minds on all things digital in this country - 2001's Knowledge Wave conference.
"A lot
of people have said since then that it was a talkfest," complained Tindall yesterday.
The problem is, that's exactly what the Knowledge Wave was - very little eventuated from it.
As people filed into the Hyatt hotel yesterday to listen to communications minister David Cunliffe open this conference, the cynics around me said they were expecting more of the same.
Cunliffe's speech resurrected some of those Knowledge Wave cliches with his talk of "turbocharging ICT" and building New Zealand's "information highway".
But I think there's more of a chance of something tangible coming from this conference because of its preoccupation with one thorny issue - broadband and how we make it better.
For one thing, the summit has made it clear that virtually all of the parties interested in developing our broadband infrastructure now agree that the Government needs to step in and help fund development of broadband in addition to what Telecom and the other private sector players are doing.
That includes building new connections between our country and the rest of the world.
Some of the big names featured at the Digital Future Summit have long been of this mindset.
"The dream I have is an open-access network where we don't care about the cost of broadband," said Xero chief executive Rod Drury, who wants Kiwis to be able to run global businesses from the beach.
Others, such as Telecom's new boss, Paul Reynolds, see the practical benefits of having the Government involved to a greater extent.
"There are undoubtedly big investment areas, sparsely populated areas, where a stand-alone business case doesn't work," he said.
"I don't think Telecom can do all of it itself."
Even Maurice Williamson, National's communications spokesman who is widely regarded as having done far too little during the nineties to break up Telecom's monopoly on the access network, is talking these days about "leap-frogging" our way into the top half of the OECD by making a major, partially Government-funded investment in broadband infrastructure, which he sees as being as important as the road network.
It was the baggage-free Reynolds, just two months in the job, who scored the only applause from the audience for the day when he urged the various players in the telecoms sector to collaborate to beat the limitations companies quickly come up against when they consider investing in broadband alone.
"We need to get our act together to deal with the scale issues by working together," he said.
You never heard that type of talk from Theresa Gattung.
If this summit is preoccupied with the issue of broadband connectivity, its success or failure on setting the agenda for the next few years, as guided by a revamped digital strategy manifesto, has to be judged on the moves the industry and the Government make to address the broadband issue.
I think we'll get our better broadband.
As Reynolds pointed out, crappy broadband service is now a barbecue discussion topic along with house prices and Auckland traffic jams.
There's a momentum to this issue we haven't seen before, awareness on the part of the public that piques the interest of politicians - especially in election year.
But there's a hell of a lot of work to be done to get it right, a task made no easier by the constantly evolving technological landscape and the by-the-book approach the Government, by nature, has to take.
But TelstraClear boss Allan Freeth made a salient point when he suggested that we need to start thinking about what we are going to use our new and improved broadband pipes for - whenever they arrive.
It's great to have super-fast email downloads and web-surfing, but how does that improve productivity, asked Freeth?
David Skilling of the New Zealand Institute in a September report identified an economic windfall of $2.7 to $4.4 billion from better broadband.
Other reports back up the findings.
The gains come from things as diverse as greater productivity achieved through more people being able to work from home and avoid the traffic rush through to companies being able to send digital content offshore quicker and more cheaply.
It means doing e-commerce will be easier. We may not build the next Facebook or YouTube in New Zealand because each household and business has access to 20 megabits per second broadband, but at least we'll be on the same footing as all those other countries who are right now trying to do just that.
