Online participation by Australian households
Digital Economy Goal: by 2020, Australia will rank in the top five Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the percentage of households that connect to broadband at home.
Increasing the number of Australian households that connect to broadband at home will deliver positive benefits for Australian families and communities in the form of improved access to business and job opportunities, health, education and government services.
Allen Consulting estimates that if the number of Australian households connected to the internet increased by 10 percentage points, this would provide gains to households of $2.4 billion a year in current prices in terms of the change in the value of consumption that they are expected to obtain. These gains are achieved through timesaving activities such as telecommuting, remote work and study opportunities, information gathering, price/product discovery and access to health services.
Targeted action is required to minimise the extent to which digital exclusion overlaps with, and exacerbates, social exclusion, and to maximise the extent to which the benefits outlined above are enjoyed by all Australian families and communities.
To help increase the portion of Australian households that are online, the government will provide $23.8 million over three years for a Digital Communities initiative, a focus of which will be to establish a ‘Digital Hub’ in each of the 40 communities that will first benefit from the NBN. These hubs will assist local residents to better understand how they can benefit from the NBN and to improve their digital literacy skills. In the 2011-12 Budget, the government also provided a further $10.4 million over four years from July 2011 to continue the Broadband for Seniors program.
Download the Allen Consulting Report - Quantifying the possible economic gains of getting more Australian households online [PDF - 1.2MB]
