This submission to the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network highlights issues including that:

• Information and communications technologies (ICT) are important to improving labour productivity.
  
• The government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) proposal sets a laudable objective to increase broadband provision and offers a roadmap for the ICT sector. But it is also a significant departure from past ICT policy approaches and the approach recommended of the OECD.
  
• The government should provide, publicly and in full, a cost–benefit analysis of the NBN that sets out that sets out the investment case and broader economic and social benefits of the planned rollout.
  
• Business and community confidence in this major public investment can be increased by demonstrating that the NBN proposal offers the best way forward compared to alternative market-based policy settings favoured by the OECD and other countries.  

The submission incorporates the BCA Submission to the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy on Regulatory Reform for 21st-Century Broadband.

Submission to the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network