Melbourne will be IT capital of country

Melbourne has a long-running rivalry with Sydney and, to a lesser degree, Perth. The two biggest cities in Australia competed intensely to be designated the capital in the early 20^th century and Canberra was built from scratch and designated the national capital in large part because of such rivalry, but now Melbourne is set to have something that Sydney will not, the city has been officially chosen as the centre of operations for the ground-breaking National Broadband Network. Analysts and city leaders see the decision as one which will in time make Melbourne the IT hub of the country.

NBN Co. Ltd, the enterprise created by the federal government to fund the project, had already located its engineering and technology operations in Melbourne, and it was due to this that the Federal Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, chose Melbourne to be the headquarters of the whole project, the largest infrastructure investment in the history of Australia.

The NBN’s operations centre will transform the IT sector in Melbourne, because the city will be the heart of the country’s internet system, as Conroy told Melbourne news media when he made the announcement, “The network operations centre will be the nerve centre of the National Broadband Nertwork in Australia”.

John Brumby, Premier of Victoria, went so far as to say that the decision to locate the centre of operations in Melbourne “cements our place as the capital for telecommunications in Australia”, adding that the investment was a “transformational” one for the city.

The operations centre will employ around 425 people, a large number of staff, but it is not the operations centre itself that will provide employment opportunities and investment in the city, but rather the effect that will be had on the image of Melbourne and its reputation as a center of innovation and technology.

The federal government has spent weeks deciding where to locate the heart of the National Broadband Network and the issue became a source of new rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney, with Brisbane also weighing in to try and secure a role in the massive project that will see over 90% of the homes, businesses and schools in Australia provided with a broadband internet connection.

The federal government is planning to spend around A$43 billion on the project over the next few years in several stages of development, the first being in Tasmania and construction has already commenced, with the first communities expected to be connected to the developing broadband grid later in the year.