CSIRO releases broadband, electricity reports

A report produced by the CSIRO’s Digital Productivity and Services Flagship and The Australian Centre for Broadband Innovation (ACBI) looks at the opportunities and risks associated with the spread of high-spread broadband communications in Australia.

The Broadband Impact and Challenges report looks at not only household usage, but also usage by small and large businesses. For business, the analysis concludes that there are clear links between business performance and online innovation, but that such links are complex. The report can be downloaded from the CSIRO web site.

Still on the subject of broadband, if the whole NBN debate has you a bit confused, an opinion piece by Rodney Tucker (a member of the original government-appointed expert panel) on the history of the network and the ins and outs of the alternatives put forward, might help clarify things. You can read it on the IEEE Spectrum web site.

The second report, Change and choice: The Future Grid Forum’s analysis of Australia’s potential electricity pathways to 2050, produced by the CSIRO-convened Future Grid Forum, looks at Australia’s energy-consumption patterns to the year 2050. Presenting four possible scenarios, it concludes that changing energy usage and adoption of smart technology, will have consequences for energy production and distribution.