With the recent passing of the legislation enabling the National Broadband Network (NBN), you might be excused for thinking the debate might be starting to settle down a fair bit.
Not so, it would seem.
If anything, it has flared up even more in the last couple of weeks, and with the cancellation of the first construction tender last Friday, many of the critics are sharpening their knives.
The benefits or otherwise of the NBN could be argued until one is blue in the face, so with this article I wanted to take a different tack. I’m relating back to an article I wrote back in October, describing some of the benefits the existence of the NBN might bring to the economy.
I encourage you to read the article to get the full background on my thinking.
INSERT MUZAK HERE WHILE YOU READ
Now that you have the background, I want to answer a question you might have – “what will this do for me?”
Say that my employer set up a scheme whereby every one of the thirty or so employees in the office were sent home to work four days a week, only having to be in the office one day a week.
One fifth of the employees turn up to the office on Monday, another fifth on Tuesday, and then Wednesday, Thursday, and so on until Friday. There might only need to be about 10 desks in the office, with people only in the office one day a week, and sharing a desk with four other people who come in on the other days.
My company slashes the amount of office space it needs to rent. Utility costs are slashed. The company provisions a private NBN circuit, like described in this article.
We get to work at home, closer to our families. We have zero commute time four days a week, and get to sleep in a little longer in the mornings, almost certainly helping with our health. Communication with co-workers is maintained through unified communications systems operated in the cloud by the company.
Nice – but what about the financial benefits?
I live in Geelong and commute into Melbourne every single day to the office. I wake up at 5:50am every morning, and by the time I get home in the evening and settled it is often 7:00pm – that’s a thirteen hour day before I get to do anything else.
How much money does that cost me? Currently I buy a $55.20 weekly train ticket. Presuming that I might have four-weeks of annual leave a year, I’m paying $55.20 x 48 weeks a year in train travel, totalling $2649.60 each year.
If I was only travelling into Melbourne on one day each week, I would be buying a single $16.60 daily ticket 48 times a year, costing $796.80.
That’s a saving to me personally $1852.80. Each year. Add to that the money I would be saving in petrol not driving to the train station every morning, and I’m saving well over $2000.00 a year.
Now, imagine you live in Melbourne and drive to work every day. If I have to drive to work, I park at Etihad Stadium, just a short stroll from the office, and $13.00 a day to park.
Over 48 weeks, and five days in each of those weeks, that’s $3120.00 each year in parking. You might be spending $60.00 a week on petrol to get you into the CBD through the heavily congested freeway traffic, costing you another $2880.00 a year.
That’s $6000.00, and a lot of money. And a lot of hassle and stress.
Cutting down to one day a week, your annual parking bill drops to $13.00 x 48 for $624.00, and cutting your fuel bill by 80%, you are now only spending $576.00 on petrol for the purposes of getting to work.
Your bill is down to $1200.00 – a saving of $4800.00. Add to that the benefits of just being able to spend more time at home with your family, let’s just call it $5000.00 – (probably more!).
If someone walked up to you and offered you five grand, would you say no?
Spend that $5000.00 on a solar power system for your house, and you’ll save more, and be helping the environment.
Yes, I’ve made a few assumptions here – but stop and think for a moment. This kind of change isn’t really possible right now with the poor upload speeds available in Australia preventing people from working at LAN speeds.
The NBN will make it possible, for a long time to come.
