Educating New Zealanders on opportunities broadband offers will hasten progress to a digital economy, writes Brett O'Riley

Digital applications can help major exporters like dairy operate more efficiently and even create opportunities for dairy-related technology exports.

The debate about broadband infrastructure is now moving on from one of whether it will be constructed to what services broadband will enable, and what it could achieve for New Zealanders.

Broadband is a core platform for an economy to grow in the 21st century.

All of our major trading partners are making huge investments in their platforms - Australia, USA, Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia and Singapore among them. They are also investing in new services and pilot programmes to explore the potential opportunities that broadband will enable.

Helping New Zealanders understand these opportunities has been made difficult by the fact that the information and communications technologies (ICT) sector tends to talk in technical jargon and acronyms. This has been to the detriment of a clear understanding of what ICT can offer.

Broadband and its related applications, hardware and services is changing the relationship between economic activity and social life. We need to inform consumers and businesses on the uses of broadband services and applications.

ICT is a complex industry. The group that represents the information and communication technologies sector, NZICT, aims to address some of these issues.

We recently released a paper that mapped out a number of recommendations for the public and private sectors.

Most of these recommendations revolve around improved broadband infrastructure and improving the understanding of broadband.

The Government sees this as a key area for New Zealand's economic growth, with a commitment to invest about $1.5 billion in broadband. If we get it right, then this will be the largest single nation-building infrastructure project in New Zealand's history.

This will enable the expansion of what we call the "digital economy". This is based on an economy of goods and services being traded electronically. The information highway that is broadband and what it offers is not only limited to business.

It offers a range of personal applications and services that can improve everyday New Zealanders' lives.

In only a few years, we've come to rely on the internet and email as an integral means of communication.

New developments such as location-based technologies will change the internet into what is termed "the internet of things", meaning that a range of everyday devices will become interconnected.