Gillard praises home work options at NBN launch

The great NBN button push: Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Senator Stephen Conroy and independent MP Tony Windsor at the same time with two local school students officially turn on the National Broadband Network in the city of Armidale, NSW. Armidale is the first city on the Australian mainland to switch on the fibre network.

The NBN will enable more people to "work where they live", according to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who attended the opening of the NBN Co network on the mainland in Armidale today where the home work possibilities were showcased in detail.

The presentation

During the presentation, hosted by ABC science journalist Graham Phillips, a promotional video was shown with an interview with a small business owner from Armidale who works from home, nevertheless needs to send large files over the Internet.

"Multiply [broadband] by a million times over and that's the NBN," she said. "By decade's end the whole of Australia will be connected to fast broadband and the monopoly of Telstra will be broken and we will not stop until last home is connected."

In addition to allowing people to work from home and run a home-based business, Windsor said more elderly people will avoid moving into aged care facilities as they can receive better medical supervision at home.

Lot of people talk about the cost of the NBN

"A lot of people talk about the cost of the NBN, however what if aged care was embraced by fibre optic research where people were able to stay in homes longer, not just because of real time monitoring of health and the security blanket that would involve," he said.

"As this baby bubble drifts through the aged care sector there will be an enormous amount of capital required to care for aged people. If we can keep people in their own homes through this innovation that would be beneficial."

Communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, said the NBN is now "then and in point of fact a reality" and May 18 will be the day the communications landscape in mainland Australia "began an historic transformation for all Australians in all areas of their lives".

"I'm pleased to report more than 4300 kilometres of fibre backbone links across regional Australia has been rolled out already," Conroy said. "And the Broadband Blackspots program is delivering 6000 kilometers of backbone fibre benefiting 400,000 regional Australians. This is due for completion later this year."