How broadband decided Australia's election

Australia's plan to run fiber-optic cable to 93 percent of the country's homes and provide minimum 100Mbps speeds (the rest of the country will get 12Mbps, delivered by wireless and next-generation satellite) was always ambitious, but even its most enthusiastic backers never expected that a national broadband plan would actually determine the country's next prime minister. But that's exactly what just happened.

Australia has broken a two-and-a-half week deadlock resulting from its August 21 national elections. No party won an outright majority, and forming a coalition government proved tricky. Numerous issues were on the table, but one of the key differentiators between the parties was the future of the government-backed NBN Company -- the entity that oversees construction and operation of the national broadband network. The Labor Party and the Greens both saw broadband -- specifically fiber optic broadband -- as key to the country's future, and both pledged to support the AU$43 billion decade-long project. The center-right Liberal Party wanted to gut the entire project, cutting NBN and instead offering some cash to make DSL available to more people. With the hung parliament resulting from Australia's election, it became clear that the winning coalition would determine the future of the country's broadband network. The deadlock was eventually broken by three independents. One broke for the Liberals. Another cast his vote with Labor. The third, Tony Windsor, is a rural MP who believes that broadband is the key issue in the election.