The federal government has revealed its plan to invest 43 billion dollars in national broadband infrastructure and services.

Professor Larry Smarr, a pioneer of the internet, and Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) has told The Australian of that Australia can benefit from the "great intellectual and technical capital of Australian universities and the private sector to create a 21st century digital 'intelligent' civilian infrastructure, built on fibre optics, sensornets, and advanced information technologies".

Professor Smarr toured the country last year as part of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue and was a guest of QCIF, praising the OptIPortal project. “Because of the 15 years of the Leadership Dialogue,” Smarr, has said, “Australia is the only country I know of that is pre-organised at the highest levels of government, the research sector and industry, giving it the capability of moving quickly to take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to ensure Australia ’s increasing participation in innovative research worldwide.”

During his tour, which included speaking at nine universities across the country, Smarr told policymakers that an innovation economy begins with the pull towards the future provided by a robust public research sector.

Read the full story in The Australian online

Photo courtesy of N. Bordes, University of Queensland