Australia envisions becoming a world-leading digital economy by the end of the decade by fully realising the benefits of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

The NBN would help Australia become a world-leading digital economy by 2020, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, said today.

Launching the National Digital Economy Strategy at the CeBIT conference, Senator Conroy said the vision of the strategy would contribute to Australia’s productivity, maintain global competitiveness and bring about tangible social wellbeing improvements – including better access to health and education services.

“The Gillard Government is committed to ensuring Australian households and businesses, through the NBN, can receive the full benefits of the digital economy no matter where they live around Australia,” Senator Conroy said.

“Building the NBN is a key step towards that vision, which has as one of its goals Australia being among the top five OECD countries by 2020 when it comes to the percentage of households connected to broadband at home.”

Senator Conroy said to accelerate progress towards this, the government will provide $23.8 million over three years for a Digital Communities initiative, a focus of which will be to establish a ‘Digital Hub’ in each of the 40 communities to first benefit from the NBN.

The Gillard Government was also aiming to see Australia rank in the top five OECD countries by 2020 in the percentage of businesses and not-for-profit organisations using online opportunities to drive productivity improvements, expand their customer base and enable jobs growth.