TECHGEEK.com.au

BUDGET 2010: The Australian Government has announced that NBN Co will be funded partly by the Aussie Infrastructure Bonds that will be available to both households and institutional investors, with $300 million of the investment will be financed this way this year.

“The component of this funding to be provided by institutional and other wholesale investors will be through the issue of CGS as part of the Government’s overall debt issuance program. These bonds will not be separately identified from other CGS at the time of issue, but will be reported in the annual budget statements,” the Government has said in its budget papers.

“Consideration is currently being given to offerings of Aussie Infrastructure Bonds for household investors.”

NBN is also getting some more funding from the government, with $12.9 million over four years will be used to support regulation and overseeing the construction of the regional backbone transmission links, and $2.1 million over four years to assist the Government’s stake in NBN Co via the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

In addition, $24 million will given over five years to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to administer the regulatory arrangements for NBN.

Another $16 million will be given to the Senator Stephen Conroy’s department for a public awareness campaign for the NBN, and will be spread within two years – promoting the values of “superfast broadband” to homes, businesses and organisations.

BUDGET 2010: The Australian Government has given more information about the new filter as it plans to reallocate the $40.8 million given to cyber-safety initiatives and provide ongoing funding of $3 million a year to enhance a range of initiatives to protect children from inappropriate materials.

The Government has also announced that it will introduce amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 and will force ISPs to filter Refused Classification (RC) material overseas on a list maintained by ACMA. It also has confirmed that the material referred to ACMA that is not blacklisted will go to the Classification Board to classify the material.

It will offer a grants program to encourage – or in other words, bribe – ISPs to offer wider forms of filtering to customers on a commercial basis, with ACMA getting another few million to enhance cyber-safety education (which, surprising there is none to my knowledge), awareness raising and counselling services.

In other Budget news, the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy will axe the ABC and SBS Digital Interference Scheme a year early because of limited demand, and reduce funding of the Satellite Phone Subsidy Scheme because of reduce demand – both providing savings of $1.5 million (for the latter, it is over three years).