NBN Co Blog

One of the first universities to be connected to the National Broadband Network is University of New England in Armidale, NSW.

We sat down with the university's Vice Chancellor, Professor Jim Barber to hear why he passionately believes fast broadband has the potential to revolutionise education.

You've been one of the most prominent promoters of the benefits of broadband in education. What will the NBN mean for education in Australia?

To me, ubiquitous broadband is the last remaining frontier in education technology. We've had the internet, then social networking, and now what we need is bandwidth. Bandwidth will provide the opportunity for knowledge and learning to flourish via the internet.

That's interesting that you separate "bandwidth" from "the internet". What do you mean by that?

The internet provided an information space without boundaries, and social networking injected humanistic interaction around that information.

Now, what we need is bandwidth to allow -- anywhere and anytime -- the online equivalent of what we can only do face to face now.

With high bandwidth, we can provide the same high quality interaction via broadband as we can do in class.