Survey: Most businesses don't understand NBN

More than half of businesses in Australia don't understand the National Broadband Network (NBN), according to a survey by research firm, Roy Morgan.

449 of companies of all sizes were surveyed either over the phone or online. It identified 55 per cent of respondents were located in metropolitan areas while the rest were in rural.

The survey revealed six per cent of businesses said they have a very good understanding of the NBN rollout, 27 per cent have a good idea and 55 per cent only have a rough idea. The rest of the respondents had little to no understanding of the rollout, according to Roy Morgan business development manager, Simon Pownall.

He was speaking at the Communications Day Summit, Melbourne.

In terms of benefits of the NBN, 58 per cent said they saw faster Internet speeds as the only benefit of the $36 billion network. More troubling was the fact 12 per cent said they saw no benefit to be reaped from the NBN and 23 per cent don't really understand the purpose of it.

Metropolitan businesses listed health and age care as the most important issue the NBN will deal with followed by facilitating more households to the Internet. Rural businesses, on the otherhand, viewed the latter as the most important followed by health and aged care.

Regardless of whether businesses understand the NBN or not, 16 per cent of respondents said they were likely to take up the fibre service and 30 per cent said they were fairly likely to do so.

Meanwhile, 29 per cent are fence sitting when it comes to whether they want an NBN service or not.

“But I think that will change once they see business applications available to them,” Pownall said.

Not that businesses really have a choice once the NBN reaches their locations since all services will be migrated over to the network.

But what will businesses do with their super-fast broadband? What will they invest in?

The survey showed businesses will mainly spend money on their websites, while others will explore things like online purchasing and advertising.

Communications Day Summit in Melbourne concludes today.