Broadband inaction leads to $7tn per year in lost GDP

Tax revenues worth as much as $1.4tn per year are being missed by governments around the world as a result of sluggish rollout of fixed broadband networks, according to UK research firm Point Topic.

Speaking at the CommunicAsia event which took place in Singapore last week, Point Topic CEO Oliver Johnson said: “[There is] a $6.9tn per year increase in GDP that we’re not getting because we don’t have broadband everywhere.”

He added that this can be ascribed to a combination of poor IT knowledge on the part of many politicians, the huge outlays involved in national broadband projects, and the fact that they often take longer to implement than the average government’s term of office.

Despite estimating that it would cost around €200bn to wire up Europe with fibre, Johnson added that the investment would “easily” be recouped within ten years.

Point Topic released a new study earlier this week which estimated that consumer value-added services are set to triple for the telecoms industry from $125bn worldwide in 2011 to $420bn in 2020, with current top earner VoIP to be trumped by IPTV during the period – more details here.