Sydney pitched for national broadband network headquarters

NSW Premier Nathan Rees has officially launched a bid for Sydney to be the headquarters of the $43 billion National Broadband Network (NBN).

Rees has appointed the executive director of Sydney's Chamber of Commerce Patricia Forsythe and NSW Chief Scientist Professor Mary O'Kane to lead Sydney's bid.

According to a glossy three-minute video released today to launch the bid, the team has already identified Redfern's Australia Technology Park, Barangaroo on the harbour foreshore, and North Ryde's Global Business Centre on a shortlist of locations the team will put forward as potential headquarters for NBNCo.

The video highlighted Sydney's facilities and international connections, describing the harbour city as being suited to a "fast and easy" NBN roll-out.

Among the claims made in the presentation:

• Sydney has double the data centre capacity of the next largest Australian city.
• Sydney has 43 percent of national expenditure on telecommunications research and         development.
• Sydney is home to 83 percent of Australia's commercial banks
• Sydney boasts the best international telecommunications connectivity - with seven of Australia's nine fibre optic cables linking us to the US, Europe and Australia. (Australia-Japan, Southern Cross 1 and 2, Endeavour, APNG-2, Gondwana-1, Tasman 2).  Western Australia hosts the connections for the other two international cables.
• NSW employs 47 percent of the nation's network engineers

The presentation did not qualify any of these claims with sources. Nor did it discuss how much of the data centre capacity is available.

The video can be seen in full here.