YNOT – The National Broadband Network under construction in Australia is expected to provide faster, easier access to the web for residents across the continent, assisting interaction with healthcare providers and government offices in addition to facilitating “distance employment.” Unless government censors get over themselves and allow adult entertainment to utilize the system, though, the A$35.9 billion project may be doomed to failure, according to at least one mainstream consultant.

The Project Factory Director Jennifer Wilson told a recent Australian Computer Society forum in Sydney that entertainment — specifically, adult entertainment — is a primary driver of the internet as a whole and will be essential to the NBN’s success.

“The single most important factor is the porn factor, because pornography has always been at the cutting edge of technology,” Wilson told the gathering. “If we cannot get porn on the NBN, then we will have trouble getting consumer acceptance and uptake.”

Of course children should be protected from adult material, she noted, but without porn’s early adoption of new technologies, NBN development will stall.

“The main reason Blu-ray took off was because the adult entertainment industry chose the format over HD,” Wilson explained as an example. “No one is going to install the NBN on the basis that one day they might need e-health services, but they will use that as a justification for getting the service in order to download movies and watch TV.”

Telecoms analyst Paul Budde agreed, but he also warned the forum to expect content censorship to be a goal of “conservative elements” within the Australian government.

When completed sometime in 2021, the NBN is expected to cover 93 percent of all Australian residents with fiber-to-the-premises and satellite connections capable of speeds up to one gigabit per second. Trial connections were launched in Tasmania in late 2010, and five mainland sites were added in April 2011.

The project is managed by the quasi-governmental NBN Co. and funded primarily by the Australian government, which will contribute A$27.5 billion of the estimated A$35.9 billion total cost.