The government’s UFB and RBI projects will easily pay for themselves in growth for New Zealand GDP, according to a study by Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent.

The study predicts a massive $5.5 billion boost to GDP over the next 20 years as a result of the projects, the great majority of that – $4.7 billion – to come during the first six years.

Consumer surplus – a measure of the savings to be realised at grass roots level, such as time & travel savings resulting from online doctor consultations – is estimated to reach $32.8 billion over 20 years. $14.2 billion of those savings will be made by businesses seeing the benefits from technology such as HD video conferencing, cloud computing, and VoIP.

Alcatel-Lucent estimates the UFB and RBI projects themselves will require a $1.5 billion capital contribution from the government.

Discussing the report at the Future with High Speed Broadband conference in Auckland, Andrew Miller, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent NZ, says the combined impact of the build is roughly equivalent to the value of the New Zealand wine export industry, at around 1% of GDP.

That’s not even including the social benefits, such as greater life expectancy due to more efficient health services, and wider classroom offerings due to the ability to teach via video.

"I don’t even know how you’d quantify that,” Miller says.

The second part of the report discusses possible barriers to the boon: lack of apps, lack of early adoption, and lack of broad uptake.

Miller says these could create a chicken-egg situation, where developers aren’t creating apps because there’s no-one using the network, and consumers aren’t using the network because there are no apps.

To overcome these problems, the ICT industry needs to foster the development of New Zealand-specific apps, such as the Ag-Hub farm management app, encourage adoption in the home, for example by promoting telecommuting, and drive uptake on a large scale, by addressing the needs of small business with tools such as Xero.

The Future with High Speed Broadband conference ends today, but you can still catch the final sessions via the live stream.