ANALYSIS

IF IT is executed competently, Kevin Rudd's internet plan will equip Australia with the world's foremost tool for innovation and growth.

The Prime Minister's earlier plan promised a pedestrian system that was outmoded even before it was announced. The ambitious revised proposal is cutting-edge and allows for almost infinite upgrading as technology advances. "This puts Australia several years ahead of the US," one of the creators of the internet, Larry Smarr, said of the Government's announcement.

"My great hope is that Australia will show the way for the US," said Smarr, the head of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.

And by making the Government the prime actor and not just the director, Rudd has thrown out three decades of ideology.

"Government is back," said Chris Richardson of the consultancy Access Economics.

This is the wholesale politics of Rudd's policy - a "nation-building" plan by a decisive leader with a vision for a prosperous future.

With the Government to own 51 per cent of the equity, Rudd has in effect closed the Australian sub-branch of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution.

But he has not opened a branch of the Fabian socialists - his plan is that the Government will sell its holding five years after the system is finished.

Smarr compared the plan to the 1956 decision by the president Dwight Eisenhower to build the publicly funded interstate highway system. He nominated four of the features of Rudd's plan as being models for a world-class system: the use of fibre-optic cable all the way to the home, the target connection speed of 100 megabits a second, the universality of its reach, and the public-private structure of the venture.

Other countries such as South Korea and Singapore are installing similarly advanced internet systems. But none is attempting to do so on a continental scale.