Offering high-speed broadband connections to more Australians has created another 169,000 jobs in just over a decade, according to a new report.
And Australians in remote and regional areas have benefited most from National Broadband Network services, a study by Accenture found, with the average speed of internet access multiplying more than five times.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland is expected to reveal the findings on Saturday in a speech at the Ben Chifley Memorial Dinner, Light on the Hill, in Bathurst.
The analysis comes almost one year after the federal government announced another $2.4 billion investment in the NBN to upgrade 1.5 million premises to high-speed fibre connections.
The new study investigated the NBN's economic impact between 2011 and 2022 and found the productivity benefits of introducing faster broadband services were 16 times greater in remote communities than in metropolitan areas, and had twice the impact in regional areas.
The Accenture study also found broadband connections in regional and remote areas had increased from 55 per cent of households to 77 per cent during that time, and the average download speed jumped from seven megabits per second to 40Mbps.
Ms Rowland said the findings showed giving more Australian households access to fast broadband had "helped to narrow the digital divide, particularly in regional Australia".
"Faster, reliable speeds are a game-changer and the uplift in workforce participation can be attributed to a range of factors, including accessibility to flexible work as well as access to online education," she said.
"For too long, these have been benefits enjoyed primarily by Australians living in metropolitan areas but we're seeing the impact faster speed can have in regional communities."
The greater connections also enabled thousands of new jobs, the report found, adding as many as 32,900 positions a year and a total of 169,000 roles since 2012.
Most of these new roles were filled by women, who accounted for 101,000 of the positions, and most were created in service industries.
But Ms Rowland said the NBN was still undergoing upgrades to give more remote areas access to faster download speeds, including expansions to its Sky Muster and fixed wireless services, as well as changes in metropolitan areas to replace copper connections in what she called a "fibre repair job".
NBN is expected to add another 1.5 million fibre optic connections to its network by 2025 as part of the $2.4 billion upgrade announced last October.
Research commissioned earlier by NBN Co found the speed boost delivered by such an upgrade could bolster Australia's economy by up to $20 billion by 2030.
Australia currently ranks 87th in the world for fixed broadband speeds with an average of 54Mbps, according to Speedtest, with Singapore and Hong Kong in first and second place.
