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Appendix 3: Input from Global Advisers
A team of Global Advisers was established to bring an international perspective to the deliberations of the BAG. They participated in meetings via videoconference where possible and the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts met with several of them individually. The Global Advisers raised the following principal issues:
Role of Government
A key question that the Global Advisers considered was the extent to which Government should, or needs to, directly invest in the development of broadband infrastructure.
While there was today less enthusiasm for investment in IT or Internet initiatives, the life sciences had become an area of large and active investment. For example, the high-speed CANARIE network was seen to be a key component in Canada's research capabilities in this area. (CANARIE is a not-for-profit corporation supported by members, partners and the Canadian Government). In particular, it had enabled the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to locate research centres in a number of regional areas. Similarly, much of the life sciences activity in the US involved a mix of public and private sector support.
A key role of government is to ensure a competitive framework for the provision of broadband services - especially at the level of the local access network. The OECD's forthcoming 'Communications Outlook' report would find that the global telecommunications industry is still growing in terms of revenue and as a share of member country GDPs. In turn, it remained central to economic performance. However, governments needed to be careful not to over invest in any one generation of technology such as today's broadband systems because "there's always something better on the horizon". Where there was genuine demand, it would tend to be fulfilled by market participants.
The UK has seen a significant rationalisation of alternative network providers during the past year, leaving British Telecom as the nation's major broadband provider. However, innovation is still occurring in areas such as wireless networking (including WLANs and 3G) and the insertion of broadband communications chips in TV set top boxes.
Some Global Advisers suggested that if left to its own devices market forces will continue to develop existing technology and that building different technology requires a national vision.
International Connectivity
The Australian Government could be instrumental in the area of international connectivity. Any intervention here would help to better integrate Australia as a creative content producer with the rest of the world, and better enable it to access information from overseas. Global advisers observed that Australia appeared to pay a high rate for connectivity and it would be more effective for the Government to concentrate on Australia's small number of international links than trying to supply high-speed connections to every home. The BAG should make it an explicit goal to "equalise the playing field" in terms of the cost of bandwidth between Australia and the rest of the world.
Educational Requirements
The experts working on Canada's broadband strategy felt their activities should be considered a 'failure' if they did not succeed in providing broadband connectivity to institutions such as schools. Canada had set the goal of providing a 10Mbps connection to each school to support the growth in general network traffic being generated by modern students. This had been achieved in many urban locations, with some larger schools using up to 100Mbps links, but was yet to be the case in all parts of Canada.
Even 10Mbps was low for a whole school, compared to the speeds business people enjoy on local area and corporate networks. The demands of school and tertiary students were comparable and that the most important applications for students of all kinds were email and faster Web access for research purposes. Email and access to the Web may only be a starting point for the use of Internet in education and the massive potential for other online learning should not be overlooked.
Security
Another significant area, and one in which the Government could play a role, was security. The 'always on' nature of broadband networks raised significant security concerns for individual users and organisations. Global Advisers observed that NOIE Chief Executive Mr John Rimmer had told a recent conference in Singapore that the Australian Government saw the promotion of online security as key to ensuring business confidence in broadband networking. The US had also released a national security policy paper that has some relevance for the Australian situation.
Broadband and Innovation
Innovation was seen to be a key part of the broadband debate in Canada and that the enabling of innovation was a goal shared by most countries. In the US universities had invested millions of dollars in research into advanced network applications but there was as much, if not more, value in solving many of the problems still plaguing already available applications such as videoconferencing. A key goal should be to make the current generation of technologies easier to use and more widely accessible.
Competitive Frameworks
Discussion of competitive frameworks led to questions about whether facilities-based competition remained the best approach in the broadband environment.
The adoption of broadband had tended to be strong where there was facilities-based competition in the supply of cable or DSL services. However, the growth of cable connectivity appeared to be slowing in Australia with the introduction of DSL services. .
There was no reason why fibre to the home networks have be a natural monopoly and similar arguments have been put forward for earlier network technologies. Within any competitive framework, it was important to retain contestability at the access level.
It is a decision for infrastructure providers whether to duplicate networks but there are equivalents to 'line sharing' technology that meant multiple operators could compete within one physical fibre network. The OECD recognised that in some situations it can make sense to exempt new entrants from such conditions in the interests of developing a more competitive market in the long run.
Establishing Targets
Global Advisers considered that setting concrete targets is useful and gave regulators key points of reference. A good example is the proposed 2010 phase out of analogue television in the UK because it is creating pressure and focusing the activities of regulators and industry.
The Government could set targets for broadband use in its areas such as education and health that it has some direct control over. A key goal here could be to help SMEs access the equivalent of corporate leased data lines. Global Advisers commented that the vision to be a leader in the OECD in terms of broadband uptake and effective use was a realistic and commendable goal.
The Global Advisers to the Broadband Advisory Group are:
- Jonas Birgersson, CEO, Framfab Labs, Sweden
- Andrew Bjerring, President and CEO, CANARIE Inc., Canada
- Bob Bishop, Chairman and CEO, Silicon Graphics Inc., USA
- Martin Cooper, Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder, ArrayComm, USA
- Janice Hughes, Founding Partner/Managing Director, Spectrum Strategy Consultants, UK
- Michael McRobbie, Vice President for Information Technology and CIO, Indiana University, USA
- Craig Mudge, Managing Partner, Pacific Challenge, USA
- Sam Paltridge, Communications Analyst, OECD, France