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Recommendations

Vision (Section 3)

  1. Australia should adopt the following national vision for broadband:

'Australia will be a world leader in the availability and effective use of broadband, to deliver enhanced outcomes in health, education, commerce and government and to capture the economic and social benefits of broadband connectivity.'

Goals (Section 3)

  1. Australia should adopt the following national goals for broadband:
  1. Broadband should be available to all Australians at fair and reasonable prices;
  2. Market arrangements should be pro-competitive and encourage investment in infrastructure, services, applications and content, and should advance the long term interests of end users.

National Strategy and Implementation (Section 3)

  1. The Government should adopt a National Broadband Strategy, in cooperation with all levels of government and industry stakeholders, based on the vision, goals, objectives and principles outlined in Section 3 of this report.
  2. The Government should establish a National Broadband Strategy Implementation Group to oversee implementation of the actions in the national strategy and to review and evaluate its progress. The Group would also:
  1. In cooperation with all levels of government and industry stakeholders, develop a national broadband infrastructure planning framework to identify ways in which individual broadband infrastructure elements can be aggregated to form a national broadband network.
  2. Coordinate the activities between the public and private sectors to accelerate the deployment and take-up of broadband applications and services.

Strategic Investment (Section 4)

  1. The Government should identify areas that are unlikely to receive services on a commercial basis at fair and reasonable prices within an acceptable timeframe.
  2. The Government should consider initiatives, investment incentives and public-private partnerships to develop services that may not be commercially viable, but which could potentially deliver significant economic, security and social benefits. These should be predominantly but not exclusively focused on rural and regional Australia and should take into account the outcomes of the process in Recommendation 5.

Strategic Coordination (Section 5)

Demand Aggregation (Section 5)

  1. All tiers of government should cooperate to develop demand aggregation strategies to stimulate broadband investment and provision of services in key sectors, such as health and education and also in regional areas. Demand brokers could be used to assist rural and regional communities and sectors to develop broadband services.

Education (Section 5)

  1. All schools and educational institutions should be connected to broadband internet services to facilitate research, support interactive learning and provide access to innovative and varied curriculum content.
  2. The Government, in cooperation with state and territory governments, education stakeholders and cultural and media institutions, should implement initiatives to ensure high-quality email and web browsing services in schools and educational institutions. This should include development of a nationwide intranet for content and curriculum interaction among schools, training and key cultural institutions.

Research (Section 5)

  1. The Government should give priority to establishing an Australian Research and Education Network which meets the domestic bandwidth needs of higher end research in universities, in keeping with the proposals in the report of the Higher Education Bandwidth Advisory Committee A Framework for an Australian Research and Education Network.
  2. The Government should give priority to ensuring that Australia can participate effectively in collaborative global research and learning networks.

Health (Section 5)

  1. The Government, in cooperation with state and territory governments and industry stakeholders, should develop an implementation plan for connectivity infrastructure to achieve improved health outcomes and efficiency of the health system through eHealth initiatives such as teleradiology, telehealth applications and electronic patient health records.

SMEs (Section5)

  1. The Government, in cooperation with industry stakeholders and state and territory governments, should ensure the availability of independent data and statistics on SME broadband take-up trends, intentions and influences.
  2. The Government should encourage increased take-up of broadband by SMEs to deliver improved economic growth and employment levels. The Government should also encourage industry associations to develop industry-based or regionally-based broadband business case workshops for SMEs.

Information Economy Environment (Section 5)

  1. The Government should implement initiatives to develop a culture of security and authentication to encourage market confidence in broadband applications. The BAG supports the Government's recently announced initiatives designed to protect Australia's critical infrastructure.

Strategies to promote broadband content, applications and awareness (Section 6)

Content

  1. The Government should give high priority to stimulating the digital content industries in Australia through:
  1. supporting research and development in the application and design of interactive broadband technologies and content
  2. working with industry stakeholders to develop an effective digital rights management regime
  3. ensuring that the Federal Government's Intellectual Property (IP) policies are not acting as a barrier to the development of digital content industries. This may include encouraging a more flexible approach for Government agencies in dealing with Crown copyright
  4. improving access to international distribution channels for the output of Australia's digital content industries.

Encouraging Take-up

  1. The Government, in cooperation with state and territory governments and industry stakeholders, should develop and provide detailed information to key sectors about the benefits of broadband applications, such as educational opportunities, improved health care, business process improvement, productivity gains and better government services.

Flexible regulatory regime and policy setting (section 7)

  1. The Government should:
  1. commit to refine the regulatory regime as required to ensure that it continues to advance the 'long term interests of end users' and to promote facilities and services based competition
  2. require the ACCC to monitor and report on progress in ensuring an open, competitive and interoperable broadband market
  3. request the ACCC to investigate and report on industry concerns regarding domestic internet peering arrangements and provide the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts with recommendations on how this matter may be appropriately addressed.

Measurement, monitoring and evaluation (section 8)

  1. The Government should monitor and evaluate the implementation of the national strategy to ensure effective outcomes. This should include measurement of Australia's international position in relation to the availability and effective use of broadband in key sectors. The Government should also encourage the OECD to introduce mechanisms that measure the effective use of broadband and not merely take-up.
 
Document ID: 18492 | Last modified: 6 February 2008, 10:31am