What are the alternatives to the National Broadband Network? For the February 2017 Nightlife we explore what to do if you can’t get the National Broadband Network.
Paul Wallbank joins Phillip Clark on ABC Nightlife across Australia from 10pm Australian Eastern time on Thursday, February 16 to discuss how technology affects your business and life.
Last week the NBN announced a third of the country was now covered by their services and the company’s CEO, Bill Morrow, said Australians really don’t want super fast internet. A few weeks before, Telstra announced a new service that will deliver gigabit broadband over their mobile network. We can expect their competitors to offer similar products soon.
At the same time we’re seeing a blast from the past as Nokia are rumoured to be soon releasing an updated version of their classic 3310 phone – are we going to see the ‘tradie phone’ making a comeback?
While the old phone is nice, many people need fast broadband so how is the NBN going and, if you can’t get it, what can you do? Some of the questions
So how is the NBN going?
Wasn’t the government’s revised plan going to mean the whole thing is going to be cheaper and faster than the original project?
Who can get it?
Is it as good as promised?
So what alternatives to the NBN are there?
Doing the sums on those mobile plans, using them can be a pretty expensive business?
It seems we’re going backwards. How does Australian broadband compare globally?
How is this affecting regional communities and businesses?
Join us
Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.
We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.
You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.
As Vice’s Jason Koebler describes, Chattanooga’s unemployment rate has halved since the depth of the Great Recession and in 2014 was listed as having the third highest wage growth among the United States’ mid-sized cities.
There are downsides though, Koebler warns, and one point is that having good broadband on its own isn’t a sure fire bet.
“Like the presence of well-paved roads, good internet access doesn’t guarantee that a city will be successful,” he writes. “But the lack of it guarantees that a community will get left behind as the economy increasingly demands that companies compete not just with their neighbors next door, but with the entire world.”
The advantage Chattanooga had though was its electricity company was owned by the city which meant a major part of the existing infrastructure was already in public hands and made it relatively easier and cheaper to roll out the network.
This month’s ABC Nightlife show will look at whether the smarthome is really worth the trouble
Is the smart home worth the trouble? We live in an age of connected smoke alarms, kettles and even egg trays. For this month’s ABC Nightlife we’ll ask if these devices add to our lives or just make things more complex.
Disabling the devices is a bit dramatic, why have they done that?
Do customers have any recourse?
Is this a risk with all connected devices?
What about connected cars, could they be turned off?
My computer needs updating, what about these devices?
What happens when the internet is disconnected, will my internet fridge work?
Samsung showed off a new folding phone last week. What exactly is it?
When will we see it on the market?
The Annual CommsDay conference was held last week in Sydney. Is there any good news for Aussie consumers?
Is the National Broadband Network looking any better?
How is the global telecommunications industry looking, can we expect anything exciting?
Join us
Tune in on your local ABC radio station from 10pm Australian Eastern Summer time or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.
We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.
You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702, or through twitter to @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag or visit the Nightlife Facebook page.
In India and Myanmar we may be seeing the effects of the internet on developing economies
For the developing world, broadband and mobile communications are helping
In Myanmar, the opening of the economy has meant accessible telecommunications for the nation’s farmers reports The Atlantic.
At the same time, Indian Railway’s Telecommunications arm RailTel is opening its fibre network to the public, starting with Wi-Fi at major stations.
What is notable in both cases is the role of Facebook. In India, Facebook’s project to offer free broadband access across the nation is meeting some resistance and it’s probably no coincidence Indian Railway’s WiFi project is being run as partnership with Google.
In Myanmar on the other hand, Facebook and Snapchat are the go to destination for rural communities, it will be interesting to watch how this plays out as farmers start to use the social media service for price discovery and finding new markets – as Tencent Chairman SY Lau last year claimed was happening with Chinese communities.
One of the promises of making the Internet available to the general public was that it would enable the world to become connected, thirty years later we may be seeing the results.
Building a competitive nation is more than just rolling out broadband connections
How much does broadband really matter in developing a competitive and innovative modern economy? A corporate lunch with US software company NetApp last week illustrated that there’s more to creating a successful digital society than just rolling out fibre connections.
Rich Scurfield, NetApp’s Senior Vice President responsible for the Asia-Pacific was outlining the firm’s plans for the Australian market and how it fits into the broader jigsaw puzzle of economies across the region.
Like many companies in the China market NetApp is finding it hard with Scurfield describing the market as “chaotic”. This isn’t unusual for western technology companies and Apple is one of the few to have had substantial success.
Across the rest of East Asia, Scurfield sees them ranging as being mature, stable and settled in the cases of Japan, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand through to India where the opportunities and the challenges of connecting a billion people are immense.
Digital outliers
The interesting outlier is South Korea, one of the most connected nations in the world, where the promise of ubiquitous broadband isn’t delivering the expected economic benefits to the entire community.
In theory, South Korea should be seeing a boom in connected small businesses. As Scurfield says, “from a technology providers’ view this connectivity means you could do more things very differently because of the infrastructure that’s available.”
Global Innovation Rankings
Korea’s underperformance is illustrated by last year’s Global Innovation Index that saw South Korea coming in at 16th, just ahead of both Australia and New Zealand whose broadband rollouts are nowhere near as advanced as the ROK’s.
Making a close comparison of Australia and the Republic of Korea’s strengths in the WIPO innovation index, it’s clear the technology and engineering aspects are just part of a far more complex set of factors such as confidence in institutions, the ease of doing business and even freedom of the press.
Putting those factors together makes a country far more likely to encourage its population to start new innovative businesses that can compete globally. When you have a small group of chaebol dominating the private sector then it’s much harder for new entrants to enter the market – interestingly a private sector dominated by big conglomerates is a problem Australia shares.
Small business laggards
NetApp’s Scurfield flagged exactly this problem, “Korea is an interesting market in there’s about six companies that matter and from a competitive view those companies are extremely advanced, they have great technology and great people.”
“However what’s not happening across the rest of the country is this adoption isn’t bleeding into the broader community,” said Scurfield “Because of that I don’t see broadband connectivity as having a wide impact.”
That Korean small and medium businesses aren’t using broadband technologies to develop innovative new products and service in one of the most connected economies on earth raises a question about just how effective investment in infrastructure is when it’s faced with cultural barriers.
Certainly we should be keeping in mind that economic development, global competitiveness and the creation of industry hubs is as much a matter of people, national institutions and culture as it is of technology.
We shouldn’t lose sight of the importance of our people and institutions when evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a nation in today’s connected world.
Is big business getting all the benefits of high speed broadband?
One of the mantras of the digital economy is new technologies, such as the web and cloud computing, level the playing field for small businesses competing against large corporations. Could it be that belief is wrong?
One of the key metrics the ACBI used was business use of websites, it’s shocking enough that only 70% of Australian corporations have an online presence but less than half of small businesses being on the web is disgraceful.
An interesting quirk in the above table indicates that there’s quite a few microbusiness using online sales services and one wonders if the question being asked by the Australian Bureau of Statistics is too limiting in its definition of websites.
The ABS defines businesses with a web presence as those with a website, home page or other web presence but excludes those listed solely as part of an online listing. A web presence was reported by 45% of Australian businesses as at 30 June 2012.
With this definition excluding social media and listing services, it probably does understate the number of Microbusinesses that have an online presence but not a website as defined by the ABS.
The relevance of broadband
In the context of broadband it’s worth noting that websites and online commerce don’t need high speed internet connections, so it’s hard to conclude that giving these businesses faster access is going to make a difference to the way they work.
Where high speed broadband and ubiquitous internet really make a difference is in business operations. As workers become more mobile and the internet of things rolls out, having access to reliable connections is going to become critical to most organisations. Again though, small business tracks poorly on this measure.
Overall the use of cloud services – which is what the bulk of these “new operational processes” will be – is pretty poor across the board although one suspects in the larger organisations various groups have changed their business practiced around services like Dropbox and Documents To Go without senior management being aware of it.
What’s particularly disappointing about this statistic is small businesses are the group most suited to using cloud services and those not adopting these technologies are missing a competitive advantage.
So who needs broadband internet?
These results beg the question – does small business really need high speed broadband access? If they aren’t doing things that could be done on a dial up modem, like registering domains or setting up websites, it’s hard justifying the investment of connecting SMBs to fibre networks.
While there’s no doubt high speed internet is essential to the economic future of communities and nations, we have to keep in mind that not all groups will take advantage of the new technologies. Some will be left behind and in Australia’s case, it may well be small business.
With a change of government, Australia’s troubled National Broadband Network is facing big changes
The National Broadband Network has always been a hot political issue in Australian politics and with the election of the new Federal government the often delayed project is being reviewed.
We’ll also be looking at some other topics such a Google’s new advertising plan and how to drop out of it.
We’d love to hear your views so join the conversation with your on-air questions, ideas or comments; phone in on the night on 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia. If you’re outside the broadcasting area, you can stream the program through the ABC website.
Broadband internet can only drive economic growth if society and business can embrace change
The assertion that internet connectivity drives economic growth is largely taken for granted although getting the maximum benefit from a broadband network investment may require more than stringing fibre cables or building wireless base stations.
While the reports authors aren’t wholly convinced of the direct links between economic growth and broadband penetration, they do see a clear correlation between the two factors.
ITU Impact of broadband on the economy report 2012
One of the areas that disturbed the ITU report editors were the business, government and cultural attitudes towards innovation.
The economic impact of broadband is higher when promotion of the technology is combined with stimulus of innovative businesses that are tied to new applications. In other words, the impact of broadband is neither automatic nor homogeneous across the economic system.
For South Korea, internet innovation is a problem as the New York Times reports. Restrictions on mapping technologies, curfews on school age children and the requirement for all South Koreans to use their real names on the net are all cited as factors in stifling local innovation.
In reading the New York Times article, it’s hard not to suspect the South Korean government is engaging in some digital protectionism, which is ironic seeing the benefits the country has reaped from globalised manufacturing over the last thirty years.
The problem for South Korea is that rolling out high speed broadband networks are of little use if local laws, culture or business practices impede adoption of the services. It’s as if the US or Germany built their high speed roads but insisted that cars have a flag waver walking in front of them.
Indeed it may well be that South Korea’s broadband networks are as useful to economic growth as Pyongyang’s broad boulevards just over the border.
Similar problems face other countries with Google’s high speed broadband network in the US so far not attracting the expected business take up and innovation, although it is early days yet and there are some encouraging signs among the Kansas City startup community.
Like Japan’s bridges to nowhere, big infrastructure projects look good but the poorly planned ones – particularly those no-one knows how to use – are a spectacular waste of money.
Hopefully the fibre networks being rolled out won’t be a waste of money, but unless industries start using the web properly then much of the investment will be wasted.
What does the internet of everything mean for businesses? Cisco’s Ken Boal explains.
As part of the Decoding the New Economy video series, I had the opportunity of interviewing Ken Boal, the head of Cisco Australia and New Zealand, about the Internet of Everything and how it will change business.
“The internet of everything is about things, it’s about people, process and it’s about data,” says Ken. “Compounding together to create new capabilities and drive opportunities for nations, enterprises, government and right down to consumers.”
“It’s a huge transition in the internet’s evolution.”
Reducing the road toll
A previous Cisco presentation looked at some of the ways the internet of everything can reduce road deaths, Ken sees this both private and public sector benefits of the connected economy flowing to consumers and the community.
“When you think about things like traffic congestion, health care and how education is delivered we know there’s huge opportunities for greater efficiency,” says Ken.
“Just on road safety, when we’ve got all the vehicles and trucks connected, when the traffic lights and traffic control systems are all connected,” suggests Ken, “then consumers are going be better informed about what is the most efficient route to work.”
“Cars will be communicating with each other to reduce fatalities and collisions in the future as well.”
Bringing together industrial, consumer and public safety technologies creates a grid of connected devices, including cars, that improve public safety while making industries more efficient.
Of course these connected services come with risks to privacy, particularly when multiple points of data can triangulated despite each individual item being anonymous on their own.
What Ken finds is particularly important is the current value of these technologies with Cisco predicting $1.4 billion in productivity gains through the internet of everything this year, half of which are available for businesses.
A warning for Australia
For Australia, the concern is that business and the economy in general is falling behind, Cisco’s recent Internet of Everything Value Index rated Australia among the BRIC countries in adopting the new technologies.
“We’ve always counted Aussies as fairly innovative and leading edge,” says Ken. “Australia is ranked tenth out of the twelve largest economies in the adoption of internet of everything capablities.”
The countries leading – such as Japan, Germany and the United States – have had a solid record of investing in technology, “in Australia, we’ve had that in the past but we’ve lost our mojo.” Ken says, “IT has been viewed more as a problem – a cost to business – rather than a provider of productivity for the long term.”
How business can adapt
For businesses, the question is how can they take advantage of the internet of everything? “You don’t have to start from scratch,” says Ken. “There are a whole heap of use cases for every vertical.”
“Start to drive some innovation. Think about your business processes at the front end where you touch your customers, look at your supply chains and your back office arrangements driving workforce productivity and how fast can you deliver new innovations to the market.”
“Internet of everything themes can address a whole host of these different processes in different parts of your business.”
The minister’s office replies to my NBN criticisms and illustrates how the broadband story isn’t being told
Further to yesterday’s post about NBNCo’s inability to tell a story, I received a polite message from the long suffering staff at the Minister’s office that pointed me to some of the resources that NBNCo and the Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital economy have posted.
All of these case studies are nice, but they illustrate the problem – they’re nice, standard government issue media releases. The original CNet story that triggered yesterday’s story tells real stories that are more than just sanitised government PR.
It also begs the question of where the hell are all these people successfully using the NBN when I ask around about them?
The really irritating thing with stories like yesterday’s SMH piece is that it’s intended to promote the Digital Rural Futures Conference on the future of farming being held by the University of New England.
Now this is something I’d would have gone to had I known about it and I’d have paid my own fares and accommodation. Yet the first I know about this conference is an article on a Saturday four days out from the event. That’s not what you’d call good PR.
The poor public relations strategies of the Digital Rural Futures Conference is a symptom of the National Broadband’s Network’s proponents’ inability to get their message out the wider public.
When we look back at the debacle that was the debate about Australia’s role in the 21st Century, it’s hard not to think the failure to articulate the importance of modernising the nation’s communications systems will be one of the key studies in how we blew it.
Despite the best efforts of a few switched on people in Senator Conroy’s office, a lot more effort is needed to make the case for a national broadband and national investment in today’s technologies which are going to define the future.
Why Australia’s National Broadband Network gets bad press
One of the baffling things in reporting the Australian tech and business scene is how the National Broadband Network project manages to get such bad press.
Marguerite Reardon’s story for CNet is terrific – it covers the tech and looks at the human angles with some great anecdotes about some of the individuals using Google Fiber to build Kansas City’s startup community.
This is the story that should have been written in Australia about the National Broadband Network.
I’ve tried.
Failing to tell the story
Earlier this year I travelled to Tasmania to speak to the businesses using the NBN and came back empty handed.
In Melbourne, I finally made it to the Hungry Birds Cafe – vaunted by the government as the first cafe connected to the NBN – to find they do a delicious bacon roll and offer fast WiFi to customers but the owners don’t have a website and do nothing on the net that they couldn’t do with a 56k modem.
I’ve found the same thing when I’ve tried to find businesses connected to the NBN – nil, nothing, nada, nyet. The closest story you’ll find to Cnet’s article are a handful of lame-arsed stories like this Seven Sunrise segment which talks about families sending videos to each other, something which strengthens the critic’s arguments that high speed broadband is just a toy.
Businesses need not apply
This failure to articulate the real business benefits of high speed broadband after four years of rolling out the project is a symptom of a project that has gone off the rails.
It’s not surprising that businesses aren’t connecting to the new network as NBNCo and its resellers have continued the grand Australian tradition of ripping off small businesses. Fellow tech blogger Renai LeMay has quite rightly lambasted the overpriced business fibre broadband plans.
Even when small business want to connect, they find it’s difficult to do. The Public House blog describes how a country pub was told the cost of a business NBN account be so high, the sales consultant would be embarrassed to reveal the price.
“The cost for exactly the same connection (and exactly the same useage) is so much higher for a business that you wouldn’t be interested.”
The whole point of the National Broadband Network is to modernise Australia’s telecommunications infrastructure and give regional areas the same opportunities as well connected inner city suburbs.
Failing objectives
If businesses can’t connect, or find it too expensive, then the project is failing those objectives. So it’s no surprise that NBNCo’s communications team can’t tell a story like Kansas City’s because there are no stories to tell.
Apologists for the poor performance of NBNCo say it’s a huge project and we’re only in the early stages. In fact we’re now four years into a ten year project and we still aren’t hearing stories like those from Kansas City.
Telling the story should be the easy part for those charged with building the National Broadband Network, that they fail in this should mean it’s no surprise they are struggling with the really hard work of building the thing.
How the V8 Supercar races use the internet and networks shows why businesses need reliable communications and the way organisations are using cloud computing.
How the V8 Supercar races use the internet and networks shows why businesses need reliable communications and the way organisations are using cloud computing.
My relationship with sports cars is similar to horses – I have a vague idea of which end water goes in and where not to stand.
So Microsoft’s invite to the Launceston V8 Supercars to showcase their Office 365 cloud service as the race’s official sponsor wasn’t expected but it was a good opportunity to see how a sports organisation uses modern technology.
Riding the cloud
At the opening media conference V8 Supercars CEO David Malone and Finance Director Peter Trimble described the IT problems the organisation had in the early days.
To properly meet their needs V8 Supercars would have needed a bank of servers, cumbersome remote access software and a full time team of several IT staff for their scattered workforce and constantly changing locations.
With cloud services, they eliminated many IT costs while simplifying their systems.
That staff can now access documents regardless of location is a very good case study of where the cloud works well and understandable that Microsoft wanted to show off what their services can do.
Networking the cars
When challenged about the point of car racing, enthusiasts cite how the sport is a test bed for the motor industry.
The motor industry is one sector leading the internet of machines with one car manufacturing executive recently describing the modern motor vehicle as being a “computer platforms” on wheels.
Pit crews monitoring in car systems
Eventually we’ll see our cars connected to the net and reporting everything from the engine’s servicing needs to the driver’s musical tastes.
That’s reality in today’s high performance racing, both the drivers and the cars are in constant contact with the crews as sensors report everything from engine performance to the foot pressure the driver is putting on the accelerator pedal.
As continuous data feeds from the cars is essential to the teams the event has its own trackside network with receivers located along the course that are used for both vehicle telemetry and the video feeds from both car mounted and fixed cameras.
Owning the rights
In what’s becoming the future of sports broadcasting, the V8 Supercars organisers run their own camera crews and provide the feed to their broadcast partners and media outlets.
This allows them to control all the rights across TV, cable and online channels.
Having full control of the pictures also gives the V8 Supercars more revenue through signage and sponsorship by guaranteeing advertising placements which wouldn’t be available if they didn’t manage the feed.
Connectivity matters
Spaghetti Junction as the various feeds come together
Getting the images out to the media and broadcast partners along with delivering the in car data to the racing teams is major challenge for organisers. The communications centres resemble a giant bowl of cable spaghetti as various groups plug into the network.
It’s no coincidence that part of the deals the V8 Supercar management strike with track owners and governments includes providing fiber and microwave links to the venue.
That single factor illustrates how vital communications links are to a modern sporting event.
Another important factor is that everything will be packed up and taken away. Following Launceston, the entire show is packed up and moved onto Auckland, New Zealand. This in itself is a major logistic challenge which would fail without good connectivity and reliable systems.
the fleet of trucks ready to move on
It’s easy to dismiss the V8 Supercars as a bunch of testosterone driven rev-heads, but the challenges in staging these complex events fifteen times a year shouldn’t be underestimated.
We also shouldn’t underestimate how important communication links are to any business. It’s why debates about the need for high speed internet services are last century’s discussion.
