Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: broadband

  • Overselling technology

    Overselling technology

    “We’d like to allow remote band members – say a violinist in the Australian outback – be able to participate in an orchestra as if they were there. We hope the NBN will be able to do this.”

    When the band organiser said this at a business roundtable all the technologists, myself included, choked.

    There are many things the Australian National Broadband Network will deliver but the ability to teleport a violinist from the outback to downtown Sydney or Melbourne isn’t one of them.

    One of the problems with technology is we tend to oversell the immediate effects; as Bill Gates famously said “The impact of all new technologies is overestimated in the short term but under estimated in the long term.”

    Because we tend to sell the immediate sizzle, customers are disappointed when our promises don’t eventuate. In the decade it takes to win them back, those initial benefits we didn’t deliver in six months have become commonplace.

    This is probably one of the reasons why businesses are reluctant to invest in new technology or online services; they’ve heard the promises before and they don’t trust what they can hear.

    In the late 1990s businesses spent tens of thousands – sometimes millions – establishing websites that didn’t work. Those financial scars still hurt when they hear talk, some of them are still paying off those sites. So it’s barely surprising they are reluctant to return to a sector that has now matured.

    Perhaps it’s best to underpromise; instead of cloud computer vendors committing themselves to 80% savings and social media experts promising millions of customers from their new viral video, it may be better to be more realistic with the expectations.

    Customers have become deaf to wonderful promises, they are expecting us to deliver. Promising the world is no longer a business strategy.

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  • The need for speed

    The need for speed

    I’m at the Kickstart Forum for IT journalists on the Gold Coast this weekend talking to various companies and technology thought leaders on the direction of the industry.

    For the forum’s opening keynote, opposition spokesperson and former Optus telecommunications executive Paul Fletcher described his concerns about the Australian government’s National Broadband Network.

    Many of Paul’s objections to the project are based on the failure of former attempts to build telecommunications networks – citing Aussat, the NextGen fibre network, OneTel and international disappointments like WorldCom and Global Crossing.

    The other main concern is that no-one will use it. He cites a Parliamentary committee that where eHealth providers said their service could be adequately provided by a 512Kbit connection, a tiny fraction of the 100Mbit speed promised by the NBN.

    Previous failures aren’t a good indicator of the success or otherwise of the NBN, but what’s more important is what a poor job industry’s doing in explaining how high speed Internet can help their businesses.

    The big challenge for NBN advocates who believe this project is the essential infrastructure of the 21st Century, is to articulate the benefits and potential. We’re not doing a very good job at the moment.

    What’s your view on how high speed Internet can help your business or community?

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  • Business is fine

    Business is fine

    “I don’t need high speed broadband,” snarls the businessman in a country town, “business is fine as it is.”

    A hundred years ago this year the iconic Australian horse coach company Cobb & Co went into its first bankruptcy as it declined from being the dominant transport service of rural Australia.

    Cobb & Co was founded in 1854 by four young Americans in the Victorian gold rush and grew around the expansion of Australia’s rural farming and mining industries. By 1900 the company had 9,000 horses travelling 31,000km (20,000 miles) every week.

    By 1924 Cobb & Co was gone. Displaced by the motor car and restrictive state government rules designed to protect their railways.

    Many businesses, including the management of Cobb & Co, thought the motor car was a fad. No doubt many at the time also thought electricity was dangerous and unnecessary.

    Business worked fine as it was when stagecoaches carried the mail and bullock carts carted the crops, steam engines were fine to power the farms and businesses while the telegraph was just fine for those times when a three month letter to your customers or creditors in London or New York wasn’t quick enough.

    All those businesses went broke. They didn’t go broke fast, it was a slow process until one day owners realised it was all over and then the end came surprisingly quickly.

    That’s where many of us our today – cloud computing might be the latest buzzword, social media might be a distraction for coffee addled children of the TV generation and the global market might be just a way to dump cheap goods and services on gullible consumers – but markets and societies are changing, just as they did a hundred years ago.

    Sure, your business doesn’t need fast Internet. Business is fine.

    Stage coach image courtesy of Velda Christensen at http://www.novapages.com/

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  • The case for faster internet

    The case for faster internet

    The National Broadband Network (NBN) is a project designed to deliver faster and more reliable broadband to Australia’s regions. While a good idea, it’s not without its critics and a fair degree of controversy.

    One of the problems the project has is the inability of NBNCo, the company established to build and run the network, to articulate the benefits and scope of the project.

    Last Friday night “John from Condobolin” grilled the Gadget Guy, Peter Blasina, about the project. John’s questions, and Pete’s answers, which can be found at 35 minutes into his program, illustrates the confusion the surrounds NBN and the failure of the project’s supporters to explain the benefits.

    So how should proponents of the National Broadband Network – people like me who believe that high speed broadband are the freeways and railways of the 21st Century – respond to questions. Let’s answer John’s questions from last Friday.

    Lightning might affect fibre networks

    John’s first question was about lightning affecting the NBN, commenting when Pete confirmed electrical storms would affect the network that “it’s no better than the existing service.”

    Sadly all infrastructure is affected by weather – a freeway is just as affected by fog as a dirt road, perhaps even more so, but it doesn’t mean you don’t build a highway because of that. The same applies for the NBN.

    Interestingly the wireless and satellite alternatives proposed to fibre optic cable are even more susceptible to electrical storms, which perversely makes a better argument for running a fibre optic network.

    I don’t need any NBN

    “I have got quite good reception in Condobolin and I don’t need any NBN, I can assure you” was John’s next big statement.

    That’s nice for John that he’s happy with what he has – the rest of us should be so lucky.

    For many of his neighbours and those in the surrounding district, particularly those dealing with remote suppliers and overseas markets, reliable and fast communications are essential.

    Now is good enough

    A farmer doesn’t need broadband for selling into America, he’s able to do that today, was the crux of John’s next comment after he and Pete had an exchange about rolling broadband out to remote locations.

    It’s true that farmers can do a lot with today’s satellite and ADSL connections, then again they were able to ship exports in the days of bullock carts and sailing ships. We could extend that argument against railway lines, roads, containers and bulk carriers.

    Once upon a time some guy argued against the wheel. Today’s technology has been good enough has always been the argument of those who don’t see the benefits of new tools; we’re talking about tomorrow’s markets and society, not today’s.

    Broadband is all about fibre

    “You’re talking about satellite dishes and things like that, not NBN.”

    The National Broadband Network isn’t just about fibre; fibre optic cables makes up the network’s core and bulk of connections, but wireless and satellite are essential in order to make sure the entire nation has access to the network.

    Unfortunately the nonsense argument that technology improvements in wireless will render fibre optics redundant has been allowed to take hold by self-interested politicians and sections of the media pushing a narrow agenda.

    Wireless, satellite, fibre optic and other cable technologies are all part of the mix, the real argument is on the proportions of that combination and the consequences to the government’s budget.

    Spotting the clueless

    As an aside, the cable versus wireless argument is a good yardstick for measuring the knowledge of anyone joining the NBN debate.

    Someone clueless arguing against the project says investment in fibre optic cable is unnecessary as it’s speed and data capacities will be one day superseded by those of Wireless networks.

    This betrays a failure to grasp the inherent advantage of having a dedicated cable connection to your property as opposed to sharing a wireless base station with hundreds, if not thousands, of others.

    Equally anyone pro-NBN who says that fibre is faster because it travels at the speed of light is equally clueless as wireless, copper wire and even smoke signals also travel at – or close to – the speed of light.

    Games and videos

    “Is this only to watch videos and DVDs?” was John’s last question.

    Well, does Condobolin have a video store? A quick Google search shows it does, along with local and satellite TV stations. So the residents of Condobolin are just keen as the rest of us to watch the tube.

    Increasingly our viewing habits are moving online and fast broadband is necessary to deliver that. John may be happy to exclude his town from being able to do that, but my guess is plenty of his neighbours would like to have that option.

    What’s more, many of those farmers, processors, trucking companies and other service providers in the Condobolin region will need those video facilities for tele-conferencing with suppliers, customers and training companies.

    Building for the future

    Video conferencing isn’t the only application for what we consider today to be high speed networks, these are going to change society and business in the same way the motor car changed us in the 20th Century and railways and telegraph in the 19th.

    Australia made a mess of the railways and the roads, in both areas we’re still playing catch up. The National Broadband Network is an opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the last hundred years and get the 21st Century right.

    Unfortunately, the objectives of building a better nation are being lost in a fog of disinformation, political opportunism and corporate incompetence. We can do better than this.

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  • Digital art is more than iPod wielding basket weavers

    Digital art is more than iPod wielding basket weavers

    This is a transcript of the digital arts opening keynote for the Digital Culture Public Sphere conference discussing the Australian government’s cultural strategy.

    Thank you Senator Lundy. A little bit more about me, as well as being a writer and broadcaster on change I spent 18 months with the NSW Department of Trade & Investment setting up the Digital Sydney project.

    Digital Sydneyis a program designed to raise the profile of Sydney as an international centre of the digital media industry.

    One of the problems with Digital Sydney was that it was very inner Sydney centric and this is a perennial question we face as to where does Australian culture, and art, spring from? The first idea I’d like to throw to the room is that ‘digital’ frees us from many narrow geographic boundaries.

    When we add the term ‘digital’ we hit another problem, that almost every aspect of our lives – be it in art, business or our personal lives – is being affected in some way by the Internet and digitalisation. In reality all art is becoming ‘digital’ in one way or another.

    As broadband becomes more pervasive, particularly as the National Broadband Network is rolled out, we’ll see art and the creative industries become even more digitised.

    In many ways we are today at the point in history not too dissimilar to that our great grandparents found themselves a hundred years ago. In 1911, our forebears couldn’t imagine the massive changes the century ahead would bring and we’re in a similar position in the first decades of the digital century.

    The first half of the Twentieth Century saw radio start a cultural shift which was accelerated in the second half as television radically changed and redefined our culture. Today the Internet is doing exactly the same in ways none of us quite understand.

    Given the massive disruption and technical advances we’re going through we need to be cautious about being too prescriptive as we can’t foresee many of the new technologies that will become normal to us over the next decade.

    This provides a challenge for government agencies supporting the arts as the established gatekeepers such as galleries, production studios and regional organisations become less relevant as the means of distribution evolve and become easier to access.

    We’re already seeing the traditional model of government support to big producers; be they factories, movie producers or games studios suffering as economic adjustment undermines many of their business model. The old economic development models are becoming irrelevant as history overtakes them.

    It may well be that the role of governments over the next decade is to create a framework that allows new mediums, creation tools and distribution channels to develop.

    One area we should be careful of when looking at the digital future of the arts is not to follow the UK’s Digital Economy Act where the protection of existing rights holders took precedence over the creative process.

    It is important that governments create legislative frameworks that balance the rights of all stakeholders, consumers and new content creators with the objective of encouraging new works and innovations to evolve.

    In an Australian context we need to acknowledge and develop our diverse population and the opportunities this presents. Our indigenous and immigrant communities with their artistic and cultural traditions give our national economy advantages that many other countries lack, this is one thing I regret I wasn’t able to push more in my role with the NSW government.

    Education is another critical area, this isn’t just in the arts but right across Australian society and industry as new entrants into the workplace are expected to spring forth with the skills making them as productive as experienced workers, this is clearly a flawed idea, particularly when many of the tools business expects students to be skilled in weren’t invented when the students started their studies.

    Over the next decade we’ll also have to confront one of the great Twentieth Century conceits; that artists are a separate breed from scientists, Engineers and business people.

    Prior to the beginning of the last Century it was accepted a tradesman or inventor could also be an artist and this damaging idea of silos between creative and so called ‘real’ industries, suited only to a brief period of our mass industrial development, will have to forgotten. This will be a challenge to our governments, educators and training providers.

    The digital arts are not about iPad wielding basket weavers, they about giving today’s workforce the creative tools and flexible, imaginative thinking to meet the challenges our mature, high cost workforce faces in a world where the economic rules are changing as fast as our technology.

    We have a great opportunity at events like today to determine how we as a nation will benefit from the next decade’s new technologies that will change our arts communities and society in general.

    The great challenge to policy makers will be dealing with the rapidly changing and evolving world that the digital economy has bought in the arts, in business and in society in general.

    Today I’m sure we can bring together ideas on how we, and our governments, can meet these challenges.

    Thank you very much Senator Lundy, Minister Crean and Pia Waugh for giving the community an opportunity to contribute to the development of this valuable policy.

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