Tag: nbn

The need for speed

What do we need fast Internet for anyway?

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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ABC Nightlife: Explaining the National Broadband Network

What does the NBN mean for Australian households and businesses?

For the February 2012 Nightlife technology spot Tony and Paul looked at Australia’s National Broadband Network, exploring the pros and cons of the project designed to connect all Australians to high speed broadband.

So what is the NBN and what does it do? Here’s some of the points we discussed along with some of the answers to listeners’ questions.

What is the NBN?

The National Broadband Network is intended replace the existing copper wire telephone network that was rolled out across the nation over the Twentieth century.

Eventually the network will provide fast data access across the country replacing the older network that was designed for telephone calls rather than computer communications.

Most of the country will be connected to fibre optic cables and areas where this is too expensive then wireless or satellite services will be used.

Why do we need a government run national network?

The NBN is the culmination of three decades of bad policy out of Canberra. We should remember that the Howard government struggled with how to provide high speed broadband access to the bush.

For coalition things became particularly bad once they privatised Telstra and no longer had any power over the company’s policies.

We’ve had a mix of ideological beliefs and rubbery figures from both sides of politics which have left Australia in the situation where the core telecoms network has had to be re-nationalised.

What are these different ways of connecting up?

The biggest part of the network will be fibre optic cable where the connection will run along the street like the existing telephone wires and will connect to a box outside your home or office.

This box – know as an NTD (Network Terminating Device) is then connected into either the existing household telephone system or into a computer network.

In areas receiving wireless and satellite subscribers will get dishes or receivers that plug into their existing home telephone or computer network.

There are different types of wireless

The different types of wireless networks cause confusion. The NBN is going to use 4G or LTE telephone wireless, which is what Telstra have started to roll out and Optus will be starting in the Hunter Valley around Easter 2012.

Most of us are using 3G networks on our phones which is what the bulk of the mobile phone networks are.

Another type of wireless is the Wireless Local Area Network. These are what we connect our home or office computers to. These plug into the existing services like the existing ADSL internet connections or the NBN’s fibre network.

We shouldn’t confuse Wireless LANs with the mobile phone technologies being used by the NBN or phone companies.

Who is running the NBN?

The organisation set up to build the NBN is NBNCo. They are setting the standards, negotiating access to existing infrastructure and building the network. Their head office is in North Sydney but major operations are also based in Melbourne.

In turn they are hiring contractors around the country to build the network, run the cables and connect buildings to the new services. Most of us will deal with those contractors and the companies selling NBNCo’s services.

How is National Broadband Network going to work?

We won’t talk to NBNCo directly, instead companies like Telstra, Optus, Vodafone and iiNet will buy services from them and then onsell them to us.

Telstra are playing an interesting game on competing. They are already offering 4G services in regional areas where NBNCo hasn’t announced rollouts and they are planning to upgrade their cable TV network to the DOCSIS 3.0 standard that can sometimes deliver speeds similar to the NBNs proposed service.

What happens if you don’t let them connect you

If you don’t let NBNCo’s contractors connect you to the new network then you’ll have a problem a year or so later.

The copper telephone network is going to be turned off in areas where fibre optic cables are installed so if you aren’t connected to the new system, you won’t have access.

Anyone who’s done some building or landscaping work knows it isn’t cheap and that’s what building owners who don’t allow access will have to pay for access later.

In Tasmania a few property owners who were just outside the NBN area asked about getting connected up and apparently the costs were prohibitive.

One of the things to watch out for is uncooperative building managers preventing NBN contractors from accessing their premises leaving all the residents disconnected when the phone network is turned off.

Will it really cost $14,000 to wire up your house?

No but there will be a cost to connect the building’s existing phone lines and power supply to the NBN’s Network Terminal Device (NTD) that will be bolted to the outside of the building.

The NTDs are designed to plug into existing phone systems and data networks so it shouldn’t be necessary to spend a fortune on connections or upgrades.

One area where there might be problems is in buildings that have substandard wiring. Licensed electricians and cablers will refuse to work on systems that don’t comply with standards so building owners may find they are faced with big bills to bring their systems up to standard.

Does the system work if the power goes out?

Yes, the basic cabling doesn’t need power, although the repeaters and local exchanges will – just like the phone network. Where the system does need power is at the NTDs which will come with a battery providing two to three hours power.

If the NBN gets hit by lightning, does it stop working?

Lightning is an incredibly powerful force. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about telephones, power or fibre optic networks – anything that is hit by lightning is going to be damaged.

We should keep in mind that the wireless alternative to fibre is more prone to lightening strikes as base stations are at high points.

Electrical storms, and other natural forces, are a fact of life that we have to work around. The existing systems are just as prone to interruptions.

Is it running behind schedule?

Yes, as of the beginning of 2012 the project seems to be about six months behind. With only 4,000 connections at the end of last year instead of the 30,000 expected by the middle of last year.

NBNCo are putting this down to delays in finalising negotiations with Telstra and other existing fibre providers.

How much is it really going to cost?

There’s still the $43 billion dollar number on the table, which comes from a KPMG study in 2010 although the government claims their investment is going to $27 billion.

Of that 27 billion, the government expects to recoup it by 2034 based on a 7% return.

In contrast the opposition are claiming the real cost is $50 billion as they are including the cost of buying Telstra’s infrastructure back.

The real number is anyone’s guess. The track record of both political parties and Canberra’s bureaucrats on estimating costs on projects like this is less than impressive.

Is it really worth the money?

We should keep in mind a lot of this money was going to be spent by Telstra or the other providers anyway over the next two decades as the copper telephone reached the end of its life.

The risk was we would see something like the cable TV rollout where the big players fought over the most lucrative parts of the country and ignored the rest. The NBN avoids that.

There are real concerns though as the NBN is running behind schedule, the procurement processes – particularly the construction contracts – appear to have been poorly handled and there has been little discussion about the technology options.

Overall though, this is an opportunity to get the 21st Century infrastructure right. Where Australia failed with the roads in the 20th Century and the trains in the 19th, we can get this one right.

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Digital art is more than iPod wielding basket weavers

What is the future for the arts in the digital economy?

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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How broadband won the Australian election

building a new communications network was the difference between the two parties

In a dour and negative Australian election campaign, the National Broadband Network was the one issue separated the look alike policies of the two major parties. In the end, it decided the election.

Privately developed communications networks are rare in the nation’s history for a combination of factors including Australia’s population distribution and commercial appetites for investment risk.

Australian governments have always been critical to the development of regional communications, from the establishment of state operated railway networks, through the post office owned telegraph and telephone networks and eventually the road system.

So the National Broadband Network is typical of Australian communications development where the government provides the infrastructure framework and the private sector grows around it.

There’s no doubt regional communities understood the importance of being connected to the global economy, successive Federal governments have struggled with a patchwork of government programs such as the Universal Service Obligation and Broadband Connect in an effort to guarantee some level of service for all Australian communities.

The NBN itself was conceived in the realisation that any solution that relied wholly on private funding was not going to deliver a national solution. This was view that regional organisations such as Digital Tasmania had held all along when agitating for their communities not being left behind.

And Tasmania was were the vote mattered, the coalition failed to win any Tasmanian seats where three would have been won had the state followed the rest of the nation. Those three seats; Bass, Franklin and Braddon would have been enough to give the Liberal and National Parties power.

Had the coalition focussed on the legitimate criticisms of the NBN such as the government’s failure to quantify the $43 billion price tag or NBNCo’s failure to produce a business plan then they may well have won the election.

As the country Independents stated, the NBN was one of the key considerations in their decision to support the Labor government, so not getting their NBN policy right cost the coalition government in two ways.

Now the NBN is going ahead we need to focus on what it can deliver, along with a sensible discussion on the right mix of fibre and wireless infrastructure, the proportion of private and public investment and exactly how much the project is going to cost.

Now is the time to get on with building what will be the 21st Century equivalent of the roads and railways of the 20th and 19th Centuries.

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Big, hairy broadband goals

fibre_opticThis column first appeared in SmartCompany. Since writing it, I’ve also done an ABC spot on the National Broadband rollout.

The more I research and reflect on the proposal, the more I’m convinced this plan is a winner – assuming it goes ahead.

I’m also more convinced than ever that Telstra is the big winner from the proposal as it relieves them of the Universal Service Obiligation and means they can avoid the massive costs of maintaining and upgrading the copper network. Not to mention the likelihood that the government will end up leasing space on Telstra’s existing fibre network.

Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” coined the phrase BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Few goals are bigger or more audacious than spending $43 billion to run fibre to every house, office, school, farm and factory in Australia.

My first reaction to the national broadband plan was disappointment – on Twitter I commented “there goes the Rudd Government’s final strand of tech credibility.”

Having had time to think about the plan, it’s clear I was wrong. The announcement is a huge change in policy and it will have immense ramifications on how we do business.

Fibre-to-the-premises completes the gaps in our communications systems. When the rollout is complete, we can rely on our internet links and assume our customers and employees have the same dependable connections.

For regional enterprises this is great news, as it will bring the world to the door to some of Australia’s best industries and businesses. It levels the playing field between big and small businesses, regardless of their location.

For Telstra, the result is mixed. While it means more competition in regional areas, it also means it can save billions on upgrading the aging copper network. The criticism of the rollout’s cost ignores the massive replacement cost already required to replace the old phone lines.

While perhaps not good news for management, the proposed break up of Telstra is good for shareholders. Sensis and BigPond, for example, would be worth far more when not shackled to a company fixated on maximising revenue from a ramshackle copper network.

Another great change is in Canberra’s communications policy. Australia has suffered from communications and media being tied together, with the interests of well connected commercial groups being more important than good planning.

The Keating government’s disastrous cable TV rollout was an attempt to provide modern infrastructure while appeasing the dominant media tycoons who saw technology as a threat to their empires.

As a result we got a mess and the cable TV networks, which could have provided this infrastructure 15 years ago became a political and financial quagmire, which delivered little of what was promised.

We shouldn’t understate the social benefits of the plan either. As the recession bites, the need for skilled and unskilled labour to build the rollout will assist in keeping unemployment down.

It’s certainly billions of dollars better spent than propping up shopping centre developers, banks or the manufacturers of cars that no-one wants.

The biggest change though is ideology. Until now, it’s been difficult to imagine a government proposing a massive infrastructure project without the ticket clippers of the merchant banks and other cronies skimming a fat share.

In every respect, this is the best communications plan and one of the most visionary ideas we’ve seen out of Canberra in generations. While it’s going to cost, history will show it’s money well spent.

Whether the broadband rollout becomes reality or not, fast, reliable communications are already a business necessity and will become even more so.

Think about what fast broadband means for your business and plan how you can take advantage of it. Those who don’t grasp the opportunities are going to be left behind.

So have a think about it. You might come up with some BHAGs of your own.

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The broadband explosion

For a typical exciting Sunday afternoon, I’ve been trolling through the Telstra annual report.

One statistic that leaps out at me is the growth in consumer broadband subscribers of nearly 60%, even if we assume all the 373,000 customers who ditched their dial up plans went over to broadband, that’s still a whopping 35% growth in customers.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the nine month growth in consumer broadband connections from June 2006 to March 2007 (not quite the same period) was 46%.

The decline in dial up connection was 26% over the nine months, as opposed to Telstra’s decline of 36.3% over the twelve months.

Interestingly, Telstra’s dial up decline would have been greater if their systems allow customers to transfer their existing dial up email address to broadband. As it stands, they have to retain their dial up account and we steer customers to Bigpond’s Casual User Plan as a cheap way of doing this.

So Telstra’s performance isn’t out of the line with the industry. What it does show is the massive take up of broadband. It’s also profitable, as Telstra’s report also shows their income has grown by over 66%.

Over the next few weeks I’ll have a look at how other providers are doing. It will be interesting to see how others are performing.

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