Business Spectator 2 November 2012
For many, the word ‘teleworking’ brings to mind a picture of a person sitting on a beach with a notebook. The reality is a little less encouraging.
Teleworking or telecommuting as it is also known has not become a feature of everyday life and less than 10 per cent of Australians have a telework agreement with their employer.
By Mark A Gregory, RMIT University
The National Broadband Network (NBN) is an important nation-building project that’s being implemented at a time of fundamental change in the way we utilise services over the digital network.
For most Australians – those of us in big cities – the NBN will be a big improvement over the existing access network, thanks to fibre connections.
By Mark A Gregory, RMIT University
Good news. A decision made earlier this month by Australia’s Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy may have inadvertently opened the door for unlimited government and police control of the internet.
On November 9, Senator Stephen Conroy said:
Business Spectator 22 November 2012
Imagine trying to connect to the network and finding that you cannot. It’s a frightening scenario that could play out sooner than you think given the technologies being developed and deployed today.
Australian telecommunications policy has been a failure for 30 years and the move to introduce even more cherry picking will be bad for Australia. Today on Technology Spectator NBN cherry picking is discussed in light of the government's NBN reviews and audits. It appears the regional and remote Australia will be the big losers. Do you want cherry picking to be enshrined in telecommunications competition policy?
Backhaul prices are too high and capacity is being drip fed onto the market to ensure prices remain high. Tasmanians suffer a regulated backhaul regime and there appears to be no light on the horizon. The telecommunication industry's history of backhaul cherry picking is discussed today in Business Spectator. Should NBN Co be held hostage by an industry that knows that NBN Co has no option but to pay and pay and pay?
Read the article here
The government took the unusual step of writing to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commision (ACCC) chairman Rod Sims to plead for the 2011 agreement between NBN Co and Telstra to be during the ACCC’s public inquiry into making Final Access Determinations (FADs) for the declared fixed-line services. Is Turnbull another Alan Bond?
The assumptions underlying the NBN Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) just don't stack up and no amount of justification will bring the CBA anything more than criticism. The speeches made by NBN Co chairman Ziggy Switkowski and Professor Henry Ergas at the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) business luncheon held in Melbourne provided a valuable insight into the NBN’s new direction and raised a few eyebrows as well.
You're either a fibre zealot, an economic rationalist zealot competition zealot or simply missing the point of the NBN, which is to provide a refresh of broadband infrastructure that will have a lifetime of 50-80 years and not a short-term injection of funds to get to the next iteration of an obsolete technology.
The Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull's startling admission at the recent CommsDay NBNRebooted event held in Sydney is a cause for concern because up to 30 per cent of premises are being left in limbo by a decision not to connect them to the National Broadband Network.