Cross Talk: Recent Episodes
Phil Dobbie
Cross Talk with Phil Dobbie gives you the inside track on what's happening in the Aus/NZ telecommunications industry.
Earlier this week Verizon announced that it plans to buy AOL in a deal worth $4.4 billion. So what are they after?
iiNet will soon be bought. Vocus and Amcom are set to merge. Should the ACCC take the blame for consolidation in telco-land?
Australia and New Zealand embarked on high speed broadband roll-outs around the same time. Their approach, it seems, is cheaper, faster – with more reliance - and has been quicker to deploy. So what’s the difference?
NBN detractors only seem to question whether it’ll deliver the speed we demand. It’s less of an issue than the question of price.
Is the NBN being designed in a way that will boost productivity by encouraging more of us to work from home?
In a high profile court case, it looks like a Hollywood studio has won a battle on copyright. But have they lost the war?
Netflix will place huge peak time demand on broadband networks. That means more capacity is needed. Who will pay for it?
The government has introduced a new Bill that will enable the blocking of websites that are believed to contravene copyright. Will it work?
Despite protestations from The Greens it seems highly unlikely that the ACCC will reject TPG’s $1.4 billion takeover of iiNet. It simply creates another sizeable player to challenge the dominance of Telstra. But there are more significant competition issues to worry about.
This week the ACCC reached a draft decision on how much access seekers should pay Telstra for fixed line services on Telstra’s network. As usual, everyone is disappointed.
The data retention bill is about to be passed. The consequences include less competition, reduced press freedom and, many would argue, an invasion of your privacy.
The telecommunications industry has released a draft code to help tackle online copyright infringement. Have telcos and copyright holders reached a happy compromise?
David Thodey has announced he is stepping down from his role as CEO of Telstra, to be replaced by CFO Andrew Penn. So, what has he inherited?
The Prime Minister expects the revised data retention legislation to pass both houses of parliament in the middle of next month. Should we be concerned?
It was tabled in government late last year, now a parliamentary committee is set to report on their findings. So, are they any the wiser?
Last April NBNCo chief Bill Morrow floated the idea that a levy should be charged to infrastructure competitors to subsidise the cost of broadband delivery to regional Australia. Last month Malcolm Turnbull said he thought it was a good idea. Is he right?
The definitive agreement between NBNCo and Telstra means the government gets a lot of fixed line assets to help fast-track its national network, but with wireless innovation could Telstra become the NBN's biggest competitor?
There are few things that Labor and the Coalition agree on – one is that satellite is the only way to provide broadband access to the most far-flung Aussie residents. But launching satellites is a tricky business, will NBN Co pull it off?
Irrespective of who your provider is you pay Telstra, through your telco, to provide phone access across the country. When NBNCo provides the infrastructure everywhere, you'll still be paying that money to Telstra. Go figure!
A consortium of interests is staging a convention early in the new year to talk about the future of communications in Australia, establishing a vision for 2030. Surely, that far out, we'd assume a fibre is assumed to reach the majority of premises.
The Vertigan Review recommended NBNCo be split into three, to create infrastructure competition. Would it help things along, or just be another destraction?
Two years of metadata could be great news for lots of people – not just law enforcement agencies, but for courts wanting to subpoena evidence – even content owners wanting to trace potential copyright infringers.
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been quick to point out that the intent of metadata legislation is to collect phone data records and a user’s session IP addresses. Yet the wording of the Bill tabled in Parliament last week seems to suggest so much more.
Telcos made money from voice, SMS and data. How do they stand when it comes from capitalising on the next big wave – digital services.
Bill Morrow has to deliver broadband to every home in Australia by 2021, with a minimum service level and a guaranteed rate of return, without extending the government’s equity commitment beyond $29.5 billion. Can he do it? Well, he needs to spend more time looking at the figures before he can give a definitive answer, but admits it’s the biggest challenge he has ever faced.
At last week’s CommsDay Congress in Melbourne Greens senator Scott Ludlam warned that data retention legislation to be tabled in Parliament as early as this month.
This week's CrossTalk comes from the CommsDay Melbourne Congress, where CommsDay and P3 Communications announced the winner of the inaugural Australian mobile benchmark study.
Jason Clare, shadow communications minister, is still convinced fibre to the home is the best technology for NBNCo to be rolling out. He says the Liberal approach is not focused on the future and it is tying one hand behind our back.
The ACCC has asked the industry to comment on proposed changes to the rate carriers charge each other to complete calls on their mobile networks – and the methodology used to arrive at that price. Whilst all carriers agree the price charged should reflect cost, two of the three reckon Telstra’s fixed line network is distorting the picture.
The TIO annual report came out this week with big drops in consumer complaints, largely thanks to mobile network improvements. Does this mean the industry should face less scrutiny from the regulator?
On Friday the Communications Alliance staged a workshop to discuss the latest recommendations from the Vertigan Review. Although there weren’t too many surprises – infact, none – it was a useful discussion for taking stock of the issues currently on the table.
Peter Ulander, Cisco’s VP of Collaboration, says he recently saw AT&T’s first video phone. It was about 50 years old. Today many of us have the capability to make video calls and join conferences, but we don’t, why?
The cost-benefit analysis on the NBN has highlighted that, beyond a certain speed, there are no incremental benefits derived from faster broadband.
The assumptions on that speed, plus those around people’s willingness to pay, are central to the findings of the NBN cost benefit analysis delivered by the Vertigan panel and made public this week.
The government’s plans for compulsory data retention has opened a can of worms. Exactly what metadata should be retained?
Cisco’s Ken Boal describes the Internet of Everything (IoE) as the “next grand era of the internet”. So, what exactly is it?
This week the ACCC launched an inquiry into the wholesale pricing for mobile termination, releasing a discussion paper and inviting industry submissions. Should prices be lower? How should they be calculated?
The government is having another stab at legislating the retention of telecommunications data. We listen in on this week's senate hearing.
On this week’s CrossTalk Phil Dobbie, back from a month’s break, tries to get his head around the first report from the Vertigan Panel, the group charged with providing recommendations for telecommunications regulation and the long awaited cost benefit analysis.
The debate on freeing up spectrum reserved for satellite for use by mobile operators is just the start in the quest for more frequencies for IMT.
Three companies are battling it out to provide a new submarine cable link between Perth and Asia. Who will win?
The telco world has embraced the idea of the Net Promoter Score. Why? Because its simple. But is that good?
Telstra has announced a $100 million-plus strategy to build 8,000 new Wi-Fi access points across the country – Wi-Fi Nation is the rather grand title given to the project. Less than a week later iiNet has announced free Wi-Fi will be available in Canberra, where they’re building 700 new base stations. It’s an extension to their free Wi-Fi network in Adelaide and they’re looking for other local governments to partner with. These are two very different approaches, which one will win out?
When you think of connecting cars to networks you tend to assume it’s all about infotainment. But, as Phil Dobbie explores in this week’s CrossTalk podcast, it’s more about big data.
The government announced that TUSMA – the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency – will disappear and its work wound into the shrinking Department of Communications. A bigger task is changing the definition of the Universal Services Obligation.
The early plans for the NBN ignored wireless as an access technology anywhere except regional Australia, where fixed technologies were considered too expensive. Since then cellular technologies have come along leaps and bounds and most vendors are talking about driving data throughput as much as 1,000 times. Could it ultimately become the most cost effective way of connecting to the Internet?
At the CommsDay Summit last month Tony Warren, Telstra Group Executive for Corporate Affairs, said NBN ‘s customer handover process was plagued with delays and disappointment. It’s of particular concern as the deadline looms for the disconnection of copper in the NBN’s first fibre service areas. Householders have till May 23rd to put their orders in and, even if they do, NBNCo still has to build the lead-in from the street.
Mobile devices are now our preferred means of connecting to the internet. That’s a big shift from the days before the iPhone, when mobile broadband was slow and devices difficult to use. So, imagine what the next few years will bring.
How does the government respond to the TPG challenge? Do they ignore it and hope they go away? The risk is a major dent on NBNCo revenues. But doesn’t the Minister want to engender competition?
The cost of providing faster broadband coverage to regional Australia is blowing out. So, is there a better way of providing what's needed and stay on-budget?
The government is considering the appointment of Children's eSafety Commission whose role could include powers to instruct the take-down of offensive content on social media sites. Will it go any way to solving the problem?
The Vertigan Review has asked whether the ACCC should be responsible for the economic regulation of the telecommunications industry. Some might say, "if it's not broken, why fix it?". That's a fair point, if it's not broken.
Last month the NBN Panel of Experts released a Framing Paper on regulatory issues around the National Broadband Network. In this week’s CrossTalk podcast Phil Dobbie suggests that most of the responses come from people who assume that NBNCo will continue with its task of providing broadband to every premises in the country. Does it have to be that way?
The government released the complete Broadband Availability and Quality report this week and launched the MyBroadband website. It’s a good start, but is it all that useful?
Could Wi-Fi be the game changer when it comes to who yields the most power in the mobile space?
Alcatel Lucent this week announced that they offer virtualisation of various mobile network management functions. So how will this change life for network operators?
Sometime soon Foxtel will become an ISP. Should other ISPs be worried, after all, when BSKyB tried it in the UK with Sky Broadband, they became the second biggest ISP in the country.
Last year’s Strategic Review by NBNCo suggested using a mix of technologies to deliver faster broadband across the country including Fibre to the Node, HFC, Fibre to the Premises, fixed wireless and satellite. But engineer Craig Watkins reckons there’s one option missing that needs to be considered: Fibre to the distribution point (FTTdp).
This week on CrossTalk, we ask why is VoLTE so important? In the long term it can mean operators can stop carrying voice over 3G and repurpose the spectrum, but what can it do in the short term?
Telstra’s decision to flog off most of Sensis to Platinum Equity signals the end of old-style thinking for the telco.
Extending mobile coverage to the more remote parts of the country and the pantomine that is the Senate's NBN Select Committee - both feature in this final edition of CrossTalk for 2013. Complete with jangly bells for Christmas.
There’s few surprises in the NBNCo Strategic Review. It promises a mixed technology approach to Australia’s broadband network. On the same day that we learnt that Vodafone’s Mr-Fix-It, local CEO Bill Morrow, has been appointed as head of NBNCo. A big day for NBN News.
This week’s CrossTalk summarises the two days of the Senate Committee Hearing on the NBN last week. It’s a 25 minute homage for those people who didn’t take the time off work to watch it unfold in its entirety. Or for those who want to relive some of the golden moments.
Even the most ardent supporters of a government built fibre network have been struggling with one thing – closing down Telstra’s HFC network. At the NBN:Rebooted forum the ACCC chair Rod Sims said it could have been a different outcome if the regulator had been involved in the decision.
This week we ask, how long will it all take. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull likens it to turning around a supertanker, but it will, of course, take a lot longer than that. David Epstein, Vice President, Corporate and Regulatory Affairs at Optus, reckons it will be two years before the plan is hatched, with agreements and any necessary regulatory changes in place. Jason Clare, the shadow minister for communications is also on the program, warning us all to retain the structural separation of Telstra, and not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
This week on CrossTalk we try and see what, if anything, we can take out of the New Zealand experience to assist in our forward telecommunications planning in Australia. Be aware, you might need to accept that they seem to have a better handle on things over there.
Law enforcement and corporate security experts share one belief - more information will help them each fight crime.
The telecommunications industry is trying its best to improve customer service. Many use Net Promoter Scores to track their progress, but, on this week’s Crosstalk, we ask whether they should be focusing on a zero contact future.
Could education be the stumbling block when it comes to Australia embracing the digital future? Could we end up with a ubiquitous high speed broadband network that we really don’t know what to do with?
“Okay, we’ll talk about some stuff today.” They were the opening words of iiMet’s CTO John Lindsay at the CommsDay Congress in Melbourne last week. So, what sort of stuff? Well, it was largely to do with the NBN – what’s been done wrong and how it can be put right.
NBNCo has been charged with reviewing progress of Australia's new broadband network and advise of an alternate way forward - but based on what criteria?
Should content streamed over the internet be subject to the same regulations as stuff we watch on our free to air TV?
Since the new government came to power there has been a lot of talk about renewed competition and an opportunity to speed up our delivery of faster broadband. But can it happen without substantial regulatory change?
This week TPG announced plans to build VDSL connectivity to 500,000 premises. Is this good news for the new Communications Minister, or too much too soon?
The incoming government has promised to cut back on red tape, to boost productivity and reduce regulation. Can they really deliver on this promise for the telco industry?
It seems very likely that Australia is heading to a fibre to the node future. But is the technology fast enough to accommodate the applications we’ll be using over the next few years.
With a week to go till the election Malcolm Turnbull and Ed Husic to head to head to discuss their respective visions for our broadband future.
Being a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) might seem like a good idea at the time, but isn’t selling on price and being dependent on the whims of a single provider fraught with risk?
John Key, the New Zealand Prime Minister, appeared on Channel 3’s Campbell Live! Show this week to reassure the population that they have nothing to fear in proposed surveillance legislation. Many people are not convinced.
The principle of quality of service is that some IP packets our prioritised over others. The analogy is letting some cars into the fast lane so they get there quicker. The problem is, says Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at APNIC, that creates congestion in the other lanes. Instead, build another lane – add extra capacity and let everyone go fast.
The broadband speeds of Malcolm Turnbull’s FTTN plan depend on a number of factors, including the quality of the copper, its diameter and how far it runs for.
This week on CrossTalk we meet with Ed Husic, MP for Chifley and the new Parliamentary Secretary for Broadband. Ed is no stranger to telecommunications. Before being elected to federal parliament at the last election he was national president of the CEPU. As you'll hear in the program he is a strong advocate of the NBN, although he might have liked to have seen some things done differently.
There’s been talk for a while about datacentre operators providing network capability, but that’s often been viewed as secure connectivity between the racks and the customer. In this increasingly collaborative world there’s an equal case for connectivity between customers, within the datacentre or between datacentre locations.
In the world of telcos you are either a home phone user, or you’re a business. But what if you are a home based business? Statistics suggest that about 1 in every 5 premises includes a home business. This large group of the population are forced to choose between a home and business product. Yet, as this program explores, these people face the unique challenge of how to separate their home and business communications. Why have none of the major telcos delivered a solution to remedy this issue?
We have been presented with two ways of delivering faster broadband across our nation. Both involve a fair chunk of money from the taxpayer. But there is a third option that hasn't been considered.
Whilst we wait for a 2021 delivery of a predominantly fibre to the premises network, in the UK OpenReach is on track to deliver fibre to the cabinet to two thirds of the population by Spring next year. Already they’re offering speeds of 80 Mbps, with the promise of faster speeds with vectoring.
This week CrossTalk looks further into the Coalition’s alternate NBN plan and asks, what if Telstra doesn’t play ball? With Malcolm Turnbull, Rob Oakeshott and Brendan Coady.
If its true that the US is collecting and sharing data on the online behaviour of foreigners - including Australians - what's ASIO giving them back in return.
Ericsson's latest Mobility Report highights the rise of video streaming on mobile networks. General Motors will be offering 4G devices in their cars from next year. So what does this mean for the radio industry.
In this week’s CrossTalk podcast you’ll hear Malcolm Turnbull, shadow communications minister, says that he supports fibre to the premises, so long as it’s affordable. That affordability could vary from area to area.
Ten years ago Enron had the bright idea of trading bandwidth, as if it was a commodity like gold. The proposition was crazy, of course, and the idea was buried along with the company. Now, though, we’re starting to see similar ideas emerge.
It seems the race is on to offer NBN speeds over alternate network technologies. Samsung reckon 5G can break the gigabit barrier and, as we hear, Huawei’s G.Fast prototype could be delivering a similar speed over our legacy copper networks.
Malcolm Turnbull has a point about FTTN. Copper is showing itself to be more resilient than many would have you believe.
Do big old telcos have the wherewithal to embrace and capitalise on the fast moving, dynamic world of The Cloud?
Whilst the government has pursued its gold plated fixed line solution, Australia has become one of the world’s fastest adopters of smart phones. Should mobile have a more central role in government policy?
If Malcolm Turnbull sees fibre as the ultimate solution we will ensure his fibre to the node network is designed for what follows it.
Just because Malcolm Turnbull said some nice things about this podcast to the gathered throng at the Communications Day summit, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be critical of his broadband plan.
At the end of this month the spectrum made available by the switch off of analogue TVs goes up for sale. But has the government set too high a price?
This week, with the Coalition’s broadband policy just around the corner, NBNCo’s rollout seems fraught with delays.
M2 telecommunications has bought Dodo, the low cost phone provider that now also sells electricity and car insurance! Is it a smart move?
Smart phone subsidies hit telco bottom lines today. But what if Facebook decides to become a service provider in its own right? What chance do retail phone companies have then?
Who’d have thought it? Connecting fibre into every apartment is proving to be somewhat problematic. So is there a better way of connecting households in multi-dwelling units. Yes there is, but it needs the government to rethink its approach.
Malcolm Turnbull wants one. Now Mike Quigley wants one too, if only to put some numbers behind the debate around alternative technology solutions. But when a cost benefit analysis is provided, doesn’t it always say what the sponsor wants to hear?This week on CrossTalk we suggest that we should develop a more collaborative approach to the development of a cost benefit analysis.
For the last week Malcom Turnbull has been touting the use of HFC as an interim alternative to fibre. At the very least he wants to focus the fibre roll out on areas that don’t already have HFC. But if extensive upgrades are needed, is it worth the expense for an interim solution? It seems the Coalition’s much-publicised forthcoming cost-benefit analysis gets more complex by the day.
How can you lose when your proposition is that you’ll offer the same thing, more or less, but spend less and deliver it that much quicker. That’s the essence of the policy the Liberal party seem set to take to the next election. Even though they say the debate has revolved too much around the technology, their “quicker and cheaper” proposition is based on a technological solution: fibre to the node rather than fibre to the premises.
Last July the government announced an inquiry into National Security Legislation. There was a discussion paper, a month for interested parties to submit a response, followed by a series of hearings by the Joint Parliamentary Committee. Since then we’ve heard very little. Does this mean, with an election looming, the whole thing has fallen into the too-hard basket?
2013 has got off to one hell of a start, with major fires and floods across eastern Australia. This week on CrossTalk we look at how the telecommunications industry coped - and helped - with these significant weather events. Grant Nicholson, Director Network Assurance Operations at Telstra talks about how his Major Incident Management team swings into action when disaster strikes. Gary Starr, Managing Director ANZ for Motorola Solutions, talks about how the networks used by emergency services are maintained and how more could be done if more dedicated bandwidth was available. We also look ahead to the NBN - how will it withstand what mother nature can chuck at it. Gary McClaren, Chief Technology Officer at NBNCo says fibre optic has some natural advantages.
In this first episode of CrossTalk, Phil Dobbie compares the two approaches, helped by Rohan MacMahon, Strategy Director at Crown Fibre Holdings and economist Arron Schiff from consulting firm Covec. Dr Stephen Gale, the telecommunications commissioner at the Commerce Commission, talks through some of the regulatory issues.
As you’ll hear, the biggest difference relates to copper. Australia is turning it off, New Zealand will keep it going for some time to come. In parts of the country where Chorus hasn’t got the gig to roll out fibre that could create some interesting – and potentially destructive – competitive behaviour.