Leading telecommunications analysts have outlined the key policies they hope will be delivered in the lead up to the Federal Election:
Layer 10 founder and the new Communications Alliance NBN lead consultant, Paul Brooks:
1 Some form of advanced broadband network, such as the NBN or an alternative if the Opposition gets in. The requirement for the ubiquitous high-speed connectivity I think has been well established with all of the research and the examination of the NBN and similar networks internationally.
2 I’d like to see a much greater focus on IP Version 6 (IPv6) migration in the enterprise space in particular. The major service providers in general are reasonably ready for it but there’s an awful lot of people holding back and not doing anything until they see a demand from a customer base. I believe there isn’t [a demand] because they’re either too busy working on other shorter duration problems, this is not yet an urgent problem they see that they need to fix, but I think a lot of enterprises don’t have any awareness of the issue at all and when they do have an awareness of it, it’s going to take them a long time and be very expensive. Now that we’re basically less than a year away from effectively running out of IPv4 addresses to allocate, any person looking to set up a new business or even migrating their network, or merging two organisations together, it’s going to have to have an awareness of IPv6 within their corporate infrastructure as well as their service providers or their networks. They’re going to have great difficulty integrating networks and expanding their networks it’s a very short time frame.
3 The development of Quality of Service enabled widespread broadband. Currently most broadband does not have a QOS queuing enabled so you end up, if you’re trying to stream audio or stream video if you’re trying to hold IP telephony conference calls, at the mercy of other people’s web browsing and YouTube viewing and all the rest of it. So it’s actually still extremely difficult to use the Internet for mission critical communications; people are relying on private networks and corporate style VPNs. I’m looking for the development of residential QOS enabled networks so people can actually start using the Internet for serious and mission-critical applications.
Market Clarity founder and chief executive officer, Shara Evans:
1 Keep the national broadband network, continue with the NBN policy itself or an equivalent.
2 With respect to the NBN rollout the initial focus should be on rolling out the NBN to people and businesses who don’t have broadband now and that would cover regional and rural areas as well as urban black spots.
3 Forget the Internet filter, because I think it’s bad for Australia. With respect to protecting children, if people or organisations are doing things that are illegal then the police need to go after them, it’s not the ISPs who should be doing that.
Telsyte's Senior Analyst, Gary Tsang:
1 My top one would be the NBN, I would like to see it remain. I think we’ve gone too far down the track to go backwards again.
2 Secondly, I would like the Internet filtering to go, due to the concerns around whether a regulated filter can provide the effective means of filtering out the content that it is designed to.
3 I would like the spectrum, the 700 MHz and also the 2.6 MHz to be used effectively and for some additional details to be released to enable the ICT industry players to plan their strategies around offerings to benefit their users.
Analyst and BuddeComm director, Paul Budde:
1 I would like to see ICT as a full blown policy that will enable the government to address a range of key issues in healthcare, education, energy, environment, transport (not just as a tool).
2 The government will need to redirect funding towards digital solutions to address the serious issues in the sectors mentioned above.
3 The NBN can be used as the utility to make this happen, for example, e-health, e-education, smart grids, smart cities, etc.
Read other policy commitment wish lists from the ICT industry