Book Notes: "Bohemian Bourgeois" by David A. Myers

Bohemian Bourgeois by David A. Myers

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This is a great read - very close to home but also sad. Close to home in that it mirrors a great deal of Australian childhood and later the academic career. I wish there were more novels like this - especially those with an Australian flavour.



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Australia's fascination with standardisation is hindering innovation

 Photo by: Vmenkov CC BY-SA 3.0

The worst thing that ever happened to Australian innovation was the lack of standardisation in rail gauges. Ever since then, Australia's fascination with standardisation has pervaded almost every aspect of life, but in particular, innovation.

In recent times, the fascination with standardisation has been played out in federal politics. Whenever there is a perceived problem, all power is given to the feds to fix the ad hoc measures employed by the states.

The fascination with standardisation can be observed in healthcare, education (in particular, the National Curriculum), the NBN, road rules, industrial relations, and more recently, research.

For some time, numerous reports have outlined the extent of innovation lagging in Australia, for example:

• SMH 2 July 2012
• CRCA 15 May 2012
• The Age 19 January 2012
• The Australian 8 September 2011
• ABC Business Breakfast 4 August 2003

Numerous reasons for the lack of innovation are espoused, but one area is rarely considered: standardisation.

I blame the railways debacle for Australia's fascination with standardisation. But in an era of increasing diversity and consumer choice, this fascination actually hinders innovation.

Try and do something different in Australia: if it doesn't fit in with the standard way of doing things, it is not allowed. Try do something new in the bureaucracy and see how that goes, too. Put simply, you are not allowed to do anything that may affect the standard. Indeed, it may be that standards are developed, based on outmoded ideas, which actively prohibit innovation.

Take for instance the federal government's rhetoric about teleworking, but then try to work from home. Mannheim (writing in the Canberra Times today) hit the nail on the head:

..."the attitude of employers and middle managers" was a major hindrance... I hear often of managers who refuse to allow staff to work from home, citing their inability to monitor performance. (If a manager can't assess an employee's performance by their work, they're probably unfit to manage.)

What is the standard here? If you can see the employee, then they will magically be productive?

But standardisation is also about making everything the same. Australian policy-makers have long adopted a mechanical view of the world: a belief that you can indeed control innovation.

Imagine prescribing procedures for the late Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg to make them innovate more or faster, or punishing Michelangelo or Da Vinci until they become more creative? Or telling them how to innovate - the very concept is absurd.

But that is how it is done here in Australia: chaos and conflict are to be avoided so leaders can remain "relaxed and comfortable". The strangest thing is that this has a negative impact on the future, and future generations will have to pay for the apathy of leaders in business, government and higher education today.

There are three possible outcomes from attempts to influence people: commitment, compliance and resistance. For too long in Australia, policies and other interventions have focused on ensuring compliance and punishing resistance.

Auditing performance of outcomes is one thing, but auditing performance based on prescribed procedures is quite another. The smart employee will either look for a vocation where their ability to introduce new ways of doing business will be valued, or worse, simply resign themselves to complying with the standard. On the other hand, punishing resistance only teaches people not to buck the system. Only encouraging and rewarding outcomes will ensure commitment, especially where "standardisation" is not the outcome being sought.

It's true that the railway system in Australia was a major stuff-up. But should our view of the world be framed by the response to a mistake made over 150 years ago?

Our fascination with standardisation may have served us well in the past, but if we really want to innovate, we need to adopt a systems view of the world. Put simply, this means that one can disturb a living system, but not direct it. 

In the meantime, leaders who insist on forcing employees to work within the confines of their fascination with standards should expect nothing more than compliance; and consequently, absolutely no change in Australia's lagging innovation.

Book Notes: "The Professor" by Charlotte Brontë

The Professor by Charlotte Brontë

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Whenever the introduction to a classic suggests that I read the novel before I read the introduction, I shall do so. I was a little disappointed that my view of the novel was shaped by the introduction, nonetheless, this was my first Brontë novel so I am sure to recover! I found the story to be like a first-person biography (as opposed to an auto-biography), and indeed that was intended. Tainted as my view was by the introduction, I could not help but notice the effeminate nature of the protagonist, although I cannot be sure if this was a result of knowing beforehand that which I would not have taken into account without the introduction. An interesting feature is the pace of the climax - a long slow, undulating yet gentle slope upwards until a climax that engulfs a decade in a moment, only to stroll along the precipice with no real danger of excitement; yet an abrupt end that lingers tantalisingly so with even the introduction's gossipy lack of deference a pleasant enough experience.



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Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan: Technological leap-frogging, fact or fiction?

It is commonly assumed that less-developed countries, which may not necessarily be constrained by years of investment in fixed-line infrastructure, can overcome the ‘digital divide’ by simply ‘leap-frogging’ ahead of developed countries by deploying less expensive wireless infrastructure. 

However, research by Howard (2007: 136) suggests that the instances of this occurring are rare. For example, during the period 1995 to 2005, only five countries (which were already wealthy) managed to ‘leap-frog’ some of the global communications technology leaders.

Yet during a recent follow-up research field-trip to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I was surprised to learn that the take-up of mobile technology in the Kingdom had achieved more than 100% penetration since my last field-trip in late 2009.

Howard (2007) did not include Jordan in his study, yet the Kingdom is clearly leap-frogging well before achieving maturity in the fixed-line market.

Indeed, fixed-line subscribers in Jordan declined from 10.84% of the population in 2006 to 6.79% in 2011, while mobile subscriptions had increased from 76.61% in 2006 to 119.75% in 2011 (Source: Jordanian Department of Statistics 2012).

Admittedly, some 39% of Jordanian mobile subscribers have more than one mobile subscription, so the digital divide persists.

At the same time, Jordan's telecoms market is the second most competitive in the Arab world.

In my research, I am interested in how institutions help or hinder the deployment of communications technologies. Jordan provides a unique case study as this developing nation's telecommunications industry is clearly getting on with the job.

Although many industry players appear frustrated by the quality of service role the TRC has adopted, the regulatory framework is certainly not hindering the take-up of mobile telephony.

Similarly, household access to Internet services has more than doubled from 15.6% in 2007 to 35.4% in 2011.

While much research focuses on competition as a major enabler of communications technology penetration, I am curious as to whether Jordan's laissez-faire approach to the coordination of networks in favour of market intervention via a quality of service role is responsible in large part for the stellar performance in communications technology penetration.

Compared with Australia's slow deployment of the expensive National Broadband Network, one thing is clear: Jordan is doing something right.

References:

Howard, P.N. (2007). Testing the Leap-Frog Hypothesis: The impact of existing infrastructure and telecommunications policy on the global digital divide, Information, Communication & Society, 10(2): 133-157. 

Book Notes: "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber & Other Stories" by Ernest Hemingway

The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber & Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The thought of safari is horrible, but in the context of the times, Hemingway writes of courage and cowardice in the way that appears to all of us in the midnight hour. The ability to move the reader in such a short story is remarkable.



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Social media but a speed-hump on the old-fashioned institutional trajectory

Until recently, social media promised to facilitate greater policy participation, enable greater user-generated content, and generally bring about the benefits of a digital economy. But none of this has happened and for the most part it has returned to business as usual.

How does a disruptive technology fail to disrupt? Simple. Key industry players and institutional frameworks coincide to ensure that new technologies do not become disruptive in the long term. There may be a moment or two when amateur experimenters get the jump on big business and government, but it doesn't take long until the existing system either changes the rules or subsumes the new technology into existing business models or government institutions.

Pay-TV provides a case in point and the story is captured eloquently by Paul Barry in his 2008 book The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer Uncut. In Australia, Steve Cosser's attempt to capture the pay-TV market in Sydney and Melbourne using microwave systems caught big business and the federal government off-guard. Both business and the feds believed that microwave was an inferior technology. However, the US was using it to great effect and Cosser was on the ball. To cut a long story short, Packer intervened with Cosser's content providers and Keating intervened to prevent Cosser from getting the jump on satellite, ending the government's professed stance on technological neutrality.

Similarly in the US, pay-TV promised a business model free from advertising where users simply paid for the content they watched, rather than having programs interrupted by advertising. However, Winston (1998: 320) outlines how the new technology was soon absorbed by the old ways:

Americans now pay twice, through advertisements and subscriptions, what they used to pay for only once. This has been done in obedience to the 'law' of the suppression of radical potential whereby the new technology over a period of fifty years has been absorbed by the institutional structures of the old. This process has not only reduced cable's, and (probably) DBS's, disruptive potential, it also ensured that those same structures will remain profitable. Although taken over and somewhat battered and by no means inured to the consequences of myopic managements, nevertheless all the major American broadcasting players are still in place.

What does this have to do with social media? Go to Google and search "facebook regulation", then narrow the search to "news". It is immediately obvious that Facebook's disruptive capacity is under attack, globally, from multiple angles: privacy, alcohol advertising, education, security, the law... the list goes on.

In light of the challenges presented to popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, it is little wonder that social media has failed to live up to what it promised just a few short years ago.

Admittedly, I embraced social media and tried to implement its use in my teaching, but institutional barriers exist even to simple things such as the use of e-textbooks - these are still under attack from those who do not wish to use them, contracts that stipulate hard copies must be provided to libraries, and a delivery system  that makes it difficult for libraries to provide e-texts instead of hard copy books. To make matters worse, government measures of research output specifically exclude publications produced in online-only formats - only commercial publishers count. So much for sustainable publishing practices and making new knowledge readily available to the public.

Importantly, social media does not exist in a political or institutional vacuum - so the disruptive capacity of  new media has more or less ended now that big businesses and governments have caught up. History suggests that this is inevitable, and it will take more than the technological capacity coinciding with a social revolution to realise the potential social media promised but has not delivered. 

I lament the passing of the promise of change, I really do. But in light of the power of institutions, I think the focus on technology and social movements alone is not the path to an enlightened digital revolution. Indeed, it hasn't worked at all.

From now on I intend to examine in more detail how institutional arrangements help or hinder the realisation of the benefits of a digital economy. My only hope is that this time I will be wise enough to know the difference.

NBN Advertising: Dodgy use of public monies?

It doesn't take a genius to work out that the National Broadband Network will change a few things for the average Australian.

Indeed, if you live in any Australian suburb like Palmerston via Gungahlin and you have recently received a little "mail out" from NBN Co in your letterbox, any improvement in service delivery will be a welcome change from the archaic services currently experienced at "top of the range" prices.

I am now paying $AUD 99.95 per month for a Telstra wireless service with a theoretical speed of 8mbps, but when you see the reality of my speed test (presented here courtesy of ozspeedtest.com at the time of writing) it is very different:

Before the peanut gallery chimes in with "oh, you should get a plan with... [blah, blah, blah], let me tell you something: it is simply not available here in Palmerston via Gungahlin, especially ADSL. You might also see from my speed test that tonight is a good night, but it doesn't matter because the download limit on Telstra's wireless service here is 15GB per month. Even if I offered Telstra $1 million per month, as a consumer, I am on the absolute best of the premium plans available in this area.

What rattles me about the NBN is that a while back, I attended a community meeting run by NBN Co where they kept asking us "what will you do with high-speed broadband?" I wasn't interested in discussing this with them. Frankly, it is none of their business. But what made matters worse was that some random NBN Co employee emerged from the audience and admitted that he had been sitting among us to hear what we had been saying. This made me feel pretty much that this was all a government-controlled freak show. At this point, it still didn't bother me so much so I said nothing more of it. Until now, that is!

So when I received an NBN Co "mail out" this week inviting me:

To find out what the NBN rollout means to Gungahlin and the exciting benefits fibre optic broadband could bring to you and your community, come to our information session on Saturday 12 May any time between 11am and 3pm...

I decided immediately that I was not interested in attending. All I want to know is: When will I get access to NBN? In October 2010, at the last community meeting on NBN at the Palmerston Community Centre, we were invited to "dream" about the NBN and how we might use it. But the biggest question on everybody's lips was simply: "When do we get it?"

Yet here we are, 18 months later and well past the September 2011 date "mentioned" at the last community meeting in October 2010 for the rollout to begin, and nothing has changed.

What is quite clear is that the consultation process is all just "spin". I expect politicians to bore me with their spin. But what really gets up my nose is when public monies are used to pay for that spin.

Not a day goes by when I don't see NBN advertisements appearing on television or in my letterbox. Yet I don't believe a single word: it is all just spin.

Spin from politicians is a political reality: it is a farce packaged as "democracy" and I have little choice but to live with it. But when I have to pay for the spin, this is when I really feel insulted.

Surely every advertisement about the NBN is election campaigning which citizens pay for? How this is legal defies logic. If they were telling me WHEN I might be able to access NBN, I might be a little less bothered. But in the meantime, spending public money to ask me to "come dream about NBN" while effectively delaying the rollout date is a complete "rock show".

As much as the Opposition is to blame for getting us here in the [broadband] first place, the fact that they haven't whispered a word about public-funded electioneering demonstrates that they really did set such a low standard during the Howard Government's "Workchoices" campaign that they have nowhere else to go on this obvious misuse of public monies.

As for NBN, the current situation where taxpayers are paying to have their intelligence insulted is nothing short of ridiculous. The publicly-funded advertisements about NBN should be withdrawn immediately.

NBN Co not fast enough, but Coalition shouldn't talk

Personal experience of NBN'nt

I delivered a lecture yesterday morning and after speaking for nearly two hours non-stop, I had lost my voice. By mid-afternoon I had cancelled my evening lecture and the dreaded Canberra flu had struck its first blow. 

Today I was forced to go to the doctor, and antibiotics were on the menu. Thankfully, Palmerston via Gungahlin has its own medical centre with great doctors and a chemist run by a very knowledgeable pharmacist.

But before I travelled the 600m to the medical centre, I thought I would save myself the slightly longer trip to the Medicare/Centrelink shop-front in Gungahlin and register for Medicare's online service. I remembered going to the doctor last year and hadn't registered so my Medicare claim could be lodged immediately by the medical centre.

Here the drama began. To get a Medicare account, I had to login to my australia.gov.au account. My password didn't seem to work so I requested a new one through the "lost password" function. Moments later I had a new password. When I tried to login to Medicare, my password was wrong.

So I end up adding a Centrelink account (no idea why), but still it wouldn't work. Clicking on the Medicare "lost password" link just gave me a 404 Error. Ten minutes later, and I found a different "lost password" link for Medicare. And it worked... well, almost. I was subsequently advised that my new password was in the... wait for it... POST!

I decided to call Medicare and after a five-minute wait (in the 1990s the wait could be hours!) the friendly Department of Human Services (the name always reminds me of the film Metropolis) officer had issued me a temporary password, and I was registered. Yay!

But when I arrived at the Palmerston Medical Centre, the first thing I noticed was a sign which read (words to the effect of):

Due to an unreliable Internet connection we are no longer able to provide electronic lodgement of Medicare claims. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

I could have cried: Palmerston via Gungahlin. I empathised with my neighbours because 600m down the street it was certainly no better.

Don't forget who brought us here

While the Coalition is having lots of fun with NBN Co's slow roll-out and poor take-up, it is important to remember who was the party in power that got us here in the first place. If the Coalition is in charge after the next election, I doubt Palmerston via Gungahlin will be any better off.

The problem with communications technologies in Australia is and has always been that it is caught up in politics. The Coalition may have a decentralised and technologically-neutral approach to improving broadband, but this policy is just a different model of the same government-controlled monolith.

Until consumers can simply purchase services from businesses that simply provide the service, the politics of communications policy in this country will never end. Today provided me with first-hand experience of just how political even simple services like lodging an online Medicare claim can be. 

In a country that prides itself on being disinterested in politics, we sure do lead an overly-political lifestyle. While the communications industry remains a big policy lever, I can't see the situation changing regardless of the ruling party.

iPad only one technology, schools fall for good marketing

Tablet PC Episode XXIV
(Photo by Jim Henderson)

I recall MAD Magazine making fun of the endless Rocky sequels during the 1980s, Rocky fighting in his late 90s, Rocky XXIV screening in 2015, that sort of thing. We ended up with Rocky VI in 2006 but you get the idea.

Yet Apple seems to be challenging Rocky as the never-ending-sequel par excellence. It appears that no sooner is a new iPad released, that yet another new iPad is being released. How can we possibly keep up with all of these changes in a corporate environment?

Put simply, we can't, and we shouldn't.

BYO technology is the answer, where people use their own devices. But this means that corporate systems need to be revamped to cope with increased-capacity wireless services, faster corporate backbones with less software bottlenecks, and increased range of devices.

The savings for organisations are obvious: less expensive hardware, no need for corporate SOE "upgrades", no need for telephones, large screen projectors, lecture theatres and so on. Deakin University (my alma mater) is making this happen right now.

Interest in BYO technologies is growing fast, and this year at the University of Canberra we have been trialling  the use of BYO computer labs in my first-year undergrad unit. Following an upgrade to the network backbone over the last 12 months, things are all going swimmingly.

Ever since returning from Jordan, where I relied on Google translate to have half a clue what was going on around me in Arabic, I have taught all of my classes in computer labs. This has given my students immediate access to information. 

Don't understand something in English? Use Google translate, understand the word, now let's discover the concept. Don't know which war I am talking about when I say the post-war golden age? Look it up on the Net then straight back into the tutorial discussion.

Remember the "no looking at draft essays" policy? All gone - simply look at it online in the classroom. Until you have taught a non-tech uni subject with several hundred students in a tech environment, you haven't lived.

So when I hear about schools investing in one particular device, I shake my head in disbelief. But it is much easier when you can supplement your investment with government funding: West Moreton Anglican College recently purchased 640 iPads for year 7-12 students at a cost of $480,000 using government funding.

Governments can't pick winners, so what makes schools any different?

Good marketing, it seems. Apple, through its devoted evangelistic followers, even has a uni domain name: auc.edu.au. 

In the 1990s, while working as an accountant, the number of clients who purchased an Apple computer to do their own book-keeping would say to me: "The kids use Apple at school, so they must be easy to use". Even today I can't use simple things like flash video on my iPad, so you can imagine how upset my clients were when their work was not compatible with our Microsoft systems.

The short-term investment in iPads is not new -the University of Adelaide did this nearly two years ago. But this isn't anywhere near BYO technology.

For me, BYO technology is all about access to the Internet and the local network at super-fast speeds. Here at the University of Canberra we have been blessed with an IT team that is second to none and my trials are working out just fine.

But what bothers me is that the Digital Education Revolution is falling victim to some very good marketing from the key device manufacturers. I have argued elsewhere that Australian policy-makers focus too much on the device and not enough on the capability:

The Digital Education Revolution (DER) aims to contribute sustainable and meaningful change to teaching and learning in Australian schools that will prepare students for further education, training and to live and work in a digital world. 

If the DER is to move to sustainability, then buying a bunch of iPads for students is a clear waste of taxpayers money. I just hope that management at West Moreton Anglican College were savvy enough to purchase the iPad three so students enjoy the prime time of their new devices.

But in the meantime, there are the institutional arrangements, and, more importantly in an educational environment, the equity issues. Instead of buying a handful of iPads, why isn't the DER providing cheap loans to students to purchase their own devices? 

The "digital world" our students will inhabit will be a BYO technology world - taking away students' ability to choose for themselves is a bureaucrat's dream of the most "efficient and effective"single solution. The approach is misguided: there are multiple solutions and we all use modern communications technologies differently. 

If the digital education revolution is to be truly revolutionary, then we need to get away from good marketing and go back to basics: user choice. BYO technology will enable the DER, but bureaucrats need to stop looking at the marketing and start talking to the people who are actually in the trenches of the digital revolution.

Convergence comes to Australia, Department of Innovation says "No"

Photo by State Records NSW CC-BY-2.0

Austar CEO John Porter decided to "suspend political correctness" this week to talk about convergence: "Telstra needs to let Foxtel sell broadband".

Convergence has come to Australia.

But in an admirable attempt to hold back the tide, the Department of Innovation says "No" to convergence.

Convergence is not new, nor is it necessarily the result of new technologies. Since the time of the telegraph and telephone (particularly in countries which did not establish public monopolies), most communications industries have been deliberately diverged to create distinct markets - not because of technology, but because of corporate interests.

For example, Canada’s broadcasting and telecommunications industries were deliberately diverged by numerous corporate agreements established amid government policies based on the idea that telecommunications was a natural monopoly. However, by the 1990s, regulators and key industry players were arguing for the (re)convergence of these industries.

During the 1990s, while Canadians were arguing for (re)convergence, Telstra was doing the opposite: extending divergence to take advantage of pay-TV.

Telstra, as part of the FOXTEL pay-TV service, deployed broadband cables and had 200,000 pay-TV customers by 1997. Telstra’s BigPond service utilised the cable to offer high-speed broadband Internet services via cable modem to customers in Sydney and Melbourne, but this was largely an after-thought. Further, the initial deployment of cable broadband services was deliberately delayed by Telstra and News Ltd for financial reasons:

While we are hopeful about the future potential for broadband services, we recognise the need to balance investment with returns in the context of the changing competitive environment and developing markets and services. Telstra has worked closely and productively with our partners and other players in the Pay-TV industry during the second half of the financial year to seek to resolve some of the financial issues that have contributed to the instability of the industry. The outcome of these discussions is that Telstra and News have further agreed to limit, at this time, Telstra’s broadband cable rollout obligation to 2.5 million homes by the end of 1997. Any resumption of additional broadband cable rollout will be delayed until overall market conditions justify such investment (Telstra 1997 Annual Report).

Due to a proposed merger between FOXTEL and Australis at the time, a pay-TV provider with a satellite and microwave distribution system, there was no commercial reason for Telstra to continue expanding cable infrastructure to compete in the pay-TV market. Atkinson, Correa & Hedlund (2008: 53) found that:

The Australian government allowed Telstra, the incumbent telecommunications operator, to take over the nascent cable companies in the early 1990s, thereby dramatically limiting broadband cable competition. Consequently Australia has among the lowest cable penetration in the OECD.

However, it would appear that whatever value was gained by keeping the industries diverged in Australia is nearing the end of its useful life. Now that the Foxtel-Austar merger will go ahead, change is in the air.

Expect to see an increase in the provision of paid content - not just pay-TV but paid media content, too - as the old paper-based industries die out quickly. Indeed, it would appear that enough consumers are willing to pay for content that the "paywall" may soon be ubiquitous.

It was only a matter of time. Unless you are in the innovation game.

The Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIISRTE) has taken it upon itself to fight convergence.

A key strategy of the Department's war on convergence is to provide targeted support to the print-based industries. In 2012, research which is published in electronic-only formats does not count in the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) rules.

In a recent revision, the Department of Innovation decided to exercise its authority over technology and put research back on paper where it belongs: 

“[B]ooks only published electronically"... do not meet the criteria [and] "books and book chapters only published electronically” can not be included under HERDC.

In light of industry's re-convergence, the Department of Innovation is certainly being innovative. Thankfully, paper refuses to receive ink from lesser researchers, and simply by excluding e-publishing, DIISRTA has significantly improved the quality of Australian research in what is a very clever policy.

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Comment: Does the NBN Matter?

By Michelle McAulay CC: BY-NC-SA

In 2007, broadband became a surprise election issue, culminating in the NBN some two years later.

Recently, I was asked to comment on the NBN and whether it would be a major election issue as it was in 2007.

Below is my response. This appeared in the Australian Financial Review on 5 March:

The NBN has been dragging on for so long that it will be difficult for it to “cut through the noise” at the next election.

If we look at the situation during the 2007 election, politicians such as John Howard and Senator Bill Heffernan really didn’t “get” broadband. Australians had suffered appalling broadband speeds and draconian download limits for so long that hearing politicians talk about broadband as a way to simply “download movies” was a case of a government with “no idea”.

Rudd was able to clearly blame the Howard years as an opportunity lost for the digital economy and to provide the NBN as an instant remedy.

However, once the policy became bogged down in the details, Australians became sick of hearing about the NBN and its outdated equipment (Tasmania), then a few years later, Armidale being connected – it was all a “big fizzer”. Some five years down the track and the Telstra agreement, arguably the whole point of the NBN, has only just been completed and the situation for broadband hasn’t changed for the majority of Australians who were suffering from “fraudband” back then.

Broadband is still an important issue, and whether Australians get the NBN or the Coalition’s version of high-speed broadband will be less important this election unless NBN Co performs a miracle and gets some major “runs on the board” very soon.

Otherwise, the major difference between 2007 and now is that in 2007, the government had no idea that things were so bad. The focus was all on selling Telstra, not on improving the appalling state of broadband in Australia.

Now that all politicians acknowledge that something needs to be done, I don’t think there is the same imperative that existed in 2007 to acknowledge how bad Australia was (and still is) performing in relation to the rest of the OECD (and even some poorer countries).

The lack of acknowledgement was the big issue. But with the NBN saga now just dragging on, recent events in politics will see broadband sitting in the background during the next election unless scrapping the NBN becomes a major budget issue.

 A follow-up article in the Australian Financial Review included my comments on 6 March.

Back to the Future or: Today I Wrote a Letter...

Artwork by Stefan Prohaczka

Ever since ditching Facebook and other social media a few weeks ago, I have undergone the strangest transformation. I think I am very quickly becoming part of the slow movement. I am not sure whether this is a product of age, but I have been rediscovering some simple pleasures which disappeared two decades ago in a blur of screen-reading and computer addiction.

I am still required to be glued to the computer on a regular basis, but the return to the natural world has been nothing short of cathartic: Enjoying time with my mini-fox terriers, reading books (and the odd e-book), and gardening. But most recently I am fascinated by old technologies.

A while back we purchased a record player. It has a USB connection to convert records to mp3 files, but listening to the humble record has re-initiated a joy I haven't experienced since the 1980s. The crackle of the dust and imperfections in the sound are brilliant.

For the last three years or so, I have been presenting The Rebel Chorus on 2XX 98.3 FM community radio. A while back we found an old transistor radio in the garage and bought some batteries so we could listen to my colleagues or my wife could listen in to my program. But every morning, the transistor radio, complete with tuning imperfections, is tuned into ABC Classic FM. After decades of neglect, the radio is now a big part of my morning - just as it was when I was a child.

My retro-fascination is not only related to communication, but also to transport. Despite the annoying bits of ACTION buses, I have settled into the routine of catching the bus. The stress of driving is now a rare annoyance - once I overcame my reluctance to substitute the car for the slightly longer bus ride. Palmerston not only has slow broadband, the buses go everywhere but direct to where you want to go so a ten minute drive takes 30-40 minutes on the bus. But once I became disciplined enough to take a book or use the commute to plan or even - God forbid - take the time just to think or dream, it is now reasonably pleasant.

But the most fascinating thing for me has been the rediscovery of the humble postage stamp and the handwritten letter. While researching the role of the Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) in Australian telecommunications, I ended up on the Australia Post website and it reminded me of stamp collecting as a child.

I have been an avid Internet shopper for many years and over the last fortnight I have collected a few items from the post office at the University of Canberra. While I was there, I noticed one of the latest releases for Australia Post's stamps: Technology - Then and Now. I was so fascinated I bought the first day cover and the mini-sheet.

Ever since, I have had a burning desire to write a letter. It has been almost twenty years since I posted a handwritten letter - I think the last time was a job application in 1988. I was forced to write handwritten minutes in the Army up until 1994 when I purchased my first portable word processor - it was an Amstrad similar to this one:

Photo by putput.

I remember how the Battery Commander's red pen was the subaltern's nightmare - reams of paper disappeared in minor errors as the red pen bit deep. Until the Amstrad. As soon as the pen hit the paper, I amended it and printed the update. It annoyed my bosses so much they soon gave up. My peers looked on in envy as they wrote and re-wrote their minutes using the lined page underneath. I had a ready-made format in my portable freedom machine and life was sweet.

But my rediscovery of some of the simple pleasures of slow technology has me baffled. All the years of learning, re-learning and keeping up with technology left me little time for reflection. I still love my technology, but I have a new-found respect for the ways of the past. It appears that there is much more to it than technological determinism and the never-ending game of catch-up: iPad 3 being a case in point.

So today I wrote a letter. Not just one but two: one to each of my grandmothers. You have to pick your audience, and I thought my grandmothers would be most capable of deciphering my unpractised handwriting.

I have been working in the space between  technological determinism and social constructivism for some time. The two extremes (respectively) suggest that technology determines how we do things or otherwise we, as humans, shape technologies and in turn are shaped by technologies.

The retrospective I have enjoyed in the last few weeks has given me fresh insight into all things technological. I am very interested in how we feel about certain technologies, rather than how these make us feel. It's a case of back to the future I know, but with so many time saving devices and less time than ever, I am finding that old technologies offer an alternative to the commercial black hole that is sucking the living privacy out of our souls.

So the next time you receive a targeted advertisement from Google or you feel that your spirit is trapped in the social web, stop, breathe deeply, and write a letter or two. The pen is mightier than the sword, after all.

The irony of waiting for the NBN in Palmerston via Gungahlin

The speed of my shaped broadband connection today

My 15GB download limit using wireless, the only service that can provide broadband speeds in the area I live, was consumed days ago. It is now the day before the download limit is reset, which happens to coincide with the day I have the most time to focus on my research. I need to answer a specific question about the NBN. 

I am aware of the plan to see Telstra’s copper networks decommissioned and also for Optus’ HFC network to be decommissioned, and that NBN Co will provide a national Layer 2 wholesale network. I am also aware that it will be possible for NBN Co and its wholesale customers to provide point-to-point services for enterprise networks and to operate as wholesalers using NBN Co's infrastructure. 

However, my question is, once NBN has control of the wholesale infrastructure, will the market for wholesale infrastructure be contestable? For example, what will prevent another provider, or indeed, an existing provider such as Transact in the ACT, from being a wholesale provider over a new or an existing network? 

Obviously it would be difficult to become a competitor to NBN Co as the major wholesale provider, but I haven’t been able to find anything about future contestability of wholesale broadband markets once NBN Co begins to operate. The question I want to answer (with appropriate references, of course!), is this:

Is there a specific law that gives NBN exclusive wholesale Layer 2 provision in Australia?

To answer this question, I have been using my shaped wireless connection to download copies of NBN Co's annual reports and some other information from the DBCDE website. The tabs for the NBN Co sites have been sitting there spinning for hours.

Just a few more hours to go before my plan is reset. Just a few more years before we get affordable high-speed broadband in Palmerston.

The irony is that right now, I am literally waiting for the NBN in Palmerston via Gungahlin.

Government control of communications: Where is the evidence of success?

Photo by Bidgee CC BY-SA 2.5

The Commonwealth has a long history of controlling new communications technologies. Typically, the monoliths developed to control these technologies create demands on policy actors, particularly if dissenting voices are to be heard during the melee of government and well-organised industry interests battling it out within the constraints of the existing institutional framework.

Bureaucratic approaches adopted to control communications technologies limit participation in policy-making to well-organised firms and government-sanctioned, well-organised policy actors. Enabling a space for dissenting voices proves problematic as the Commonwealth's propensity to control new communications technologies in Australia typically results in the technology being controlled by a government-sponsored monolith that can't quite keep up with technological change. 

NBN Co is simply continuing a long tradition of government-controlled monoliths - PMG (1901-1975); AWA (1921-1951); Telecom Australia/Telstra (1975-2006); and now NBN Co (2009- probably 2040) - all products of the Australian way of "ensuring" regulatory certainty.

Regulatory certainty typically refers to ensuring the rules are clear or that barriers to entry to certain industries have some economic justification. But in Australian telecommunications, the culture of the monolith is so embedded that regulatory certainty means:

more than simply knowing prices earlier or having a ‘streamlined’ process for setting prices. Regulatory certainty requires that parties, both monopolist and access seeker, can predict what prices will be next year and how they are likely to evolve in the long term. This requires knowledge of both: (a) how regulated assets will be valued in the near term; and (b) how the level of compensation over the asset’s life will reflect that valuation (1). 

Broadband, the latest major communications technology "problem", appears to have been "solved" by creating another monolith: NBN Co. But how are these monoliths justified?

Simple. Whenever there is a policy problem in the communications sector, government produces a report that states just how well government is doing:

The importance of telecommunications in this country has been widely recognised and much has been done to ensure the adoption of modern forms of communication and in providing efficient services in all settled areas of the Commonwealth (2).

The following table was used as evidence for the statement above from 1960:

Australia ranks high in world telephone development. This is shown by the comparison of international statistics in Figure 5 (2).

Australia ranked "high" in 1960 but this needs to be put in perspective. During the 1950s, most of the countries Australia outperformed were still recovering economically from the destruction of World War II, whereas Australia ranked lowest of the neutral countries or those relatively untouched by the devastations of total war.

The "Australian way of 'doing' communications policy" does not work because the evidence, if considered objectively, doesn't stack up to support a continuance of the same approach. As Albert Einstein supposedly said, insanity is"doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". 

Dissenting voices are hard to find, but here are two historical examples you won't find in your typical self-congratulatory analysis:

Amos (3), in his 1936 Story of the Commonwealth Wireless Service, was hardly enamoured with Australia's communications laws in his introductory statement:

Having passed this draconic piece of legislation [the Wireless Telegraphy Act of 1905], the Second Deakin Administration took no further action in this matter

Nonetheless, Green (1976), Secretary of Postal and Telecommunications, was quite comfortable with government's role in the radio broadcasting industry (4):

It can therefore be said that, for nearly thirty years while broadcasting was in its infancy, successive governments have found departmental control a satisfactory means of exercising the communications power.

But the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (now Commercial Radio Australia Ltd) was not so pleased with the "satisfactoriness'" of government control:

Here is an early indication of the poorly-concealed objective of the authors of this document clearly exposed in the assertion that Governments found "departmental control a satisfactory means of exercising the communications power". Whether it is satisfactory to the community is a question which does not appear to have been asked (5).

Attempts to improve consumer participation in industry standards have appeared from time to time (6), but this has occurred within the monopolistic industry structure. As government centralisation tends to be matched by centralised industry bodies, it follows that a process of decentralisation might be resisted by the centralised industry bodies. A consequence of government control has been the top-down establishment of the major consumer organisation to represent the interests of consumers in the telecommunications industry: the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN).

Although the government claims that ACCAN has been successful, the government has a habit of finding the positives in everything it does. Peeling back the layers of history is like peeling an onion: it makes you cry, but someone has to do it!

Notes:

(1) Ockerby, J. (2009). 'Reform of Part XIC: Regulatory Certainty: Increasing regulatory certainty for telecommunications assets in Australia: A report for Optus'. Competition Economists Group.

(2) Postmaster-General’s Department (PMG) (1960). Community Telephone Plan for Australia 1960. Melbourne: Postmaster-General’s Department.

(3) Amos, D.J. (1936). The Story of the Commonwealth Wireless Service. Adelaide: E.J. McAlister & Co.

(4) Green, F.J. (1976) Australian Broadcasting: A report on the structure of the Australian broadcasting system and associated matters. Melbourne: Postmaster-General's Department.

(5) Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (1976). Australian Broadcasting: A report on the structure of the Australian broadcasting system and associated matters: A critical appraisal. Milsons Point, NSW: Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters.

(6) Consumers' Telecommunications Network (1994). Raising the Standard: Ensuring consumer participation in telecommunications standards setting. Redfern, NSW: Consumers' Telecommunications Network.

Duct Structure is the Problem AND the Solution

Photo © Michelle McAulay, UC

Today I was fortunate enough to meet a cable laying crew and get a glimpse of what it is like to be at the coal-face of the broadband industry.

What struck me was the myth perpetuated by proponents of the NBN who pointed to the problems of the past where telegraph and telephone infrastructure were over-duplicated by competing firms.

Not much has changed today. Admittedly, the extent of duplication is not over-crowding the above-ground scenery as it may have in the past, but there is still plenty of duplication by private and government networks.

Given that cable-laying is considerably less labour-intensive than it was ten years ago (my knowledgeable companions explained how, using modern equipment, a crew of 3 to 4 workers today can do the work that 10 to 12 workers did ten years ago), the civil works - digging the trenches and laying duct - is the biggest cost factor, especially as the distance increases.

[A] high proportion of costs in [a new build] scenario that are due to Civil Works – 87% and 89% in the urban and suburban geotypes respectively. Duct sharing therefore presents a significant opportunity to reduce industry-level costs versus duplicative new build construction (CSMG 2010: 52).

In the UK, BT's Openreach appears to be addressing the issue of  sharing duct structure as an efficiency measure. Nonetheless, broadbanding Australia is a considerably bigger task than broadbanding the UK (which is only slightly bigger than Victoria).

Canada provides a better comparison, of course, but it has a long history of sharing infrastructure because of the cable television industry (CSMG 2010: 15). That is not to say that Canada has a fair and equitable history of infrastructure sharing, as facilities-based competition has shown. 

And while the CRTC has a mandate to ensure that communications providers, in particular incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), provide access to the duct structure, it has been proven that the CRTC does not to have jurisdiction over utilities infrastructure, even though this infrastructure could be used by municipalities to provide broadband services.

But given that the Australian industry has only really engaged in infrastructure sharing since the late 1990s (CSMG 2010: 11), getting access to the duct structure is still a relatively new game.

With all the attention focused on the NBN and its various arrangements to access Telstra's duct structure, a great deal of faith seems to be placed in NBN Co's ability to negotiate what is effectively a new idea in the sector. A simple solution appears to be the building of a comprehensive duct structure that encompasses all networks, including roads, rail and utilities.

Regrettably, the constitutional imperative forces the Commonwealth's hand every time, and we end up with control systems instead of communication systems. Nonetheless, the most obvious role for government is constructing and managing access to the duct structure and leaving businesses to connect the cables. With the NBN stalled yet again, we can't afford to ignore the obvious any longer.

Consequences of communications control-freaks: Wireless-less tragedy of the SS Yongala

SS Yongala, before 1911

It is difficult to wade through the history of communications technologies in Australia without entangling oneself in the weeds of technological nationalism. These promise glory, but for the uninitiated, tragedy lurks beneath their murky camouflage.

Despite the introduction of the Wireless Telegraphy Act in 1905, Australia was a wireless backwater for a decade longer than it should have been.

Before the introduction of the Wireless Act, it is quite clear that the Postmaster-General's Department (PMG) ‘wanted absolute control’ over wireless. However, from 1902 to 1910, the Australian Government deliberately delayed the introduction of wireless technologies in Australia (Moyal 1988: 110). And while the Australian Government was influenced by ‘a British post office hostile to Marconi’, it rejected a decade of offers from a variety of other companies including Telefunken and De Forest (Moyal 1988: 110).

Despite setting aside £10,000 in forward estimates to establish a coastal wireless service after the Marconi company conducted a demonstration of wireless telegraphy from Queenscliff, Victoria in 1906, nothing happened until the first coastal station was built at Melbourne's Domain in 1912.

But by then it was too late to prevent one of Australia's worst maritime disasters. The SS Yongala disappeared off the coast of Queensland during a cyclone in 1911. The most unfortunate part of the tragedy is that the ship was still in sight of land when a nearby signal station received a telegram warning of the cyclone but without a ship-to-shore wireless capability observers could only watch as the ship sailed into the storm (Maritime Museum of Townsville 2008).

The Australian Government was criticised for its cavalier attitude towards wireless but the control-freak nature of things didn't end there. Although a number of coastal wireless stations opened in Australia in 1912, the coastal station in Melbourne's Domain was established using what the Commonwealth claimed was its own equipment (Deloraine and Westbury Advertiser 1912: 1; Barrier Miner 1912: 3; Given 2010: 60.3-60.5).

It appears that the government went to extraordinary lengths to maintain complete control of the coastal wireless stations by attempting to avoid the use of the Marconi system. 

After an introduction in London, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher appointed John Balsillie, the Australian-born founder of the British Radiotelegraph Company, as the PMG’s engineer for radiotelegraphy.[1] Balsillie established twenty stations by 1915 (Cleland 1979), the first of which used his own ‘invention’.

The Barrier Miner (1912: 3) reported on the Commonwealth’s reluctance to reveal any details about the first coastal station in Melbourne:

The Commonwealth Government, in fitting up its wireless stations, is using what it claims to be a system of its expert (Mr. Balsillie). Nobody knows what this system is. The Commonwealth claims that it is one which does not infringe any existing patents, but in almost the same breath as this it was announced by the Postmaster-General [Charles Frazer] that if any other system was being pirated the Government would be prepared to make suitable reparation to the owners of the patents…

When the Melbourne station was opened certain persons connected with the wireless companies in Australia sought permission to inspect the plant with a view to seeing if it was really all that was claimed by the Postmaster-General. Mr. Frazer, however, declined to allow such inspection, at the same time reiterating his statement that no patents were being infringed.

The representatives of the Marconi company in Australia are not content to take the Postmaster-General's assurance about the exclusiveness of the system of his expert.

Further, the contracts to build the major coastal wireless stations at Sydney and Perth did not go to the Marconi system. Instead, these contracts were granted to Australasian Wireless Ltd, a Sydney firm with the patent rights to equipment developed by the German company Telefunken (Goot 1991).

A series of patent disputes with Marconi commenced in 1912 and the Commonwealth settled out of court with Marconi in 1915. In the meantime, Marconi's Australian operations had merged with Telefunken's Australian operations to form AWA.

By 1922, the Commonwealth entered into a public-private partnership by purchasing a bare majority in AWA (for £500,001) to extend the international beam wireless service. This arrangement would last for thirty years (sound familiar?) because neither the Commonwealth nor AWA had any idea how to dissolve it.

The arrangement also meant that the Commonwealth was locked into the radio broadcasting industry because, at the time of making the arrangement with AWA, it had been unable to guess what might have happened in the future.

None of this helped the 122 poor souls who lost their lives on the SS Yongala in 1911. The location of the wreck wasn’t confirmed until 1958.

But one can only imagine the helplessness felt by the lighthouse keeper on Dent Island as he ‘watched Yongala steam past into the worsening weather. It was the last sighting’, knowing full well that the technology to save them could have been installed nearly a decade earlier.

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[1] The Australian Government decided to use circuits designed by Balsillie exclusively in an attempt to avoid patent problems with Marconi (Goot 1991). However, the 'Balsillie System' of wireless telegraphy had been found to be ‘an infringement of the Marconi patent’ in 1911 (Cleland 1979).