Decentralised NBN Key to Unlocking the Potential of Our Regions

Photo taken on Black Mountain, Canberra by Michael de Percy - CC: BY-NC-SA

“Rolling in” the NBN from the bush to the city is good news for regional areas. Indeed, the trickle-down-effect has never really worked for “the bush” so the reversal of the NBN’s delivery approach is a promising sign of policy change.

With Australia’s coastal cities reaching crises in housing affordability, traffic congestion, over-population and a rapidly diminishing quality of life, the NBN “roll-in” provides a timely opportunity to reinvigorate our neglected regional areas. But is the “roll-in” just centralisation going backwards or an opportunity for decentralisation and therefore our regions to – dare I say it – move forward?

In comparison to other geographically large, wealthy, federal nations, Australia is one of the most highly centralised in terms of both governance and population concentration. For decades now, Australian policy makers have been focusing on the ways things are, rather than how they could be, and the regions have been paying the price with diminishing services leading to a vicious cycle of economic stagnation and ever-decreasing populations.

To make matters worse, whenever service delivery fails, the trend in policy responses has been to centralise responsibility with the federal government, whether it is healthcare, education, workplace relations or indeed telecommunications. Clearly, centralisation has not worked for our regions.

And centralisation has its cost. Centralisation tends to lead to systemic policy failures due to the overwhelmingly bureaucratic decision-making processes needed to ensure the monolith operates in a rational manner. This typically means that programs designed to deliver services wheel-spin in administrative expenditure for years before ever getting any rubber on the road. The Coalition’s Metropolitan Broadband Connect program was a good example where millions in administrative costs led to minimal outcomes in terms of improving services to citizens two years later. Put simply, centralisation does not make good economic sense.

Administrative expenses aside, there is also a human capital cost to centralisation which political parties are able to avoid right up until it is too obvious to ignore – often when major opportunities have already been lost. The trouble with human capital, particularly skills development, is that it is only noticeable when it is absent. For example, as more and more policy functions are centralised, Australian citizens have less and less access to policy processes. As citizens have less access to the policy process, they have less interest in participating.

A simple example of poor policy participation was the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee consultation I attended in Sydney a few years ago. It’s a no-brainer to guess how many regional citizens were able to attend a consultation on regional issues held in Sydney. Focus groups don’t overcome the problem either, and the recent election outcome is clear evidence that focus groups simply don’t work for successful policy formulation.

Further, with centralisation, policy actors become increasingly organised and specialised, leaving less room for the ordinary citizen to be involved. This is already a problem for local political representation, where the federal government’s constitutional responsibility for telecommunications means that only federal representatives have any real impact on policy.

NBN Co, when it was first established, started looking for a “headquarters”. But whenever there is a choice to be made between “Sydney or the Bush”, the original intent of the old Aussie saying holds true – nobody really wants to be in the bush unless they’re reminiscing over a Paterson or Lawson classic.

In the end, citizens lose faith in their political representatives and become disenfranchised. Any hope of harnessing the nation’s human capital is then lost and bureaucrats are left to struggle away, delivering one project at a time to “customers” who probably would have chosen a different “supplier” if they had a choice. In essence, central systems are too slow and can only deliver one solution to a myriad of problems. Governments are generally bad at this as the Coalition rightly suggested, but their model – “NBN 3.0” - was stuck in centralisation-mode, too.

It seems that the only way the bush was ever going to get a broadband Guernsey was via the independents. There is simply no way a “roll-in” of the NBN would have happened if the Gillard Government could govern in its own right. But must it be centrally delivered?

The NBN “roll-in” provides an opportunity for economic stimulus and to develop human capital in the regions. A decentralised “roll-in”, harnessing the skills, knowledge and political clout of all sectors of the community (including local government) to address the modern communications needs of our regions will enable multiple “roll-ins” and ultimately faster deployment of the NBN. Granted, decentralisation can lead to sporadic failure in some instances, but it will certainly alleviate the current eight year wait for Australians to officially join the information revolution.

A quick look at Canada and the United States shows that regional development and decentralisation tend to go hand-in-hand. Neither country has a single national solution for broadband, yet both outperform Australia in both regional prosperity and connectivity.

Right now is the time for a new approach to regional development and service delivery, and only the federal government has the jurisdiction to make it happen. If we know anything so far, it is that the centralised model just doesn’t work.

Decentralisation is the key to unlocking the potential of our regions while making life in both “Sydney and the Bush” just that little more bearable.

NBN 3.0? Lessons from an Arabian Broadband Experience

Broadbanding the Nation: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Photo by Michael de Percy CC: BY-NC-SA)

From Photo Gallery

Is NBN 3.0 a feasible alternative?

Regardless of the politicking behind broadband policy, there has been little discussion about what is needed and why we need it in terms of broadband outcomes. Labor's NBN promises vast coverage of fibre-optic cable (effectively replacing the copper network currently owned by Telstra) and very high speed broadband (100 mbps) with a handful of hard-to-reach places served by satellite and wireless. The Coalition is promising to do what they did for more than a decade which got us into our broadband woes in the first place. But now there appears to be a third option: NBN 3.0.

Rather than repeat what has already been written, details on the Alliance for Affordable Broadband's NBN 3.0 provided by independent technology journalist Renai Lemay are available here.

There has been some speculation about using wireless technologies in lieu of a fibre-optic NBN. Here I draw on some experiences in a country with mostly Wimax services to argue that these technologies can provide an adequate user experience for household users.

An Arabian Wimax Experience

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a small, non-oil producing, mostly land-locked country in the Middle East, bordering Israel in the west, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the east, and Syria in the north. With a population of some 6 million people, Jordan is home to many ancient wonders and sites of significant historical and religious importance.

Comparing Australia to Jordan is inherently unfair: Australia's GDP per capita is some 13 times more than that of Jordan. But when it comes to access to broadband, my personal experience is that Jordanians - if they can afford it - have access to better services.

In Palmerston via Gungahlin, in full view of the flag atop Parliament House, it really doesn't matter how much money you have. Out of frustration with ADSL, I now have a Wimax connection (and a two-year contract) which at least gives me adequate speeds during peak times but it costs $110 per month. The trouble is I am limited to 10GB of downloads per month - regardless of how much I am willing to pay for additional data.

While in Jordan, I experienced an ADSL connection in Amman, the captial, which worked fine (once we upgraded the ageing modem). Just about every Western cafe and fast food joint had free wifi for customers - again no problems. In the south, I experienced blistering Wimax speeds while staying at a dive centre, and a similar service closer to the centre of Aqaba, Jordan's only port city on the Red Sea.

The dive centre's download limit was regularly blasted by a few guests who insisted on watching videos online. This created a bit of havoc when I tried to help out the crew with some web page changes and a workshop on using Facebook to market the business. But it was a simple phone call to the supplier and 1 Jordanian dinar (about AUD $2) per gigabyte of additional download - and that was it. Try doing that with your typical Aussie plan!

Implications for NBN 3.0

So what does this quick comparison mean for NBN 3.0?

First, it means that Australia's broadband services are poorer than those provided in less well-off developing nations.

Second, it means that Wimax technologies can deliver adequate broadband experiences to the typical household user.

Third, it means that there may be some merit to NBN 3.0.

But is wireless good enough?

Let me put it this way - if I was being operated on by a surgeon receiving instructions from a specialist via a Wimax connection, I'd be pretty worried. Satellite would be even scarier. And if I was in the middle of an online university test using my connection here in Palmerston via Gungahlin, I'd be quite worried about the connection dropping out (as it does regularly) and my complaints about my Net connection would get the "my dog ate my paper" treatment. Or worse, my light-weight download limit would be blasted by 2 weeks worth of online learning and then I would be stuck until the next month. Students in the UK simply don't have this problem because capped plans are the exception not the rule.

So while there is some merit in the less-fibre NBN 3.0 option, I think it will be a missed opportunity for Australia if we don't get the NBN promised by Labor. Having said that, I would rather have a Jordanian broadband experience than a Palmerston via Gungahlin fraudband experience any day, so NBN 3.0 sounds better than what we have now.

Why I wish Turnbull was still Opposition Leader

Malcolm Turbull supported a *real* approach to climate change, he is not a hardcore boat-people-kicker, and he knows a thing or two about the value of high-speed broadband. I wish Turnbull was opposition leader so I would have a real choice this election. But instead, I have a choice between Dumb and Dumber.

It doesn’t matter who gets in at this election – Australia’s broadband future is well and truly stuffed. Whether you vote for Dumb or Dumber really won’t make a difference.

Australia could get a high-speed and far-reaching National Broadband Network censored by the Central Party in Canberra. Alternatively, the nation will have unrestricted access to the Net but on the tired old network provided by the same private sector that has never really had a reason to invest the necessary billions in the infrastructure. For years, the Coalition kept throwing consumer subsidies at businesses under a variety of names, only to see most of the money disappear in administrative costs with no improvement in connectivity.

If we don’t choose the Central Party option, then we will be returning to the dark decade of Howard’s Luddite regime. Only this time you won’t be able to blame it on the old dears and their lack of understanding of how this Internet thingy all works. But rest assured they will have a new name for the same schemes they used during their last reign.

People who question the value of high-speed broadband in Australia really need to wake up and smell the coffee. If you think Australians are anywhere near their counterparts in the rest of the developed world in terms of Web 2.0 skills (and this includes e-commerce), then you are kidding yourself. The lack of broadband access has simply crippled our skills development.

Why is it so?

There are two reasons why Australia has been so complacent about new communications technologies: 1) The myth of the digital native; and 2) Australian governments have done it this way since the time of the telegraph.

First, let’s look at the myth of the digital native. All hitherto Australian communications policy is based on the myth that digital natives will just pick up all this Internet stuff once they have access to it.

But as we approach a decade or more where our young people have not had real access to broadband services, the skills-gap between Australian workers and those offshore is huge.

I should know. I have been using Web 2.0 technologies in university classrooms with young Australians for a few years now. These same young Australians pick up the skills pretty quickly once they learn, but getting them started can be quite the uphill battle.

Over the years, some of my students have said that my approach to teaching is “left-field”, only to find out later that their friends in the US and Japan have been using blogs and wikis in the classroom for about ten years now. And yes, overseas students do this even in high school. But try implementing Web 2.0 technologies in Australian high school classrooms and see how long you last. The bureaucracy will hunt you down.

It is quite clear that young Australians engage with modern communications technologies. But this engagement is all about entertainment and it has nothing to do with productive work. I wish I could understand why workplaces are so reluctant to engage with Web 2.0 applications. You only have to use a wiki instead of a face-to-face meeting to develop a team document and you can see in two seconds how much more productive we could be if everyone knew how to use this stuff.

And this brings me to another point. Why is it only the ALP who bothered with the NBN? If any of the Liberals (or even the Nationals) knew how much more productive the minions would be if they could use Web 2.0 technologies, there would not be a single right-wing politician opposing the NBN. After all, they want to get as much out of each employee for the least cost possible. If only they knew.

But the really big question is why? Why do we do it this way here in Australia?

The answer is simple: we have always done it this way.

The first telegraph system was brought to Australia by Samuel McGowan, a Canadian who had studied under Morse. He thought he could become a rich businessman by bringing a new technology to Australia, much like he had seen the entrepreneurs do in North America. McGowan could not have been more wrong.

Colonial governments refused to let the private sector own the infrastructure. Indeed, the first private sector telegraph network was demolished by the colonial government of South Australia. The businessman who set up the network was promptly warned that only government could own the infrastructure. It never really happened again until the late 1980s when the Australian government said that maybe Optus could own a few phone lines.

But the thing that keeps happening is that Australia persists in locking itself into decades-long commitments to a particular technology – and always because government says so. And, ironically, always because the introduction of newer technologies was delayed by government for far too long in the first place.

So much so that by the 1950s, Australia was still relying on the telegraph long past its use-by date. Implementation of that horrible new instrument, the telephone, had rightly been delayed in Sydney by at least twenty years. Imagine the dilemma if we had spent a great deal of money on the telephone only to see a new technology replace it in the future? Besides, we had a perfectly good telegraph network up until 1968.

Don’t get me started on FM radio, colour television, pay TV or Government 2.0. But if you compare Australia’s use of electronic communications technologies with a similar country like Canada, you can see the trend quite clearly. Australia is slow to implement new technologies. Consumers might take them up pretty quickly, but we are always slow in comparison to the other advanced economies.

Australia simply waits too long before adopting new communications technologies, and then adopts the new technology via a government-led catch-up that is so big we have to wait decades to receive the return on investment from the initial outlay.

It isn’t about a lack of will on the part of the Australian people. Australians want these new technologies but the historical control-freak nature of Australian governments just slows the whole process down. In the meantime, Australians are not learning how to use these new technologies, so we are always behind the 8-ball.

Sure, the NBN will fix a bad situation, but then adding a Net Filter to it is just plain crazy talk.

And then how long will it be before we find ourselves in another communications technology crisis? Will we sit around waiting for the government to “rescue” us once again?

Decentralisation and enabling combinations of business, local council and community solutions to our broadband woes is the key - a key that government refuses to consider.

With a choice between Dumb and Dumber this election, you can rest assured that in a few decades time, we will have a new “future-tech” drama just like the one we have now. Either way, things are not looking good for Australia’s broadband future.

If only Malcolm was still Opposition Leader...

Photo courtesy of Melburnian.