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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