ATUG focuses on broadband

Australia's future high-capacity communications capability and the role for fibre networks has been hijacked by the campaign to destroy regulation, ATUG managing director, Rosemary Sinclair told delegates to ATUG 2007 in her welcoming address.

According to Sinclair, the choice is presented as 'my way' or the 'byway'. In reality, Australia should be thinking and planning for fibre without accepting any argument that competition rules should be rolled back.

As the annual ATUG conference was in progress yesterday morning, the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced the Australian Broadband Guarantee, a new measure to ensure that all Australians have affordable access to a high-quality internet connection.

Under the Australian Broadband Guarantee, the government will commit almost $163 million to provide subsidised Internet access for Australians currently unable to gain a reasonable access to broadband service at their principal place of residence or small business.

The Prime Minister said, "The Australian Broadband Guarantee will provide a smooth transition to the $600 million Broadband Connect infrastructure program and broadband access for people in metropolitan, outer metropolitan and regional Australia who, for technical or geographical reasons, do not have broadband services at present. The $600 million Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program will establish an efficient, sustainable broadband network across regional Australia to enable the roll-out of higher speed internet."

The government has committed $1.1 billion to the total Connect Australia package and from June 2008 a further $2 billion from the Communications Fund will be available to enhance telecommunication services and to continue the Australian Broadband Guarantee.

Senator Stephen Conroy, Shadow Minister for Communications and IT, gave a hard-hitting speech about the government's lack of commitment to broadband and what Labor proposed. He said recent comments by Senator Helen Coonan, the Minister of Communications & IT, that no one in metropolitan Australia is complaining about broadband ignores the fact that Australia is ranked 25th in the world for available internet bandwidth and that the OECD ranks Australia 17th out of 30 countries surveyed for the take-up of 256 KBps entry-level broadband. And even worse, Australia's relative position has not changed from the previous year.

Conroy stipulated that Labor very much wants to see a national fibre to the node network rolled out in Australia.

The ACCC's chairman, Graeme Samuel talked about the fact that the country will have a high-speed broadband network but two simple questions have to be answered. These are: what form will the network take and who will own it?

All is not rosy in the New Zealand Telco land, reported Ernie Newman, chief executive of the telecommunication users group in NZ. He outlined a series of lessons and the first and most pertinent was: If there is a war between a phone company and a government, the government will eventually win.

Other speakers yesterday included Chris Chapman, Australian Communications & Media Authority, and Rhoda Holmes, general manager, key clients for Gen-I Australasia.

As usual, the highlight of the conference is the ATUG Awards, which were presented by Senator Stephen Conroy. ATUG also presented for the first time its National Awards for the Effective Use of Broadband which focus on ways to improve services in regional and rural areas and recognise that innovation is a key element to the value the industry delivers to end users. Winners in this category were: Mackay Sugar, Onsite Track Easy, City of Whittlesea and Kadina Medical Associates, South Australia.

The most prestigious award on the night is the Charles Todd Medal, which commemorates the achievements of the man who pioneered the overland telegraph from Adelaide to Darwin, the vital link that finally connected Australia to the world. The 16th winner of the Charles Todd Medal for Communicator of the Year was Professor Trevor Barr, director of Convergent Communications at Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, program leader for the User Environment at the Smart Internet CRC and consumer co-chair of Telstra's Consumer Consultative Council.

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