The report, compiled by the Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) and released by the Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Senator Richard Alston, in Melbourne today, claims the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) "should be directed to monitor and report on progress in ensuring an open, competitive and interoperable broadband market".
The report notes that international and domestic peering arrangements are a significant issue for local broadband providers, especially as they (and other ISPs) bear the full carriage cost of data flows between Australia and the United States. Telstra now has Tier One status in the US and no longer has to pay to connect to major providers on the other side of the Pacific, but "that doesn't mean we're not still being screwed," said Alston. The report requests an ACCC investigation of domestic peering, which places a similar burden on some ISPs, and the Minister said he would encourage the ACCC to this address this matter "in the near term".
The BAG report recommends the federal government adopt a National Broadband Strategy - in cooperation with all levels of government and industry stakeholders - to ensure broadband "is available to all Australians at fair and reasonable prices".
BAG quoted consultancy Accenture as estimating that, if Australia adopts broadband as universally as the telephone over the next 25 years, it could reap economic benefits of between AU$12 and AU$30 billion per year.
"A policy of encouraging widespread broadband adoption could deliver accelerated economic value within years rather than decades," claims the report.
Senator Alston said at the launch that broadband "has an enormous capacity to transform our daily lives" and brushed off the issue of where Australia stands in broadband penetration relative to the rest of the world.
"I don't think it particularly matters if you're one, two or three [in the world]," he added.
"We've never had a national approach to broadband," said Bronte Adams, BAG chair and principal of Dandolo Partners. "The proof will be in the implementation, which will be a complex and challenging task."
Adams identified five threads to the 19 recommendations made in the report: a commitment to a national approach; attention to the effective use of broadband, not just take-up levels; a focus on what government can do, for example in education and research; a commitment to measurement and implementation; and a market emphasis.
The report states the government should "identify areas that are unlikely to receive services on a commercial basis as fair and reasonable prices within an acceptable timeframe" and consider initiatives to fill these holes if it would provide significant economic, security and social benefits. Such initiatives would primarily be focussed on rural and regional Australia.
All schools and educational facilities should be connected to broadband Internet, while priority should be given to establishing an Australian Research and Education Network which meets the domestic bandwidth requirements of higher end research in universities, according to the report.
The report also recommends the government give high priority to stimulating the digital content industries in Australia, by developing an effective digital rights management regime and encouraging a more flexible approach to the use of government's intellectual property.
Part of any review should include rigid and publicised levels of performance by infrastructure suppliers (primarily Telstra).
The Wollongong area for instance has had regular and consistent ADSL outages over the past couple of weeks. When effected companies request details regarding the outage from their suppliers, who are in many cases resellers of the Telstra infrastructure, the answer is that Telstra will not give them this information.
Notwithstanding the fact that this may be a problem with the reseller themselves (ie in not asking the right questions), the fact remains that a country's telecommunications infrastructure is one of its most strategic and vital assets. Any organisation with the stewardship of this asset should be made to be fully accountable to those companies reselling same, and ultimately, the end user.