Rob Durie, executive director at the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), believes that the government needs to totally rethink its approach to datacasting.
-Companies were experimenting developing products relative to digital broadcasting and interactive broadcasting which wasn't directly related to free-to-air TV," Durie said.
He said he knew of several developers which were working in this area, but said many were losing jobs to foreign competitors. -This whole concept of datacasting just doesn't work," he said. -So we don't have any sympathy for the government and we think the sooner the government rethinks its whole approach to broadcasting the better."
He said the AIIA strongly disagreed with the original concept of datacasting. -There should be competition in digital broadcasting, just the same as there is in telecommunications and in other economic activities," Durie said. -As far as our industry is concerned, the restrictions on digital broadcasting can't be removed soon enough."
And other industry bodies agree.
Lynne Spender, executive director at the Australian Interactive Multimedia Association (AIMIA) said that if anything was going to open up the multimedia industry in Australia, it would be the reduction of restrictions in datacasting. Spender sees it as a way to -kick-start" the multimedia industry.
-Our view is there's absolutely no evidence that protecting the free-to-air broadcasting is going to effect the content industry anyway," she said. -It may well be that by opening up new innovative services via datacasting you'll kick start that genre."
Both AIMIA's Spender and the AIIA's Durie said their respective organisations would be making submissions to the Federal Department of Information Technology, although both have yet to be finalised.
Submissions about the issues paper covering the Review of the Operation of Schedule 6 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (Datacasting Services) close this Friday.
According to Senator's Alston's office, the review is aimed at making sure the legislative framework for datacasting services provide the maximum scope for development of new and innovative services, while maintaining the moratorium on new commercial TV licences.
During last year's federal election, the Government announced it would review datacasting early this year. The digital TV framework, which was passed at a federal level in 2000, required that datacasting services must differ from broadcasting in order to preserve the pre-2007 moratorium, designed to allow free-to-air television networks to make what is seen to be an expensive transition to digital.
