IT's just not good enough

• Brad Howarth
• 28 May 2009
• Page 1 of 3 : single page

If you grew up with mono television, would you really understand why stereo was so much better until you heard it yourself? Or how about 5.1 surround sound?

The same analogy can be cast for much of Australia’s information infrastructure. We hear every day that our broadband fails to stack up in global terms, that our mobile charges are too expensive, and that there is no money to fund start-up companies, but do we really have it that badly?

Many of the things that we take for granted today – such as internet banking, mobile telephony and email – were barely known of just 20 years ago. All of them depend on a web of interwoven infrastructure, from internet standards to payment and billing gateways, right down to the networks they run on.

So let’s look at where it stacks up and falls down.

Broadband

Broadband networks have become a political football in Australia, to the detriment of consumers. But if broadband speeds and access are an important component of future competitiveness, the figures do not look good. According to numbers released by the OECD, in December 2007 Australia ranked 16th in number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants, with 4.83 million households connected.

The Government’s proposal is to contribute $4.7 billion to the construction of a national broadband network (NBN) using fibre technology that would provide download speeds of 12 Megabits/second or greater, to a minimum of 98% of Australian homes.

This makes it Australia’s largest single infrastructure investment; but according to an analyst with broadband comparison site Broadband Experts, Rob Webber, we are not alone in upgrading.

“In the US, president Obama has recently unveiled the first stages of plans to spend US$8 billion to improve broadband networks, while in the UK internet provider British Telecom has said it will invest £1.5 billion in a new high speed fibre optic network that could reach speeds of up to 100Mb,” says Webber.

Our Government’s proposed speed is laughable compared to commercial networks elsewhere in the world that look to be delivering speeds of 100 Mbits/second and beyond, and Webber says the UK already has 99% coverage, albeit within a smaller area.

However, he says the speeds and prices of Australian services are not too far out of line with global comparisons.

“Starting prices for home broadband in Australia and the UK are around $10 [a month] ranging up to $37 in the UK and $49.95 in Australia,” says Webber. “However, the Australian plans have strict download limits, unlike many of the UK plans. The US also offers unlimited broadband plans, but the speeds for the top five are comparatively slow compared with Australia and the UK at 1.5 – 6 Mbits/second for between $31 and $46. One US home broadband provider offered up to 20 Mbits/second, but the cost was $93 a month.”

In many parts of the world the deployment of high-speed networks has been by telecommunications carriers and coupled with services such as internet television, as a means of recouping their investment in direct challenge to cable television operators. In Australia, however, the largest telecommunications carrier also owns 50% of the cable television network, reducing the chances of a competitive challenge.

While the national broadband network rolls on, Telstra has announced that it is upgrading its hybrid fibre-coaxial network in Melbourne (the cable that carries Foxtel) to deliver speeds of 100 Mbits/second in time for Christmas 2009. The company says it will spend more than $300 million on upgrading the cable network this year.

Mobile networks

At the recent Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, it was hard to move without running into Telstra chief executive Sol Trujillo spruiking the upgrade of his company’s Next G network to deliver data at speeds of up to 21 Mbits/sec.

Telstra is the first company in the world to upgrade its network to this speed, and Trujillo has talked about taking it to speeds of 42 Mbits/second before the year’s end. Competitors have not been so quick to follow suit. Optus, for example, operates part of its network at 7.2 Mbits/second, but has not announced a roadmap to go faster.

Australia’s world-leading position is likely to be swiftly lost next year as operators elsewhere migrate to the next generation in mobile networks, based on a technology called Long Term Evolution (LTE ). Also known as ‘4G’, LTE promises speeds of well beyond 100 Mbits/second, and network operators in Japan, the USUS and Europe have begun discussing trials of the technology ahead of commercial deployments in 2010.

What we currently gain in performance, we lose in price. According to Webber, Australia has an expensive pricing regime for mobile data, with carriers usually charging high rates for usage above that cap. This contrasts to the US in particular, where many carriers offer unlimited data downloads. However, we do fare somewhat better in terms of mobile data speed than consumers in the US.

“Of the five best mobile broadband deals currently quoted on our Australian, UK and US websites, the UK offers the fastest speeds in its top five and the US offers the slowest selection currently,” says Webber. “The US mobile broadband costs are higher than the UK and Australia for much slower speeds.”

Computers in schools

A clear key component of Australia’s future is our ability to equip the next generation with the skills and tools they need to take advantage of the new opportunities that technology is delivering. The Digital Education Revolution has promised to get laptops into schools, but it is what students do with them that is critical.

Damian Anderson, the principal at consulting group Acceleration, believes that Australia’s K-12 eLearning content is up there with the most innovative in the world, thanks to ongoing investment at a state and federal level. He says Acceleration worked on the first state pilot of eLearning content creation in Tasmania around 1999 and then worked with the Le@rning Federation Initiative, which has spent approximately $250 million over seven years developing content, software infrastructure and skills to support the online delivery of learning to students in all states and territories.

“We have a fragmented curriculum structure [across states] and a socially and geographically diverse society, so our schools education sector has needed to find ways to use technology to engage kids in the classroom while managing the practical and political pressures,” says Anderson.

Competition for work in the future will be stiff, however, and the APAC education director at Adobe Systems, John Treloar, says Singapore and Malaysia both realised much earlier than Australia that a student needs 21st century tools across all areas.