To whom it may concern,
Background: I am an engineer, and have worked in the Telecommunications industry for the past 11 years.
(a) the current and prospective levels of competition in broadband services, including interconnection and pricing in both the wholesale and retail markets;
From a retail perspective, and as a consumer, the main broadband operators that I know of, off the top of my head, are Telstra and SingTel. I feel that the other operators, even though the communications industry has supposedly been deregulated, the smaller broadband providers will find it difficult to provide services as they either
(a) Don't have the capital to put in there own network
(b) Have to depend on the 2 key operators.
Hence, I see a duopoly situation. In this cases, and these cases in general, the consumer has to pay a premium. Hence, Telstra's recent comments that they are making money on broadband. They have had decades of government subsidisation to put in a massive infrastructure to be able to provide broadband services. Adding the broadband is a minimal cost compared to the network they have in place that has previously been subisdised by taxpayers.
I am considering geting broadband, on either cable or ADSL, but believe it is about $80 per month which is too much for my budget. Considering I am singlae and in the top income bracket, I find it hard to see how the average consumer can afford broadband services.
(b) any impediments to competition and to the uptake of broadband technology;
(i) Yes - Telstra and SingTel have a duopoly, thus effectively locking out other Telcos and service providers (whether they have their own networks or are resellers). i.e. Primus, PowerTel, etc.
(ii) Broadband Technology will only be taken up by regular consumers if it is:
(a) Understood. What is it? Why would I want it? What can I do with it? etc.
(b) Competitively priced. i.e. $40 per month. In addition, it should be offered in public places and also for travellers. i.e. at airports, hotels, etc. 'Hot spots' where business travellers frequent. This also raises the questions as to why WI-FI (802.11) has minimal coverage, and publicity in Australia. Having just come back from the US and currently in Singapore, it is like Australia is living in the dark ages......
These 2 points need to be seriously considered on how they will be addressed by the government.
(c) the implications of communications technology convergence on competition in broadband and other emerging markets;
Communications technology is converging and all systems will be based on data (even voice - which will be over IP). Again, unless the competition can gain access to reasonably priced broadband services, which should be decreasing as technology evolves, then it will be very difficult for them to resell. In terms of putting in infrastructure, I can only see the non duopoly telcos providing broadband services in certain areas (i.e. places that are profitable - like the city.....or places where affluent and computer literate people are located or transit through).
Emerging Markets - In Australia, or overseas??? I don't think the second part of the question is well phrased.
(d) the impact and relationship between ownership of content and distribution of content on competition; and
Good Question. This is similar to other forms of media such as TV or newspapers. If a media magnate or the government got hold of the ownership of content and distrbution, this could potentially result at worst case to put Australia back decades, and create an environment where the public is only told what the owners (whoever they may be - private/public) want them to hear, this would in severely jeopardise the Freedom of Information and Free Speech Act.
With respect to competition, I believe the two (content and distribution) should be mutuallly exclusive so as to create a healthy competitive environment. Unlike a similar situation in the US where Rupert Murdoch owns both the content and distribution. He could be feeding them propaganda for all we know?
So, as Telstra and SingTel have the Lion's share of the ownership of the distribution, it would be totally unreasonable for them to be able to own any of the content. The two should be mutually exclusive. This should facilitate a reasonably level playing field provided it is properaly arbitrated by the ACCC.
(e) any opportunities to maximise the capacity and use of existing broadband infrastructure.
I don't know what the current capacity of the current broadband infrastructure is but I would imagine that both the wireline and wireless infrastructures are fairly underutilised. The only issues I have heard of wrt congestion are on cable, if there are a 'significant' number of users in a broadbeand dense area.
Opportunities to maximise the capacity are always there, but as is ususally the case, the bottom line is economic drivers. So, to maximise capacity costs money. Telcos usuallyonly invest in increasing the capacity when the exisiting capacity runs out,as it typically costs money to increase capacity. Take the GSM900 mobile network as an example, there are certain hot spots where there congestion is likely to occur. This is usually related to certain events in time i.e. Friday peak traffic in the city, an event such as the Grand Prix, Grand Final, etc. Typically additional measures can be taken to temporarily increase capacity which to Telstra's credit was done extremely well during the Olympics (as an example). In wireless broadband, currently in Australia we have very high data transmission rates available on the Hutchison 3G network ( up to 0.5 Mbit/s), the Telstra CDMA Network (100 kbit/s) and much higher in future(up to 2 Mbit/s), and so on. For non-wireless, I believe we currently get approximately 0.5 Mbit/s over ADSL, and no reason why this couldn't reach up to 2 Mbit/s now......
The end user is only interested in running applications. For the non-educated end-user they will wonder why the network is slow or be happy when it is fast. Also wonder why their connection dropped - especially on a stable wireline network. There will always be bottlenecks from and end-user to a service provider, despite having an extremely fast Broadband connection at the users end; i.e. if there is congestion on a website.
I hope the above comments assist in improving the broadband infrastructure in Australia for all users, and also assist in making Australia a 'Technology Smart Country'. Referring back to my initial points, education of people on broadband, and accessibility at an affordable price should help in achiveing these goals.
Best Regards,
Jamie
James Nichols
Wireless Operations
Asia Pacific( DID: 61 (0)3 8866 4684
( ESN: 640 4684
) Mob: 61 (0)427 825 522
( Switchboard: 61 (0)3 8866 4646
2 Fax: 61 (0)3 8866 4644
+ <mailto:jamesn@nortelnetworks.com>Address:
126 Noone St, Clifton Hill, VIC, 3068.