Matthew Allen

I recently organised a symposium at Curtin University entitled Broadband in Society: International Perspectives and Research Challenges. The symposium was held to mark the formation of the BroadBand Research Team, involving several international researchers all with a particular interest in the social and policy dimensions of emering high-capacity, fast broadband networks such as Australia’s National Broadband Network.

My presentation, entitled Broadband in Australia: commonplace but why? considers the extent and significance of the Internet connectivity in this country, especially since most people have some kind of a broadband connection, and also looks at the importance of understanding the relationship between mobile and fixed connectivity.

I recently attended an excellent presentation by Catherine Middleton at the Australian Media Traditions conference at which she discussed the contradictory positions of the Government and the NBN Co on the way in which we might understand the difference that the National Broadband Network will make. Her paper was entitled, “Have We Ever Needed a Killer App? What could the NBN learn from the 1990s?”. Here are some notes, with a few asides from me.

Middleton begins by reminding us of the importance of the rhetoric of the “killer application” in the policies and plans of broadband development. She notes that, often, this “killer app” is located in the future, still to arrive but promised or imagined.

Broadband networks were initially understood as delivering content to people in a manner like television; but the alternative perspective which Middleton’s research has clearly demonstrated is that the broadband is a network – in effect, broadband is its own killer application, infrastructure to enable connectivity and user-based activity. Her problem is that the Autralian government promotes the NBN as infrastructure, as a network, but the NBN Co is building a model which implies content delivery.

Recounts the history of trials for broadband in the mid-1990s in the USA which concentrated on interactive TV, TV on demand and so on – these trials were seen as failures (as Time Warner concluded, however, the failure was one of the economics – insufficient demand to justify the investment). Killer application blurs with ‘compelling content’ – that the content is the application. However, as Middleton discovered, the story being told by the individuals connecting was different to that of the providers. The providers had not understood exactly what connectivity would do – evident in the reflections of providers who were ‘surprised’ by the importance of email. Another perspective was a provider saying it was ‘arrogant’ to assume that people want information pushed at them.

This resonates with my own arguments relating to the different understandings of how the Internet might ‘arrive’: telecommunications and media providers were strongly oriented towards a model of the Internet in which they, not users, played the determining role. In fact, the Internet as it developed, relocated the power to determine utility to the user. The internet that I claim was ‘the future-in-the-present’ was precisely a network where users’ social interconnectivity through information exchange was the primary experience of network connectivity

Middleton emphasises how content is central … but not as a given, as a contested space about the economics of exploiting content – who creates it, who circulates it and who benefits from it. Providers, not surprisingly, saw themselves as the owners of the only legitimate content.

Equally, I believe, telecommunications companies did not understand that communication would be textual, distributed and not real-time circuit-switched.

Middleton returns to the NBN, noting how the current rhetoric of the NBN is similar to that the 1994 Broadband Services Expert Group

I would add that of the 2001 report on Broadband]. It therefore implies that there is something of a return to the past, a recouping of the ideals which had first inspired the BSEG and similar thinking: but which was never realised through both failures of infrastructure development but more importantly the success of the Internet as it actually developed.

The government rhetoric is that broadband is understood as an investment in services, as an infrastructural multiplier of the investments in other areas (health, education) – that the NBN will leverage that investment, just as those investments also make the NBN sensible. The NBN cuts costs, but also improves outcomes. But, the rhetoric from elsewhere, often read off the plans of the NBN Co but also through the retail service providers’ assumptions, is a re-invention of the plans from early 2000s for the high-speed Internet as telephones and television via IP.

I would probably add a third perspective: I am not entirely sure that the ‘infrastructure’ model from the Government is that different to the content/communications model of the NBN Co which mimics the roll-out of cable for cable TV. This third perspective is that of users who are not currently connected; or which connection that maximises the immediacy and distribution within the home of connectivity – effectively more connectivity. In essence, the challenge is that the size of the investment does not match the perceived benefits of connectivity.

Essentially, Middleton concludes that there is a disconnection between the policy and developmental rhetoric (Government and NBN Co). She notes the difficulties of the current political climate within which the Opposition is critical of the NBN precisely because there is no compelling story about the difference that this massive (and world-leading) investment will make.

Middleton argues that the pay-tv approach might be the ‘leader’ to get people connected who then will discover all the other things that can be done online. But in Australia may not work because there is a significant number of people who have chosen not to connect for Pay TV.

Ultimately, Middleton concludes, there needs to be a new way of thinking about the way broadband is understood, outside of the competing rhetorics of ‘content delivery’ and ‘social infrastructure’.

In questions, Middleton makes the excellent point that the political messages needed to manage the contests over the NBN are simple and simplistic: that the faster speed justifies the investment.

(Comments and ideas from session at Broadband Summit)

The MCEECDYA Program of reporting, National Assessment Program: Information and Communication Technology Literacy, provides evidence about the literacy of students. The 2008 report, not yet available publicly, shows that students in Years 6 and 10 of Australian schooling are not involved in a lot of “creating, analysing, and transforming” of information via online tools (what I would term cognitive uses of the web) and are primarily interested in using the net for chatting and searching for information. It will be interesting to compare this report (which is clearly in the social media period – 2008) with the previous report, from 2005.

Discussion of research infrastructure: main question – what is the interface with NBN given that the emerging Australian research network is already a lot faster and so on than the NBN? I am wondering if this is relevant to NBN – in the same way thet BHP Billiton builds its specialised network, so too would the Australian research community. It perhaps suggests that we need to be thinking about ‘networks’ not just the NBN.

An excellent presentation of problems in school:
Six key points

• Old models + new tech not solution

• No leveraging of open systems
• Risk management needed (not risk aversion)
• Personalised learning
• Costs are increasing
• importance of gatekeeping

See how the problem set is formed at the intersection of multiple domains of control and expertise – technologists, managers, teachers all work at different angles to the central problem and sometimes don’t have sufficient interaction. (Raju Varanasi – good presentation, from NSW Centre for Learning Innovation). And, the solution to this interaction matter is policy. Infrastructure is not the issue – it is policy.

A summary of the ‘reality check’ on digital education. The reality check is: don’t focus on the technology, think policy, professional development, cultures of use, legal matters AND students themselves. Technology gets in the way, if it is made the centrepiece; it should be invisible.

“the problem with students is that their life and learning will be going down a different [digital network] track” – they will choose this path because it is part of themselves and identity, so if schools don’t change students will not be engaged. (Watson, The Learning Federation)

Education is a very contested zone of debate since it involves the attempt to manage the future very directly by creating the people OF the future (our school students). Visions, hopes and fears get played out through the way people characterise the school system. Moreover, education is one of the remaining obvious places where the experts tend to be derided (teachers vs parents, bureaucrats). It is also a place where control strategies get explored and demanded, principally on the basis of the failure of children to be adult enough.

(This session doesn’t report on speakers directly but provides comments, summaries and ideas)

Realising Our Broadband Future
digital education stream

Very large bandwidth to big school, computers for everyone, digital resources are the focus (Moo, CIO, NT)

Watching a terrible Microsoft glossy promo video: does this company not realise how bad these things look? Sure, it’s a ‘vision’ not reality, but what it assumes is a class infrastructure – 100% middleclass. Plus the sort of ‘perfection’ they imagine for devices and software is, to be honest, just a wee bit farfetdched given M’Soft’s record on such things. Oh wait, maybe this is a glimpse into the 23rd century.

Part of the problem here is that technologists assume (as always) that the technology solves the problems. That the technology is what’s missing to make education better. Equally, there is a kind of rationalist determinism here, too, hidden in the technological determinism: computer science sees the problems as ones of knowledge and information and data, that there is always a rational answer to a human need which will appear, in the modern mode, if only it can be addressed.

Equally, some of the Microsoft hyperbole fails to account for the way teachers have already implemented the underlying pedagogic and other ideas which are apparently ‘allowed’ by technology, without that technology. Clearly, some technologies improve and extend and make easier some pedagogic approaches, but the experimentation comes from the teachers and students in action, from which a technology need emerges.

There continue to be significantly outdated ideas about education from many people, especially senior bureaucrats and technologists. These people imagine education is like it used to be. However education has moved on and some of the problems which the technology is meant to solve have already been solved or are simply not there any more. At the same time, some problems remain – systemic problems caused by time, space, age of children, the nature OF the system. These problems might be better seen as problems of the school system itself – they cause technology to ‘fail’ because technology is not designed for such uses. (NSW CIO of Ed talks about hotswappable computers if it breaks, just have another).

Schooling has to include, for many good social reasons, the collocation of people into places at specific times. This should not be forgotten. But the Internet, when fast enough and wide enough, enables those locations to connect to other locations in a manner that allows distributed activities to solve scale and reach problems (Hagen, CIO, Qld Education). “Build the damn thing and get out of the way”.

Certain issues, like health and education, are framed by political debate to demand attention to equity and equality of access and opportunity, especially where they relate to the spatial location of users etc. From some perspectives, innovation almost demands inequality – it has to be leading edge and thus mostly unaccessible, not usable or apparently not relevant to the majority. From the teachers’ perspective – the innovation comes from below and thus the system’s insistence on equity impedes.

I also reflect on the way education is seen as being in a problematic state – falling behind some presumed state of required competence in, learning through and exploitation of digital connectivity. Asking if broadband infrastructure can solve this, or similar, doesn’t really ask the right question. The problems is as much caused by the ‘transitional state’ we all live in – caught between pre-digital and digital worlds; our awareness of this transitional state is as much the cause of ‘the problem’ as problems themselves. This does not mean we need do nothing: but first we need to recognise what the real problems are.

Realising our broadband future
Disclaimer: Liveblogging

Second session of the 2009 Australian Govermment summit on broadband, http://broadbandfuture.gov.au, featuring Craig Mundie (Microsoft), Vint Cerf and David King (Google), Samantha Hannah-Rankin (Auspost), Nick Gruen (Gov 2.0).

Mundie, Microsoft

Broadband access is not simply about infrastructure but also inspiring social and economic innovations. Discusses the way devices are going to change and become embedded in our everyday life, through user interfaces involving gestures, facial signals and so on – “entirely new relationship between computers and people… pervasive and intuitive system that works on your behalf”. [A relatively underwhelming piece of gee-whizzery]

Vint Cerf, Google and Father of Internet

Investment in NBN needs to be carefully managed – not just edge connectivity, but more impact at core and the backhaul. Cerf emphasises the importance of end-to-end principle and the requirement to avoid constraints within the system once a person gets access. Cerf calls it “permissionless innovation”. Also bear in mind that we need to help people to see why they should use the new ideas which might flow, potentially, from the new infrastructure. Cerf comments on the lack of competition within the USA – Australia’s approach is “quite stunning” in separating the network from the services. “new kinds of competitive applications” can emerge without constraints. Cerf notes that high-speed widespread networks enable Australia to connect economically much more easily with the rest of the world, not just within Australia. Ponders that there might be multiple and different fibres passing or near premises. Cerf sees this as a benefit, not a problem.

David King, Google (You Tube)
Why talk about YouTube in this kind of forum? Great case study of what more bandwidth can do. YT is good for culture and politics, media and moneymaking. Note the importance of link to other technologies – cameras are cheaper now, easier.

YT is growing steadily. Example of business link: marketing of music via videos. But, more than that, YT creates new business – people want to put music into their OWN videos and the originator of the music shares in the revenue when this happens, as well as adverts to sell. Example: home film maker puts short demo up on YT, ends up getting major studio contract to turn demo into real film.

Reach: – global audience like no other platform (eg Sarah Boyle 300 million views = #1 on album charts)
Rights: – scalable, automated, choice-laden system for video management (inlcluding archive of video!)
Research: – people can understand who and when and where people watch videos. (e.g. Mr Bean popular in Saudi Arabia, discovered this via YT)
Revenue: – 38% of media consumed online, 9% of ad revenue

Hannah-Rankin, Australia Post
AusPost view – NBN establishes capacity for digital services the same as traditional postal analog services (security, confidence, etc of communication). Need to establish familiarity among consumers and services so they know why and how to use NBN. Auspost is about equality of access.. everyone can use it; trying to bring a similar apporoach into the future via the NBN.

H-R claims we move from massification from customisation, classic link of postmodernity and IT as the sequel to modernity.

[H-R utilises standard language re interoperability, unlocking potential value, confidence, synergy and so on: this is part of the problem. The language of 'IT implementation' is not the language of politics, culture or real business, even though we depend ON that language]

“Compelling consumer-centric solutions”

Gruen

Simple definition of Web 1.0 – email and website (point to point) – vs Web 2.0 – multi-channel and networks. Emphasises that Web 2.0 is NOT fancy technology. What broadband brings is “higher speeds and ubiquity”. What is Web 2.0? “I’s about culture change” (Draws on O’Reilly).

See The Government 2.0 Taskforce reports at : http://gov2.net.au/

• Collaborate
• Improvise
• Share
• Play
• users build value
• be modular
• Build for value, monetise later

- this stuff makes government VERY nervous.

Before 2000, Gruen says as an economist, that he thought governments built public goods. But, in Web 2.0, the private sector builds public goods [well, you might say THAT about the internet!]. So government needs to catch up to this approach.

“Organisation without organisations”

“low-cost social formations”

“low-cost experimentation and startup”

“turbocharge the market for reputation”

Key point – identity needs to be STABLE. We don’t need to know WHO you are, we need to know you are the same person you were before and will be in future. And, once we start to get identity stable, online, then reputation can be built, attached to identity

A final key point from Gruen re Government 2.0 work: it’s about data, of which we have masses, visualised in new ways, leading to understanding, acceptance and so on. I would add that the visualisation and management of data involves the need for lots of bandwidth – which further provides an reason for NBN not previously or commonly discussed.

Brad Wearn, CIO BHP
Presents case study on BHP Billiton’s use of broadband comms within their massive Pilbara operation. Straightforward discussion of infrastructure re railroad control system. Like a mini version of NBN since it includes fixed and mobile.

Commentary

An array of presentations, all of which appear to be part-advertisement for the the business behind them, part advertisement for the possibilities of broadband, and show a diversity of ways of addressing the possible audience. Microsoft: a smoke and mirros performance that owes more to science fiction than the realities of social change; YouTube: a presentation that embodies why YT is successful – clear and precise and in the language of the audience; Australia Post: presentation laden with biz-speak from the IT sector which, fundamentally, is a plea for relevance from a threatened organisation…or is that too harsh?

Gruen is such a literate and capable analyst of and proponent of Web 2.0 and its relationship with governance. His linking of the economics of public goods to the development of Web 2.0 style architectures and systems (the private is the public, reversing the way that the public tried to become private) is critical to grasping the entry of the internet into mainstream. Many internet commentators have been saying for years that the internet is explicable as privately created and owned public goods; now this idea enters the mainstream. He also is fearless to utilise the government’s own failings (eg in copyright of goivernment documentation) to demonstrate the change needed.

It is often difficult to extract from the presentations the precise reason why they speak to the need for NBN, except insofar as the NBN achieves some other aspects of Internet accessibility rather than the obvious one of speed. In fact, they are starting to suggest to me that the emphasis on speed is irrelevant – it’s about access, first of all; it’s about reliability and soiphistication in the infrastructure; it’s about competition to drive services, not supply of access; it’s about the transition to the ‘ubiquitous utility’ model. Sure, speed matters in relation to some aspects, but there are deeper cultural matters here.

Should we also be considering the diversity of uses as including fundamentally different things? There is a strong move at the moment to try and aggregate many kinds of use (games, business services, ehealth etc) into a single whole – similar to the claim of the entirety of “social computing” in recent EU report – to claim the need for NBN. But, realistically, we know the Internet is now like a road system with 100s of lanes, moving in concert but sometimes not interconnected – it’s not a single superhighway but a dense twisted set of layers and tunnels and so on. From a technical perspective, no problem with aggregated; from a selling / managing perspective – we need multiple messages to different kinds of users. (Comment sparked by Wearn’s comment re latency).

Realising our broadband future
Disclaimer: Liveblogging

Opening session of the 2009 Australian Govermment summit on broadband, http://broadbandfuture.gov.au, featuring Kevin Rudd, Mike Quigly (NBN) and Jeffrey Cole (Annenburg, USC).

Paul Twomey, ICANN, opens the forum: “we are using Web 2.0 tools throughout the forum” to encourage particiation both at the event and elsewhere. Stephen Conroy, Min DBCDE welcomes delegates: plenty of hype around the critical importance of NBN

Kevin Rudd, PM
(Full text of speech)
Economic strategy is a key point: for today and the future. The NBN is linked to that strategy. Rudd frames the summit by reminding us of the global financial crisis. Describes the NBN as “core infrastructure” for the new century like rail (19th) and roads (20th). Links the NBN to sustainability, but also emphasises health and education and the advantage for all Australians.

“The reality is that our current broadband…is not up to scratch”; “slow broadband is holding us back” “Australians want fast broadband”. Uses the rhetoric of international competition “we are even behind the Slovak Republic”. Notes 18 failed plans for broadband in 12 years before the Rudd Government elected. “This is like building the Snowy Mountain Scheme, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the national road network” – it’s about confidence in the future. “It is a massive task”. It is the work of government, because of this fact.

Potential to “transform our economy”, “transform many aspects of our lives”. Fast broadband is the answer to global communication, to regional disadvantage, to 24/7 businesses, to enabling advantages throughout Australia. “Plug our nation fully into the global economy”. It’s about addressing challenges in the future – climate change, ageing, city congestion. “Our national broadband policy is not just about communications policy…It is about the whole way government meets the needs of people”. Emphasises in particular greenhouse gas reduction, principally through telepresence technology to reduce travel; also smart metering of the electricity grid.

“What excites me about broadband is the applications that none of us have thought of yet”. It’s about new trade opportunities (access to global markets), smart business practices; it will create jobs now and into the future. NBN underpins innovation to create jobs across “every part of our economy”. Cost savings – eg paper, time, etc – and new growth at less cost.

Rudd then announces several innovative projects relating to health, emergency management, education all of which tend to focus on rural and regional disadvantage. Summarises the current progress on NBN – planning, testing in Tasmania, the new regional backbone development recently announced. Legislation for structural reform – more competition, innovation and protection for

Moves to the Goverment 2.0 agenda. “While the internet is the citizen’s most important point of contact with government, it is largely a passive engagement”; Gov 2.0 is to be about ‘listening’ to those using public services to improve them (eg “it’s buggered mate”); also about accountability. Calls on government to accept and embrace. Rudd website now includes comments and webchat, for example. “Accessible, transparent, accountable”. “Digital inclusion” for remote and regional – uniquely needed in Australia with its dispersd population and large area.

“Wider Australian Digital Community” called upon to participate: conference now opened.

Quigly, NBN co CEO
(great slides for this talk, with graphics of key points – pdf file).
3 objectives for NBN High speed; competitive level playing field; do this cost effectively. Achieve them transparently and accountable. Technical design, financial plan (with McKinsey) and project plan Supports the dual stream approach – NBN more focused on technologies; McKinsey-KPMG financials.

Two key questions:

• Why 100 MBits/sec? Cisco predicts, by 2013, 500% increase in the traffic over global networks based on the increased resolution of screens and power of computers to support massive data traffic. Nice graph showing, if we don’t go to 100, then we assume downstream traffic speed will level off from historical growth from 1990s.

• Why not all wireless?Cisco research = fixed line traffic will dwarf mobile. Laws of physics cannot be broken – limits in spectrum, will run out of tweaks of the wireless technology, but mostly, it’s about the increased number of cells available for mobile transmission. And, how does data get OUT of the cells? Fibre. Moreover, if we have to build many more cells, then this is likely to be just as expensive. Also notes the very low AVERAGE speeds of wireless because of sharing. Note too the problems of being at the edge of the cell – which can reduce single-user speeds by a factor of 10-20. Wireless still important, but it is not the only solution.

Critical importance of equivalent access across system to ensure competition. How? Fibre-based wholesale service…connects premises to points of interconnect via Layer-2 ethernet (layer 1 = passive optical), nothing above layer 2 which is for ISPs and others – BOTH wholesalers and retailers – covering services and application. Logical separation of streams to enable endusers to choose multiple providers of services; technology for maximum efficiency of bitstream. Note – layer 2 = access QoS, but not service QoS.

Quigly explains NBN relationship with ISPs backhaul etc. – Critical point – NBN is NOT going above layer 2, and will mainly focus on fibre from premises to Points of Interconnect. only where there is a single backhaul provider to a PoI will NBN then aggregate traffic from that PoI and haul it to another one where there is competitive backhaul provision. Essentially, the NBN will be putting in backhaul mainly in regional areas (as indeed NextGen is already starting to do); in well served areas, it will be focusing on fibre to the home/premises. Small footprint in the overall value chain. “Plumbers” of the network – everything else by other people.

Key is the suite and pricing of products; to cover both legacy and future applications and services.

Future proofing for further technology improvements.

One major building issue: the civil works involved in placing cables and equipment that supports cable. CLaims that the data needed to absolutely settle on a business plan (eg pricing) is not available – it’s such a complex business and many variables.

91% of premises served by roadside teclo pillars; (8% of land area). Remaining 9% = rural and served by radio or direct copper from exchange.

Cole, USC Annenberg

There is a bigger gap between dialup and broadband than between no access and dialup. BB changes the world “like nothing we have ever seen except the printing press and electricity”. What are some of the early changes from dialup

Dialup – households – 2-3 times a day, 20-30 minutes at a time. logging on was a big deal, we aggregated our tasks and did them en masse at one time. Time was focused ON the internet and its use, not on as many local interactions (eg with family). People wanted to be undisturbed. But, broadband – from 2002-3 – people were on 30-50 times a day, but for 2-3 minutes at a time. There was no aggregation of tasks, no scheduling. The internet is not in the background now, but integrated into our lives, where we were in life. Broadband moves the internet into the centre stage [what evidence? see http://www.digitalcenter.org/]. This has also got something to do with wireless, however. The changes broadband enacts are changes in how and when we do things involving online activity.

Broadband is not a threat to TV in the same way dialup is. “It’s the best friend TV ever had”. But… newspapers? No. teenagers are interested in the news – more so than any time in last 70 years. But just not from newspapers. When net penetration hits 30%, newspaper sales decline. (Annenberg research). So news has to be online, constantly updated – broadband is the only way for news institutions to survive since they are so much more readable and immediate. [Not sure these assertions are sustainable given the changes in the nature of the media - feels like a re-run of 'put the newspaper online in 1980s-1990s].

Cole moves onto more sustainable ground when he moves into discussion of interaction and user-generated content – especially saying don’t forget upload speed and limits, particularly in the era of video creation.

Key points – uploading is vital “democractic part of broadband”; younger people have grown up with internet and, increasingly, growing up with broadband; collaboration is the absolute essential component of broadband; cites some research showing people who went back to dialup from broadband were shattered to discover that whole parts of the net they were used to using had become unusable.

We know that we have the right kind of broadband when we stop talking about speed etc, and the system just does what you want and only noticeable when it is not there (like electricity). Always on, always there is the goal.

Commentary

Note the change in rhetoric around NBN to include current issues such as climate change which were far less significant earlier; similarly, the emphasis on short-term jobs which did not matter prior to the GFC. I also believe there is a deeper emphasis now on the economic dimensions of the NBN, even though Rudd also says that NBN is not ‘communications’ policy, but policy across all areas of government. The political aspects are also clear: note the reference to Howard government failures on broadband; look at the appeal to rural and, especially, regional voters utilising the NBN as a mechanism to articulate the ‘whole of Australia’ position by the government. Note also the linking of other digital initiatives (Government 2.0) which, largely, are independent of broadband development, to the NBN – creating an all-encompassing ‘we are the digital government’ image.

Reflect on the notion of ‘revolution’ and change of state. Why is NBN not understood as incremental change? How does it fit with the actual history of incrementalism over past 15 years? Is the promising of NBN’s radical potential ever going to be realised because, fundamentally, it will not be experienced as a radical phase shift?

Cole’s presentation is an important statement about the radical changes involved in internet use, especially as experienced by younger users who are the future (note link to Rudd’s future rhetoric). What is interesting is that he discussed what people are doing now online and have been for 4-5 years as part of promoting a network for the future. The real fact to take away from this presentation is that we can’t easily predict what people will do online in 10 years given that noone was really expecting the whole social media craze in the 1990s.