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Now we need an ICT 2020 Summit

I certainly believe that our industry should have, and could have, made a greater contribution to the Summit. We could have played an important role in generating visions and strategies for e-health, tele-education, smart grids and e-government.

By failing to be more prominent part of the Summit we missed the opportunity for really effective participation. Telstra seems to be the only company that was represented with several delegates. Many more from our industry were nominated, but in the end they didn’t make it onto the Prime Minister’s final invitation list.

Having said that, the reality is that our industry will be the facilitator in many of the issues raised by the Summit. Every item identified by the ten groups will require input from our industry.

The fact that telecoms and the digital economy were grouped under infrastructure was reasonable and correct. This further highlights the fact that the government needs to ensure we have structurally separated infrastructure from the telecoms services, to facilitate what this group put on it top priority list – a world-class broadband system to foster full participation in the digital economy.

Proposals currently on the table from Telstra could jeopardise this, as the access price to that broadband infrastructure would be out of the reach of most Australians.

I would suggest mini-ICT summits, bringing the various industries and government organisations together to address some of the issues as a follow-up to the 2020 Summit.

Of course, one could argue that the telco industry is conducting its own 2020 Summit at the moment, trying to achieve the right outcomes for the Minister’s plan for a National Broadband Network. This debate is far from over.

Another key outcome from the various groups at the Summit was a more collaborative government and, again, these are issues that our own ‘Summit’ has been addressing. One could almost say that we are even a step ahead, having brought together four federal departments in our smart grid debate (Climate Change, Environment, Energy and Broadband).

The Smart Grid Australia alliance will take a coordinating role in this process from here on. There was another link from the Summit to this topic. Under the Summit topic of ‘Sustainably’ the Climate Change group also listed smart grids with true intelligent meters at people’s homes as a key item.

Next month at the FttH Applications Roundtable we will begin to make strategic plans (under the banner of the FttH Applications Workgroup – part of the FttH SIG). We will be discussing how we can also bring the Departments of Education and Health into dialogue with the broadband infrastructure developments.

Both health and education featured strongly on the Summit’s topics list and I hope that this will also be followed up within our industry. If we are building a nationwide broadband infrastructure why aren’t we talking more about the need for this infrastructure to facilitate health and education? These services have nothing to do with high-speed Internet to peoples’ homes. The organisations/authorities involved need to be able to use the broadband infrastructure to deliver their services, independently and at a very low cost. If that was brought home more clearly to the decision-makers in these departments they would better understand the importance of getting the management and structure of that broadband infrastructure right, so as to facilitate real wins in these social sectors. A vertically-integrated telecoms industry cannot deliver an economically viable broadband infrastructure for healthcare and education – it’s as simple as that.

On the positive side, there is now more political will at the top to build more collaborative government structures, but at the same time the reality is that these departments are already overloaded and have little time left to look beyond their own borders. Unless direction comes from the highest levels of government this will not happen, beyond token gestures and lip service.

I judge these to be the key issues for our industry, and I will be exploring how we, as an industry, can further contribute to the work that will now follow the Summit.

Your ideas and suggestions are very welcome.

Paul Budde

One Response to “Now we need an ICT 2020 Summit”

Peter Senior Says:
April 29th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
The new Minister is far too smart to not realise that, as you note in your blog, a vertically integrated monopoly telecoms firm will never deliver anything but typical inefficient and over-priced services - as demonstrated in the UK and NZ. You/we also know the answer: real competition or, failing that, a fully separated network. So what is going on in the Minister’s mind? Who is manipulating whom, and how? How about putting together a series of hard-hitting questions on behalf of the whole industry that address this and related issues and asking the Minister for objective answers? A full-page letter in the Australian would be a good way to convey the questions. I’m sure you’d have many eager contributors to the full-page ad cost. This could even be a pre-stated output for a 2020 Telecom Conference.

Now we need an ICT 2020 Summit

One Response to “Now we need an ICT 2020 Summit”

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