Issue: 09/08

BuddeComm Meeting with Minister Conroy

March 12, 2008

ATUG’s Kate Schober attended the Wholesale Industry Group’s National Broadband Network (NBN) meeting with the Minister last week which was co-ordinated by Paul Budde and the Buddecom team. A summary of the meeting is provided below with an indication of the working groups in place now . ATUG members would be welcome to join these groups – please advise kate.schober@atug.org.au

10 March 2008

Debriefing - Meeting with Minister Conroy and Industry Action Plan
Presentation of the industry vision report on the NBN

At the BuddeComm Roundtable in October Senator Conroy had promised the industry that if Labor were to win the election he would invite us to come back to him with an industry vision on his plans for a National Broadband Network (NBN).

That report was presented to the Minister on 6 March 2008. The report can be downloaded from our site: http://www.budde.com.au/presentations/National_Vision_for_FttH_6March2008.asp

The lunch preceding the Roundtable was used to introduce the delegates to the Minister. The meeting was opened by him with an overview of the current status of the NBN project and the process and timeframe he intends to follow.

We were grateful for the opportunity of a 3½-hour meeting with the Minister. This clearly demonstrated his commitment to the industry and his interest in our input. The core of the report consists of seventeen recommendations that the industry would like the Minister to consider for inclusion in his tender document for the NBN. The single most important message the industry put to the Minister related to the need for regulatory clarity around his open access model – this would allow companies to develop a serious response to the tender document.

The Minister invited the industry to elaborate on the recommendations so that they can be considered by the Expert Group that will be appointed to guide the tendering process.

Importantly, we have only a limited period of time to prepare our submission to the Expert Group.

The rest of the meeting was fully interactive, with the industry representatives discussing various issues with the Minister and exploring ways to proceed.

Key parameters of the NBN

The Minister again showed his commitment to FttP, open access, symmetric services, backbone networks, greenfield deployments. He also confirmed that the government funding will be used for projects where there is little or no viability for commercial roll-out.

A lengthy discussion took place around ways to best engage other ministers and their departments in this process, since e-health, e-learning, energy saving and green telecoms (the role the NBN can play in reducing CO2 emissions) all depend on leveraging the related government initiatives.

The Minister was very open in speaking of the problems he is facing here, and we concluded that the industry should put more effort into educating and lobbying other departments about the benefits of the NBN in relation to current health, educational and environmental issues.

The NBN can be a catalyst in all of this. While there definitely is interest from other ministers and their advisors the opportunities created by the NBN around these issues are not yet fully understood by most of them.

The synergistic effects of an NBN could be enormous if a whole-of-government approach could be achieved.

The industry decided to set up special working groups to this end, and the Minister has promised to assist us in contacting the people we should be talking to.

Also important was the regulatory push the industry received to become more actively involved in addressing matters such as the migration from the present to the new environment. The ACCC is interested in hearing the industry’s suggestions in this respect. Other brownfield issues such as local council overhead cabling issues would need to be explored.

Smart Grid Australia

The Minister urged the industry to put maximum effort behind smart grids, and at that point I took the opportunity to update the Minister and the meeting on my conversations with the Gridwise Alliance in the USA, a joint government industry initiative to promote smart grids in the USA.

Interestingly the USA encounters the same ‘education’ problems as those mentioned by the Minister in relation to Australia. The Alliance in the USA is aimed at specifically addressing the issue of education, information, lobbying. Their focus is on the role smart grids can play in global warming, CO2 emissions, climate change, carbon trading and green telecoms.

I will have a follow-up meeting with Gridwise on 13 March. The aim is to launch a similar Alliance in Australia at an industry dinner on 23 April (the eve of the 2008 Smart Grid Summit in Sydney). I will update you separately on this event. As you would be aware, I currently facilitate UtiliTel, but the time has come to broaden the arena to include the telco and IT industries as well.

Invitation for further industry support

Based on the discussion with the Minister the meeting decided to form the five working groups listed below, and some of the attending delegates offered to participate. The group also suggested others I should invite – and, last but not least, members of the FttH SIG are most welcome to participate. Please let me know ASAP, as we have only 4-6 weeks to accomplish this work.

The Minister also stressed that individual companies could, and should, make their own submissions to the Expert Group.

Open access issues for the tender document (Access Seekers)

Participants: iiNet, Internode, Hills Industries.

Via this debriefing report I would like to also invite Elders, Optus, SelecTV, Austar and Foxtel.

Others?

Smart Grid Australia

Participants: Integral Australia, Silk, Capricorn, Bob Darwin

Via this debriefing report I would like to also invite IBM, Optus, PRI

Others?

Greenfield FttP (develop a model that guarantees FttP)

Participants: Lend Lease, Pivot, VicUrban, Titan ICT, Hills Industries, PBN, Connell Wagner.

Others?

Applications (including e-health, e-learning, digital media)

Participants: Cisco, Qld Government, Cisco, Domenic

Via this debriefing report I would like to also invite Aarnet

Others?

Migration (brownfield issues, backhaul)

Participants: Telabs, Titan ICT, Nokia Siemens, Hutchison, Connell Wagner.

Via this debriefing report I would like to also invite Visionstream

On another point, the Minister showed great support for the skills issue that several members of the SIG have been pursuing with great vigilance, and here also he has offered support in enabling the group to make contact with the right people.

This will be followed up separately by the two members involved.

Acknowledgements

I don’t want to end this paper without once again thanking the many people that have been, and still are, involved. In all, over 30 people actively participated in the writing of the report (600 pages of submissions). The full FttH SIG consists of 140 companies and 200 representatives. In the end only three companies requested that they not be listed.

I was also grateful for the personal support I received from several CEOs of the leading second-tier telcos.

In addition, it is important to state that we are a SIG only. We are not an association, nor do we have any aspirations in that direction. Instead we hope that our reports can be used as input in the tender process. Similar to our input regarding the Wholesale Access Principles and the National Broadband Infrastructure map, we hope that our contributions will also be utilised in the work of federal, state and local governments, and organisations such as Communications Alliance, ATUG, IIA and others.

Paul Budde

Bucketty

6 March 2008