Telecoms & Broadband Business Newsletter - September 2010

Editorial - How is the trans-sector approach progressing?

Looking back, it is safe to say that very significant progress has certainly been made in relation to trans-sector activities. 

After Australia adopted this across-sector approach (thanks to the support of Minister Stephen Conroy) it was possible to also take it to the broader global community. That made it possible to engage the attention and support of the Obama Transition Team. This was invaluable, as it provided even more credibility to the process. 

The US National Broadband Plan and its Public Safety Plan are both excellent examples of good government policies; they took the trans-sector approach to a new level. 

New Zealand took a similar approach to the developments and the Dutch Government has used the model to highlight the opportunities of trans-sector innovations. 

Coming from a slightly different angle the governments of Finland, Korea and Rwanda are also showing great government leadership, and this has a very positive effect on the development of broadband infrastructure for digital social and economic developments. 

The OECD, World Bank and the UN now all support the trans-sector concept – this was unimaginable before we embarked on this journey in 2005. 

Aside from the progress that has taken place at a political level, Australia, again, was a frontrunner in relation to the practical aspects – showing leadership here also. 

While many pilots are being carried out for all kinds of e-services around the world (‘death by pilots’) there is hardly any large-scale implementation of e-health, e-education, smart grids, etc, simply due to the lack of government driven leadership regrading national broadband plans based on the trans-sector concept. 

In order to build scale a high-speed open (utilities-based) broadband network is required, as well as government policies that will see government funding redirected from traditional (brick and mortar) budgets to digital budgets. In this highly silo-driven environment the leadership of presidents and prime ministers is needed to break through these silos, stand above them and direct them in a trans-sector way towards the use of the digital infrastructure for the delivery of e-services. 

The A$100 million Smart City/Smart Grid Project that was launched in 2010 aims at building a smart grid for 10,000 households, using the NBN for its telecommunication needs. Smart Grid Australia has developed a high level report that shows how this could work (this is a world first). 

In the education sector all primary school students are receiving a laptop. Their schools are currently being connected to the NBN and they can take their laptops home, connect to the NBN and use the e-education services. The government has set up the Myschool portals where all education services for schools, teachers, students and the broader community are centralised. 

Smart infrastructure – the NBN will also support M2M communications that will allow infrastructure and other non-human connections to be linked to the NBN. The broader transport and infrastructure industry are looking at how this can be further developed. 

All round the world healthcare is perceived to be the killer app in these developments; at the same time it is the hardest sector to work with. Internally it is siloed to an even greater degree, which makes it very difficult to develop cohesive e-health policies. A recent development to use the NBN to deliver e-health to 17,000 practitioners is seen as a breakthrough.