Report on Townsville Consumer Consultation Meeting, 20 November 2002
The meeting was held in Townsville, Queensland, on 20 November 2002. The Townsville chapter of the Australian Computer Society kindly invited their members and set up a venue for the meeting, and I contacted our local ISOC-AU members. Dave Keppel (ISOC-AU) and Bevin Irvine (ACS) arranged everything, and I am very grateful for their assistance - it was an enjoyable and very interesting event.
Participants were advised that this consultation process is supported by
funding from the Department of Communications, IT and the Arts.
We discussed a wide range of issues, but it was clear that the problem
of not having local high-speed access was by far the major concern.
Below is a report of our discussion.
Accessibility
This issue predominated strongly over all others: the lack of local, reasonably-priced high-speed access. The only current possibilities are the carriers at high cost. Telstra has some old, Alcatel exchanges that offer DSL but most don't, and a big problem is that the newest Townsville suburbs, with apartment blocks specifically wired for Internet access, have exchanges with RIM (Remote Integrated Multiplexer), which can't use ADSL.Telstra is now saying that in March next year they will backfit Mini-MUXs to the exchanges that will permit up to 16 connections for ADSL through the RIM, but this will clearly not satisfy demand. The attendees were in agreement that RIM was a very poor technology choice, foisted upon the public via some inexplicable decision process. Not only was it inadequate, it was being installed so slowly that any opportunity for growth was being lost, just as with ISDN.
Everyone felt strongly that "Telstra's mistakes penalise the community" as they are so dependent on Telstra hardware. There seem to be continual faults and this dependency was a great concern. The local council recently had a meeting on high-speed access - they apparently have a helpful local councillor who is pushing for better services.
Another related issue is the 3 Gigabyte traffic cap on Telstra services: people wanted high-speed connections so that they could work from home, but the data cap makes it impossible - professional IT people would use that amount up very quickly.
James Cook University currently has a significant spend with various carriers. While this provides access to bandwidth, like many other regional universities it is far below that available to their metropolitan counterparts. To sustain their linkages into AARNet and Grangenet they need access to an affordable high-speed connection to Brisbane.
The northen Queensland mines have excellent networks, videoconfs etc; telecommunications as important as mine infrastructure - but they are private networks. Some remote hospitals also have videoconf facilities that are also used by police, court meetings etc - they have been very constructive for rural communities.
James Cook University has a number of remote campuses: their
students, eg the Medical School, have to do job placement in remote
regions - they desperately need affordable, broadband services back to
the University main campuses.
Wireless
There is a group of local wireless enthusiasts who would, amongst other services, like people to be able to contact the Uni via wireless, but there is currently no government or council support. One high school has put its own antenna on a local mountain to connect to its ISP. Security is not a concern - once someone is on the network they are controlled by the usual network/account access measures.
auDA
Few concerns about auDA or domain names, seem to be acceptable/adequate.
Competition and regulation
Concerns about privacy legislation - that it's too much of a burden for small business, who are generally simply ignoring the requirements.Would like to see a set of standards/guidelines on avoiding Internet fraud, identity theft, security, etc for small enterprises.
ISOC-AU's Key Points for maximising Internet benefits
They were comfortable with all of the points - didn't think there were any issues missed out. Keen on open-source software.
They were concerned about government efforts to get so many services on-line,
yet those who might need them may be low-income, low-education, not
able to use computers, may not want to spend the ridiculous amounts of
time needed to run them, etc.
General Comments on Regional Issues
Accepted the fact that as a regional centre there is a *tradeoff* - ie the enjoyment of a small city, versus the lack of services or infrastructure. But:They were concerned that currently there is a renewed emphasis on centralising services in Brisbane (a centralisation/decentralisation cycle that seem to happen on about a seven-year turnaround, politically driven).
Locally there is a lack of depth of IT skills because there is not
the demand - because there is not the infrastructure! They want better
infrastructure so that recent graduates can stay in the area and build
up the IT industry and local business.
Kate Lance
Executive Director ISOC-AU