PODCAST · technology
CrossTalk
by Phil Dobbie
CrossTalk was a weekly half-hour telecommunications podcast produced for the industry journal CommsDay.
Episodes
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24 Jul '15 - NBN Migration - still not right?
The government has outlined a framework for migrating customers to the NBN, with a threat of regulatory action on the industry if the process isn't smoothed out. Last year Tony Warren, Telstra's Head of Regulatory Affairs, said that the process needed to be fixed and the Comms Alliance was the...
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17 Jul '15 - Will the NBN keep up with demand?
No sooner had NBN released its Network Design Rules document than one blogger was questioning whether the 2Gbps uplink capacity per node was enough to cater for peak demand. After all, Cisco is forecasting 29 percent annual growth in peak demand from Australian internet users, and that prediction...
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10 Jul '15 - New law will see Government get to grips with network design
The Attorney General (AG) has circulated draft legislation that will give the Government greater control over how networks are designed and maintained. The belief is that the commercial pressures of carriers and carriage service providers are at odds with the objectives of national security. The...
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2 Jul '15 - ACCC not sold on Telstra’s Double Dipping
The ACCC has revised its decision on access pricing, saying wholesalers should be paying more than 9.6 percent less to Telstra. Whilst ACCC chair Rod Sims expects the savings to be passed on to consumers, CommsDay’s Kevin Morgan says it will simply see the margins passed to Telstra’s competitors...
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25 Jun '15 - The Internet of What Things?
Last week the Communications Alliance workshopped issues that will arise from the Internet of Things – technically and regulatory. But do we have a clear vision of what the IoT is? A survey this month from Progress software showed that more than half of developers didn’t use the term Internet of...
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19 Jun '15 - Broadband and mobile are growing, but is it fast enough?
Ericsson and Cisco have both released reports highlighting the growth in data usage, internet speeds and device adoption. Not surprisingly, the figures are all on the rise. Yet, with the exception of mobile data speeds, we rate poorly compared to similar economies. A new report from the Centre…
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12 Jun '15 - Will new contracts fix NBN's rollout problems?
NBN’s history has been blighted by poor relationships with construction contractors. Has the new team fixed the problem? In the past, NBN’s immediate partners complained of inconsistent placement of work, whilst subcontractors argued that they were being squeezed on margins and, in some cases…
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5 Jun '15 - Copyright law will help the Government’s website blocking
A government review has concluded that there are only minor changes needed to how agencies enforce website blocking, but it seems to ignore the impending changes to copyright law. Under section 313 of the Telecommunications Act companies have to do their best to help government agencies enforce…
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28 May '15 - Hong Kong Takes Fibre to the Curtain
Hong Kong Telecom has moved on from providing fibre to the basement, with more than 80 percent of households able to receive fibre right to their home. Now they are reaching further into the home, offering services that utilise their network. As HKT CTO Paul Berriman remarks, they’re even selling...
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21 May '15 - Time for a rethink on the USO?
At the CommsDay Australasia Satellite Forum this week Paul Fletcher, Parliamentary Secretary to the Communications Minister, raised questions about the future of the Universal Services Obligation. Should it be the responsibility of the NBN? Optus’s Head of Interconnect and Economic Regulations...
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14 May '15 - Why Verizon wants to buy AOL
Earlier this week Verizon announced that it plans to buy AOL in a deal worth $4.4 billion. So what are they after? In the past telcos acquired media players for their content – remember the AOL Time Warner merger? Not a big success story. Foad Fadaghi, Managing Director at Telsyte, says this…
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7 May '15 - Why the sudden need for scale?
TPG wants to buy iiNet, so does the M2 Group. Meanwhile Vocus and Amcom want to merge, but TPG wants to stop them. Perhaps they’re next on the TPG menu. So, what will happen next? Who will be iiNet’s successful bidder, and what happens to the party that loses out? Nathan Burley, Director...
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30 Apr '15 - Did New Zealand get it right on broadband?
Australia and New Zealand embarked on high speed broadband roll-outs around the same time. Their approach, it seems, is cheaper, faster – with more reliance on fibre - and has been quicker to deploy. So what’s the difference? Well, they didn’t trust it in the hands of a government agency. Instead...
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23 Apr '15 - Price could kill the NBN, not the speed
NBN detractors only question whether it’ll deliver the speed we demand. It’s less of an issue than the question of price. For some time in the industry the question of CVC charges has been the biggest bone of contention. This is the price a service provider pays to connect their own network to…
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16 Apr '15 - Is the NBN Fast Enough For Home Workers
Is the NBN being designed in a way that will boost productivity by encouraging more of us to work from home? People have been talking about telecommuting for decades, yet research from the University of South Australia indicates only 16 percent of us do it on a regular basis. The Department of...
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9 Apr '15 - How Dallas Buyers Lost the Battle They Won
The copyright owners for the movie Dallas Buyers Club won a court battle against iiNet this week, but the ruling could scupper any plans for speculative invoicing, making action against suspected copyright infringers prohibitively expensive. Could this be an example of what awaits us – expensive...
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1 Apr '15 - Will you be paying for Netflix, whether you want to or not?
Netflix has arrived in Australia. Are their competitors worried? Not really. Stephen Langsford, the CEO of Quickflix, says their presence will help to grow the market. Perhaps it’s the ISPs who should be most concerned. As John Lindsay points out, too many customers streaming 4Mbps content will...
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26 Mar '15 - Website blocking: the easy way to protect copyright, but does it work?
The government has introduced the Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015. It will enable copyright owners to approach the Federal Court to request an injunction against an overseas website if its primary purpose is the infringement of copyright. ISPs will then be required to block...
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19 Mar '15 - iiNet takeover the least of our competitive worries
Despite protestations from The Greens it seems highly unlikely that the ACCC will reject TPG’s $1.4 billion takeover of iiNet. It simply creates another sizeable player to challenge the dominance of Telstra. It’s a move welcomed by Warwick Davis, economist at Frontier Economics and Matthew Lobb…
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12 Mar '15 - What price, the last mile?
This week the ACCC reached a draft decision on how much access seekers should pay Telstra for fixed line services on Telstra’s network. As usual, everyone is disappointed. Telstra had argued that prices should rise (by more than 7 percent), their competitors hoped to see them fall. In fact, they...
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4 Mar '15 - Racing to the data retention finish line
It’s looking highly likely that a revised version of the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill will soon be passed into law. That means telecommunications companies and internet players of all shapes and sizes will be required to maintain two years’ worth of...
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26 Feb '15 - The anti-piracy three strikes code
Late last year the Attorney General George Brandis and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull wrote a letter to the telco industry asking for an industry code to tackle the problem of online copyright infringement. Last week the Communications Alliance released a draft, asking for public…
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20 Feb '15 - Thodey's Last Stand
David Thodey has announced he is stepping down from his role as CEO of Telstra, to be replaced by CFO Andrew Penn. Laurie Patton, CEO of the Internet Society of Australia, says Thodey is smart enough to leave when he’s on a high. Does that mean Telstra faces more of an uncertain future? After…
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12 Feb '15 - Open-ended data retention legislation weeks away
The Prime Minister expects the revised data retention legislation to pass both houses of parliament in the middle of next month, just a couple of weeks after the parliamentary joint committee has presented its findings. Even with the committee reports it seems the legislation will still be…
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6 Feb '15 - How will the Data Retention Bill work?
It was tabled in government late last year, now a parliamentary committee is set to report on their findings. So, are they any the wiser? Last week the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security tabled two public hearings in Canberra, talking to some of the organisations from the...
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29 Jan '15 - The Price of Competition
Last April NBNCo chief Bill Morrow floated the idea that a levy should be charged to infrastructure competitors to subsidise the cost of broadband delivery to regional Australia. Last month Malcolm Turnbull said he thought it was a good idea. This week on CrossTalk we look at the idea and other...
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18 Dec '14 - Malcolm Turnbull on the NBN Telstra/Optus Deals and Beyond
On Sunday afternoon NBNCo CEO Bill Morrow signed revised agreements with Telstra and Optus to make use of their copper and HFC networks. In this week’s CrossTalk Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull describes it as a successful outcome, because NBNCo is paying no-more than was promised in the...
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11 Dec '14 - The risk of reaching the last three percent
There are few things that Labor and the Coalition agree on – one is that satellite is the only way to provide broadband access to the most far-flung Aussie residents. But launching satellites is a tricky business, will NBN Co pull it off? At the NBN Rebooted conference last month Gregory Clark ,...
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4 Dec '14 - Is the USO an expensive irrelevance?
The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Bill 2014 isb efore the senate. If passed it will end the short life of the Telecommunications Universal Service Management Agency, the body established to administer the Universal Services Obligation. It did a particularly good job of...
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27 Nov '14 - Doesn't a 2030 Vision Need Fibre?
Back in 1974 Arthur C Clarke predicted a future where connected computers in the home would allow us to do banking and conduct our work anywhere in the world. 15 years later Tim Berners-Lee created the worldwide web. Now a group of Australian interests wants to create its own vision, of...
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20 Nov '14 - Are Three NBNs Better Than One?
The third of those weighty tomes from the Vertigan Review panel was all about market power and regulation. It reckons that the current model, with NBN Co controlling the full spectrum of technologies, “inhibits the development of competition, is difficult to effectively regulate and results in...
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13 Nov '14 - The Metadata Bonanza
Two years of metadata could be great news for lots of people – not just law enforcement agencies, but for courts wanting to subpoena evidence – even content owners wanting to trace potential copyright infringers. Patrick Fair, Partner in law firm Baker and McKenzie and John Lindsay, Managing...
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6 Nov '14 - The Nitty Gritty of the MetaData Bill
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been quick to point out that the intent of metadata legislation is to collect phone data records and a user’s session IP addresses. Yet the wording of the Bill tabled in Parliament last week seems to suggest so much more. In this week’s CrossTalk…
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30 Oct '14 - Software is the Future, Are We Ready
Telcos made money from voice, SMS and data. How do they stand when it comes from capitalising on the next big wave – digital services. The Cloud is part of this future, of course, and vendors are repeatedly telling operators they can add value by allowing applications and enterprises to control...
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23 Oct '14 - Bill Morrow with NBN's reality check
Bill Morrow has to deliver broadband to every home in Australia by 2021, with a minimum service level and a guaranteed rate of return, without extending the government’s equity commitment beyond $29.5 billion. Can he do it? Well, he needs to spend more time looking at the figures before he can…
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16 Oct '14 - Are Data Retention Laws Imminent?
At last week’s CommsDay Congress in Melbourne Greens senator Scott Ludlam warned that data retention legislation could be tabled in Parliament as early as this month. That came as a surprise to John Stanton, CEO of the Communications Alliance, who said that there were many details still to be...
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10 Oct '14 - The Wireless Winners
This week's CrossTalk comes from the CommsDay Melbourne Congress, where CommsDay and P3 Communications announced the winner of the inaugural Australian mobile benchmark study (http://ow.ly/CjXEg). The winner didn’t come as a complete surprise, but the other two networks came close in certain...
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2 Oct '14 - Jason Clare: Still the fibre purist
Jason Clare, shadow communications minister, is still convinced fibre to the home is the best technology for NBNCo to be rolling out. He says the Liberal approach is not focused on the future and it is tying one hand behind our back. In an exclusive interview for CommsDay he talks about the NBN,...
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26 Sep '14 - Mobile termination rates: distorted by fixed line callers?
The ACCC has asked the industry to comment on proposed changes to the rate carriers charge each other to complete calls on their mobile networks – and the methodology used to arrive at that price. Whilst all carriers agree the price charged should reflect cost, two of the three reckon Telstra’s...
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18 Sep '14 - Complaints Down. Time to Ease Regulation?
The TIO annual report came out this week with big drops in consumer complaints, largely thanks to mobile network improvements. Does this mean that investments in infrastructure will always be the driver of customer satisfaction and attempts to regulate other issues are really addressing the...
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12 Sep '14 - Turnbull: The NBN is still a risky undertaking
On Friday the Communications Alliance staged a workshop to discuss the latest recommendations from the Vertigan Review. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull sat alongside economist Henry Ergas, NBNCo CEO Bill Morrow and Opticomm’s Chief Regulatory officer Phil Smith. Although there weren’t…
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4 Sep '14 - Video Collaboration: Why is it slow to take off?
Peter Ulander, Cisco’s VP of Collaboration, says he recently saw AT&T’s first video phone. It was about 50 years old. Today many of us have the capability to make video calls and join conferences, but we don’t, why? Ulander says it’s because it’s been too difficult. Cisco’s new MX Series systems...
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28 Aug '14 - Thoughts on Vertigan’s NBN Cost Benefit Analysis
The cost-benefit analysis on the NBN has highlighted that, beyond a certain speed, there are no incremental benefits derived from faster broadband. The assumptions on that speed, plus those around people’s willingness to pay, are central to the findings of the NBN cost benefit analysis delivered…
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22 Aug '14 - Metadata - what to keep
The government’s plans for compulsory data retention has opened a can of worms. Exactly what metadata should be retained? The Attorney General George Brandis got a little confused two weeks ago when asked on Sky News what was planned. He said the government wasn’t interested in keeping your web...
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14 Aug '14 - What is the Internet of Everything, anyway?
Cisco’s Ken Boal describes the Internet of Everything (IoE) as the “next grand era of the internet”. So, what exactly is it? A key element is the use of data analytics. The Internet of Things seems a myriad of devices connected online, but the IoE uses the data they gather to change the way we do...
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7 Aug '14 - Mobile Termination: Is The Best Rate Zero?
This week the ACCC launched an inquiry into the wholesale pricing for mobile termination, releasing a discussion paper and inviting industry submissions. Should prices be lower? How should they be calculated? Economist John DeRidder suggests it is important to follow a cost-based approach, but...
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31 Jul '14 - Surveillance Reform: The Devil's in the Detail
The government is proposing significant revisions to the telecoms intercept law. Unlike the UK, where legislation was rushed through with little consultation, there is a senate committee consulting with the public and industry on the proposal. It’s another stab at trying to get telecommunications...
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24 Jul '14 - Vertigan and the Future: It’s Complicated
On this week’s CrossTalk Phil Dobbie, back from a month’s break, tries to get his head around the first report from the Vertigan Panel, the group charged with providing recommendations for telecommunications regulation and the long awaited cost benefit analysis. The first report focuses on access...
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18 Jun '14 - The C-band debate. Just the start in the quest for spectrum?
Debate hotted up at the Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT) Preparatory Group Summit in Brisbane last week. Industry leaders from 32 Asia Pacific countries gathered to discuss spectrum allocation, including the use made of C-band, the 3.4 – 4.2 GHz spectrum used for satellites. Should some, all or…
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13 Jun '14 - All Noise on the Western Front
Three companies are battling it out to provide a new submarine cable link between Perth and Asia. It’s a route currently served only by SeaMeWe-3, an outdated network between Australia, Asia and Europe built in 1999. With more data stored in Asia there’s a clear business case for a new west coast...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
CrossTalk was a weekly half-hour telecommunications podcast produced for the industry journal CommsDay.
HOSTED BY
Phil Dobbie
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How many episodes does CrossTalk have?
CrossTalk currently has 117 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is CrossTalk about?
CrossTalk was a weekly half-hour telecommunications podcast produced for the industry journal CommsDay.
How often does CrossTalk release new episodes?
CrossTalk publishes regularly with 117 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to CrossTalk on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts CrossTalk?
CrossTalk is created and hosted by Phil Dobbie.
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