ACMA’s annual report on communications in Australia
The Australian Communications and Media Authority have released their Communications Report for 2006-2007.
ACMA are responsible for regulating broadcasting and communications in Australia. Part of their responsibility is recording and publishing information on the scope of Australia’s communications industires, and the success of broadcasters, telcos and other in meeting their regulatory obligations. This report does all of that, as well as devoting a whole chapter to the state of communications in remote indigenous communities, and another to explaining the importance of improved communications to the Australian economy.
Given that improved communications infrastructure not only has knock-on effects in the broader economy, but is so important to citizen journalism and other forms of online civic participation, it’s disappointing that Australia’s broadband roll-out to date has been so poor. It’s summed up well in this chart.
That’s right: as at the reporting period, a full one third of Australian Internet users are still on connections speeds of 256 kilobytes/second or less. Whether you put this down to market failure, a failure of regulation, or a combination of the two (say, a poorly-conceived, short-sighted privatisation of a dominant telco), it’s a national disgrace.
It puts us well behind any comparable nation in broadband connectivity, and it means that over two million Australian households are significantly disadvantaged - economically, culturally and politically. And that’s not counting all those people who have no connection at all. The worst effects of this broadband drought, naturally, are felt in rural and regional areas.
The Rudd government has promised to address this, but the detail of tomorrow’s budget will tell us whether they’ve invested enough to do anything meaningful about it.
Given that they have, they then just need to get past Telstra.
ACMA, Telstra, broadband, citizen journalism, government, regional bloggers, regulation
Yes it’s interesting to imagine how long it would take those in rural Australia to download the 7MB pdf detailing their plight.
That’s funny, but it’s also a very good point. People are starting to talk about online consultation feeding into policy and governance alongside the long-running advocacy of blogs as a means of extending public speech. But it’s all a non-starter if such an enormous proportion of the population can’t easily access relevant information that might inform discussion. This has to be a priority concern for anyone who cares about any of these issues.