Rowan's blog

BBC 'Digital Revolution' Project

To celebrate 20 years of the Web, the BBC has launched a 'Digital Revolution' project. They want it to be a collaborative effort, in the true two-way spirit of online.

Read the BBC article 'Charting the Digital Revolution'.

Get involved via the 'BBC Digital Revolution' blog.

Microsoft ad: 'The Break Up'

Now this is weird; a strange combination of content and format. But it seems to work as a viral ad! Watch the ad.

Smart Energy (aka Smart Grid)

Yesterday, General Electric unveiled a project at its research labs that will let homeowners cut annual energy consumption to zero by 2015. Read the article on CNet.

Sounds a lot like IBM's Smart Energy messaging. See the fun video or landing page.

So which companies will be involved and how will this roll out? CNET's Green Tech blog post explains what a 'Smart grid' is, the benefits and the barriers to adoption. From the article:

"Who are the companies participating in the smart grid?
The smart grid is shaping up to be a giant mash-up of the electricity utility, computing, and communications industries.

"Heavyweight tech companies--Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, and Google--all have serious initiatives in this area and loom large among utility executives working on smart-grid programs.

"IBM, which sees big dollar signs when it gets involved in large infrastructure projects, is building the technology backbone for many grid modernization programs. That includes installing communications equipment along the grid as well as the software and servers to process the mountains of data that need to be processed.

"Cisco, too, is jumping in with both feet with a broad initiative to supply networking equipment for utilities as well as in-home energy management tools. Verizon is looking at this as well, seeing the home network as a point to gather data on home energy use and, potentially, control lighting and appliances for better efficiency.

"Microsoft and Google are going after consumers as well while trying to sign on utility partners.

"The other key players are the host of start-ups in the area, many of which focus on energy displays. A handful of stronger network-oriented companies are emerging, notably Silver Spring Networks, which offers a wireless card that goes into smart meters.

"Finally, there's the electrical infrastructure itself: meters, transformers, transmission equipment, and other hardware that makes the grid tick. In addition to a number of smart meter makers, there are the global infrastructure companies like GE, Siemens, and ABB that are introducing modern control systems to manage the flow of electricity."

Lets hope these companies play nicely to overcome the technology challenges. There are plenty of other barriers to adoption, including consumer acceptance, government support and investment. Will be an interesting area to watch.

Australia's NBN: Conroy's digital economy roadmap

Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy released the government's roadmap for Australia's participation in the digital economy last night at an event at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The report is now available from the government website.

This ZDNet article outlines some of the reactions from Industry at the launch.
iiNet regulatory officer Steve Dalby raised the important point that we need applications that make use of the 100MBPS speeds, not just the speed itself. Brad Howarth expanded on this on his blog. A couple of his points:

• "Enterprise Connect, the digital literacy programs and small business online programs will assist with takeup of the NBN, but there seems to be no cohesive strategy for developing broadband-enabled services themselves.
• "The work needs to be done now to equip businesses and business associations with the skills - and potentially the seed funding - to begin developing next-generation broadband services today, so that they will be ready when the network begins to go live. Failure to do so means that the benefits from the network will not be realised until quite some time later, meaning our investment in infrastructure may be quickly leapfrogged in economies where the focus has been on infrastructure and services, as opposed to just infrastructure."

IBM has ideas in this area, communicated in their Smarter Planet campaign.

I really hope we don't end up with more obtrusive rich online advertising and increased piracy (has the RIAA started lobbying against NBN / putting together a case to sue the Australian Federal Government yet?!!)

Is 100MBPS enough to support human teleportation services? Now that would be cool...

The AFR Broadband Conference

I was invited to attend the AFR Broadband Conference in Sydney last Tuesday on behalf of IBM Australia. The event attracted a variety of interesting speakers.

In short, the situation in Australia:

• Broadband speeds are currently slow in comparison to the US, Europe, Japan, Korea etc. (Average download speed in Australia is 710.6 Kbps, based on 12469 tests from download-speed.org)
• Broadband coverage is patchy. The cities have reasonable coverage, but there are holes (e.g. Balmain in Sydney). Most of the country (geographically speaking) cannot access ADSL2+ broadband. See the map.
• Telstra owns the existing copper wire network. In the cities, there is competition, with companies like iiNet having set up their own. Unsurprisingly, where Telstra is the only provider, prices are much higher (Telstra was privatised and therefore acts in the best interests of its shareholders - not the public, or the country).

The Australian Federal Government recognises that digital information and communication is becoming increasingly important to businesses / the Australian economy, culture and society and that Australia will be significantly disadvantaged if the lack of broadband speed and coverage is not addressed.

The Australian Federal Government has committed to create a National Broadband Network (NBN), which will be the single largest infrastructure project in Australian history. The details are still being ironed out. This is what we know so far:

• The NBN will be a wholesale only fibre network (i.e. not allowing for retail conflict as with Telstra in the past)

• The NBN will deliver 100-1,000MB connection speeds via direct fibre.

• The NBN will connect at least 90% of homes/premises in Australia (actually, the Hon Senator Stephen Conroy indicated during his speech that he was not interested in leaving out any % of the population).

• Wireless networks will be supplementary to the direct fibre NBN.

• The NBN is estimated to take approx 8-10 years to roll out (2017-2019 completion).

• The NBN is expected to have a 50+ year life.

• The NBN will be future proofed. (Professor Douglas Van Houweling said he expects packet info transfers will always be used via Internet Protocol but that the way those connections occur will evolve.)

• The NBN is expected to cost 43 billion AUD (mostly labour cost) and create 25,000 jobs.

The main discussion points at the conference:

1. Is structural reform a necessary precursor to the NBN?

• The consensus was ‘yes’, a regulatory reform package is required to get the structure of the sector right.

• Professor Allan Fels suggested rules governing broadcasting should be reviewed by the Productivity Commission (they performed the 2000 review).

• An agreement must be reached to separate Telstra’s existing assets (their copper wire network will become obsolete with the rollout of NBN). Government may need to compensate Telstra?

• The NBN must be a wholesale network, separate from retail. (This means the retail ISP’s would not be able to differentiate on product. Some are already starting to focus on customer service!)

• Since the NBN project is actually a 40-50yr investment (taking adoption into account) – in order to see the project through to completion, the Labour Government would need to be re-elected three times! Because of this, it would make sense to have laws put in place to protect the build of and investments in the NBN.

2. Where will the 43 billion come from?

• Firstly, the estimate of 43 billion is now considered to be on the high side. Phil Campbell from Citi Investment Research estimated, during the panel discussion that it would cost 30 billion.
  

• The Federal Government recently committed 5 billion (the Hon Senator Stephen Conroy confirmed during his speech that they would foot the whole bill if necessary, though they don't expect to have to do that). Suggestions were: 10 billion vended assets, 20 billion via infrastructure bonds (tax free investment opportunity).

3. What will the NBN mean for the broadband industry in Australia?

• In the next 8-10 years (the gap prior to NBN), steps must be taken to ensure existing broadband services continue to expand and competition continues in order to keep prices down.

• Once NBN is in place, the ISP’s will need to differentiate based on service (as the product will be ubiquitous). This is the situation in Korea, where the broadband network is a wholesale monopoly with the retailers playing on top of it.

4. How will the NBN change things for business, society and the country?

Rohan Lund from Yahoo!7 spoke about the media revolution we’re already seeing as audiences use the internet to communicate, discover and be entertained. He outlined how Australians have adapted their internet behaviour to the speed currently available:

• Yahoo!7 (which aims to be a guide to content on the internet) holds proportionately less market share to Google in Australia than in other countries. Google’s cleaner, faster search experience has been embraced by 90% of the Australian market.

• Video is consumed, but in low quality, bite sized chunks.

• The lighter social networking sites are most popular.

Clearly the NBN would be a good thing for Rohan and Yahoo!7 !

Abigail Thomas from the ABC talked about some of the innovative projects she’s undertaking. ABC iView (internet television) is, I gather, currently only feasible due to agreements with several ISP’s whereby the content download charges are not ‘metered’ for their customers.

Projects being undertaken overseas, such as digital health record systems (England, Denmark, Chicago), or traffic management systems (Stockholm, London), are reliant upon the creation of the NBN. See my earlier post ‘"Towards a smarter economy" with a National Broadband Network’.

Professor Douglas Van Houweling (in the US) joked via phone hook-up (after his video speech had been played) that it was a shame he couldn’t yet see us – his audience – via real-time video hook-up. Real-time video upload will be possible with the NBN.

Related points:

• Professor Douglas Van Houweling said the rest of world will be watching as Australia rolls out the NBN and becomes a leader in this area. He suggested the US needs to think about ensuring 100MB connectivity within 3 years, with at least 10MB upload speeds. (It’s important to remember users will contribute, not just consume. Example is medical centres uploading x-rays.) This point re. upload capacity will hopefully be considered for the Australian NBN.
• NBN will ‘float the boats’ in that many internet based applications that will be created by the business community and government will be reliant / sit upon it.
• Korea currently has the fastest broadband speeds in the world and is investing 24 billion to increase to 1GIG connectivity by 2012!

Videos of some speeches from the conference:

• Marianne King, first assistant secretary for Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy.
• "Pipe Network's Bevan Slattery, Nextgen's Malcolm Roe, Ericsson's Tony Malligeorgos and TransACT's Gordon Dunsford discuss what the federal government's national broadband network will actually deliver". (Source: misaustralia.com)
• The Hon Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.

For more info, check out 'The Scoop' by Mark Jones.

One blog post gets more response than 24 returned letters

I'm very pleased to report that I have been contacted by some very nice people at Vodafone and the matter of the mail has been resolved.

It seems (in this instance anyway) that one blog post got more response than 24 returned letters.

"Towards a smarter economy" with a National Broadband Network

Glen Boreham addressed the National Press Club last month. His speech 'Towards a smarter economy' described how sensors in the form of transistors and computer chips (that are already built into most aspects of our lives*), combined with a high-speed, high coverage broadband connection (i.e. the National Broadband Network) could report information that would allow us - individuals, corporations and government - to make smarter decisions. 

Synopsis of Glen Boreham's speech from ibm.com/au:

"When people have more information, they make smarter decisions.

In Germany, 6 million households are reducing their electricity bills, because an intelligent energy grid gives them enough information to do so. In Sweden, an intelligent road system gives Stockholm’s commuters enough information to reduce traffic congestion by 25% and carbon emissions by 40%.

If Australians had more information about the impact of their decisions – on their pocket, on the environment, on their quality of life, on GDP – they would act very differently.

Glen Boreham contends that – as we invest billions in building infrastructure through the stimulus package – Australia has a unique opportunity to embed intelligence into every road, building, city and utility grid. In his view, the information this would generate would empower our citizens, businesses and governments to get behind the issues that affect us all.

Mr Boreham looks to a future where the sum of millions of smarter decisions help us to use less energy, make far more efficient use of our water resources, unclog our congested cities and boost our GDP – creating a smarter, sustainable economy."

You can download Glen Boreham's full speech here. I thought it was visionary. What do you think?

I attended the AFR Broadband Conference yesterday, during which the National Broadband Network (NBN) was discussed. If we don't get the NFN, I fear Australia will suffer greatly. Glen Boreham's vision, for one, is dependent upon the NBN.

*Interesting snippet: The new Mercedes contains as many control units as the new Airbus A380. That's just a car. The same thing is happening in almost every commercial sector.

The house that tweets

IBMer Andy Stanford-Clark will be on BBC News tonight talking about how he set up his 16th century cottage on the Isle of Wight to tweet.

Andy is an innovator - creating solutions that are likely to be adopted for monitoring business processes, factories, healthcare systems etc moving forward.

Watch the video on BBC.

Govt unleashes web 2.0 taskforce

Today, the Australian Federal Government launched a taskforce to investigate web 2.0's ability to make government more transparent and increase community engagement.

Sounds like they've taken note of Obama's great success in the digital arena.
Download Social Pulpit - Barack Obamas Social Media Toolkit 1.09

I think this is fascinating! How will 'governing' evolve? Will ideas / solutions to national problems be brainstormed, collaborated upon and strengthened by massive online communities of suitably qualified experts? Will algorithms be created to help define policies based on online feedback loops?

Read the full article on the new Aussie taskforce at ZDNet.

Email, Social Media Merged To Create Marketing Channel

"StrongMail Systems Monday unveiled a strategy and a set of tools intended to link email marketing with social media campaigns on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, and Digg, among others. Its "framework" turns static email programs viral.

"StrongMail developed the tools in response to requests by retail customers. The survey conducted by StrongMail reveals that email marketing linked to social media has become an important initiative, with 66% of marketers planning to integrate the two channels in 2009, and 48% who have already formulated a strategy for achieving this initiative.

"Of those marketers planning to increase budgets in 2009, 83% will increase amounts in email marketing, followed by 62% in social media."

Interesting. Makes sense for retail. I guess the other email tool providers will be playing catch up!

Read the full article on mediapost.com