Learning fast: broadband and the future of education

Educational institutions have always had a central place in the online age. Before the advent of high-speed broadband, other communications technologies and services also played a big role in education.  University researchers were among the first Australian users of what became known as the Internet. When the domain name system was deployed in the mid-1980s, the .au domain was delegated to Robert Elz at the University of Melbourne. When the Australian Vice-Chancellor’s Committee decided to set up a national communications network to support research, Geoff Huston transferred to its payroll from ANU to work as technical manager for AARNet, whose current chief executive, Chris Hancock, is interviewed by Liz Fell in this issue. When a 56 kbps ARPANET link with Australia was made by NASA and the University of Hawaii via Intelsat in June 1989, the connection was established in Elz’s University of Melbourne laboratory. (Clarke 2004: 31) In earlier times, the postal service made learning-at-a-distance possible by ‘correspondence’, particularly in remote areas of Australia. Advances in radio communications made it easier and the interactivity more immediate. Television sets and later video cassette and DVD players and recorders made it more visual. The telephone provided a tool of communication for teachers and learners; the best of them understood that most people were both at different times. Then simple low bandwidth tools like email and web browsing provided new ways for students, teachers and their institutions to communicate and distribute and share information. Learning management systems like Blackboard have been widely deployed through the education sector. Information that was once housed in libraries is now available online and social media platforms are providing new ways for students to collaborate. Ubiquitous, faster broadband and mobile access via smartphones and tablets promise further transformations. &nbsp

Radio's digital challengers

This article describes the early decisions taken about digital radio in Australia in the 1990s, the second round of decisions implemented in legislation in 2007 and subsequent developments, the state of digital terrestrial radio in what is generally to be considered its most successful market, the United Kingdom, and the challenges facing digital radio when it is introduced in Australia in 2009

Wireless politics II

Broadband was one of the few issues that deeply divided the major parties in the August 2010 federal election. Labor and the Coalition disagreed about how big the problem was, what was needed to fix it, and how much should be spent. Strikingly, their positions cleaved down an old fault-line. Labor planned much more wire; the Coalition emphasised a bigger role for wireless. This article examines the background to this conflict and the arguments presented in support of the Labor Governments heavy investment in fixed line infrastructure. It then indulges in a thought experiment to argue the opposite case that mobile access networks will dominate in the future so as to undermine the rationale for subsidising (not for building without subsidy if commercial investors choose to do so) some or all of the FTTP NBN. It concludes that a Government planning the biggest intervention in Australian infrastructure history might find itself with rather more competition from wireless access networks and rather less interdependence and symbiosis between wire and wireless than it hopes

Making media policy: looking forward, looking back

Seeking papers for the media stream at the conference and articles for this issue of Media International Australia, our aim was to examine contemporary media policy issues that benefited from some kind of historical analysis. Rather than starting with history, confident that it served up powerful and useful lessons, the idea was to begin with the current policy challenges and see whether history helped. Unsurprisingly, most authors found it did---though not always, and for different reasons

From Wellington to Washington: Australia's bilateral trade agreements and cultural policy

Examines the economic and cultural relationship between Australia and New Zealand. Overview of the conflict over the treatment of New Zealand television programs under Australian content requirements; Details of a free trade agreement entered into by Australia with the U.S. in 2004; Impact of the agreement on the relationship between the countries

Australia's 'convergence review'

A three-member Convergence Review has recommended fundamental changes to media and communications regulation in Australia. Set up in December 2010 to 'take a fresh look at Australia's existing regulatory frameworks with a view to modernising them' and released in April 2012, the Convergence Review proposes less regulation, differently targeted, and new regulatory institutions to do it. Broadcast licensing would end but some of the obligations currently imposed on licensees would continue for major 'content service enterprises'. At the time of writing, the Government had not announced a formal response to the Review's recommendations

Fibre to the everywhere: Australia's new plan for broadband (ISR Lunchtime Seminar Series)

Announced on 7 April, Australia's new $43 billion plan for broadband will deliver 100 Mbits/sec download speeds to 90% of Australian households within eight years via optical fibre lines running all the way to their homes, schools and workplaces. The network will be built and operated by a new company in which the Commonwealth will be the majority shareholder. This talk considers the origins of the new plan and asks who will benefit and who will pay for it. This talk delivered as part of the Institute for Social Research lunchtime seminars

New Zealand shoots for the sky

Abstract not available

'There will still be television but I don’t know what it will be called!': Narrating the end of television in Australia and New Zealand

Australia and New Zealand, like other countries, have unique TV systems and practices that shape the possibilities ena-bled by emerging technologies, enterprises, behaviors and ideas. This article explores two recent articulations of the concept of television that have motivated ‘end of television’ narratives in the two countries. One is future-oriented – the introduction of online subscription video services from local providers like Fetch TV, Presto, Stan and from March 2015, the international giant Netflix. It draws on a survey of senior people in TV, technology, advertising, production, audience measurement and social media conducted in late 2014 and early 2015. The other is recent history – the switchover from analogue to digital terrestrial television, completed in both countries in December 2013. Digital TV switchover was a global policy implemented in markedly different ways. Television was transformed, though not in the precise ways anticipated. Rather than being in the center of the digital revolution, as the digital TV industry and policy pioneers enthused, broadcast television was, to some extent, overrun by it. The most successful online subscription video service in Australia and New Zealand so far, Netflix, talks up the end of television but serves up a very specific form of it. The article poses a slightly different question to whether or not television is ending: that is, whether, in the post-broadcast, digital era, distinctions between unique TV systems and practices will endure, narrow, dissolve, or morph into new forms of difference