[LINK] Education, Offshoring and Free Trade to remove ICT Trade Deficit

[Richard Chirgwin]

Michael Still wrote:
> Tom Worthington wrote:
>
>   
>> * Conducive environment for global activities - For Australia to
>> continue to be a successful exporter of ICT services, the nation
>> requires reliable infrastructure such as high speed broadband, the
>> ability of local suppliers to link into global production systems and a
>> supportive regulatory environment.
>>     
It may be time for the 12,000 V clue-shock over at the ACS.

Most businesses:
- can get fast data connections if they want. If you look at business 
registration data, then at telco network data, there aren't so awfully 
many black holes.
- can afford them if they need them.
- can use various grades of "broadband" pipe if they don't want to pay 
for premium data services (for eg, instead of metro Ethernet or fibre 
services, take an SHDSL at 16:1 contention)

I *know* that "broadband" is the hot word, and that if something isn't 
on the product sheet as a "broadband" service then there will be some 
luser to say "well, you wouldn't want Aussie Small Business to be stuck 
using Legacy Data Services would you?" but I would expect the ACS to be 
just a little smarter than that. And I would expect the ACS to actually 
check whether what it's saying is supported by objective fact.

RC
>
> While broadband is interesting for it's educational value, I think it's
> a red herring for businesses. It's not like I am going to hang a data
> center at the end of a DSL line. However:
>
>  - the expense of data center space in Australia vs the US
>  - the expense of electricity in Australia versus overseas
>  - the expense of bandwidth (both local, and global)
>
> Will all keep large businesses from hosting in Australia. Without
> hosting, you don't have any of the surrounding industry -- hardware
> people, network people, manufacturing, operations folks, etc.
>
> Let's face it. It's time to stop subsidizing farmers, and start building
> an infrastructure where we can provide all of those things at a lower
> cost base than our competitors. Oh, and give Telstra a good kick in the
> pants.
>
> (Although I concede that Australia has physical advantages and
> disadvantages in the data center space. I can think of geological
> stability, network latency to the rest of the world, and ambient
> temperatures as issues off the top of my head.)
>
> Mikal
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>
>