[LINK] Coonan's statement -- correct or not?

[Richard Chirgwin]

Jan,

There's a sloppiness in terminology here. ISPs aren't licensed but have 
to be TIO members. Carriers are licensed, and there are about 167 of 
them (more like 600 ISPs). Not all carriers offer ISP services, of 
course ... But it's disingenuous to say "more than the three" etc under 
Labor, because Labor hadn't deregulated the carrier market.

Um. Since the row is about something released by the Information 
Technology and Innovation Foundation in the US, I might remark that I 
don't know where the "Australia is number 27" comes from, but I know 
that in the most recent report from the same group, here in PDF form:

- that in Table 1, Australia has fifth place for low-cost broadband on a 
per-megabit (I guess really per Mbps, per Second) basis.
http://itif.org/files/BroadbandCompetition.pdf

So one might suspect ITIF of choosing its stats to fit its arguments, if 
one was cynical and prepared to work through its methodologies. I'm not 
going to bother doing that much work on a weekend!

RC

Jan Whitaker wrote:
>
> http://www.theage.com.au/news/federalelection2007/australia-in-digital-dark-age/2007/10/20/1192301086691.html 
>
>
> Coonan:
> She said Australia is ahead of the US, Canada, United Kingdom, 
> Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and many other developed countries.
> Internet prices are competitive because the coalition government's 
> telecommunications policy has licensed 167 internet carriers, more 
> than the three licensed carriers under the previous Labor government, 
> she said.
>
> -=-=
> The bit I don't believe is that they 'licence' internet carriers. Huh? 
> Does the government licence ANY internet carriers? How does one set up 
> an ISP? Aren't many of the 167 resellers?
>
> I don't understand the business, but this statement from Coonan didn't 
> sound right.
>
> Jan
>
> Jan Whitaker
> JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
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