[LINK] Fwd: MR103/2010: Technology developments in the digital economy [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Tom Worthington]

Antony Barry wrote:
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
>> From: media at acma.gov.au ... 27 August 2010 1:11:41 PM AEST ... 
>> Smartphones are expected to drive significant future growth in
>> mobile communications ...

ACMA needs 50 pages to say that smart phones are popular?

>> Infrastructure developments have continued the trend towards high
>> bandwidth network upgrades and the transition to internet protocol
>> platforms ...

ACMA have discovered that:

1. People want more bandwidth.
2. They are using the Internet.

Not exactly news.

>> Sustainability concerns are creating a new convergence between the
>> telecommunications industry and utilities and are driving smart
>> applications’ development. ...

There is a lot of talk about smart grids, but I do not see
much evidence of it in practice in Australia, nor of it providing
environmental benefits. So far smart meters only appear to have had the
effect of driving up electricity bills, not reducing energy use.

>> The combining of location-based information with other information
>> sources in the digital community has provided a range of rich
>> commercial and social applications  ...

Like smart grids, there is a lot of talk about location based
applications, but are these actually being used on a large scale, or is
it just a few early adopters who read Wired magazine?

>> A copy of the report (www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_312249) is
>> available on the ACMA’s website. ...

Smart phones may be the way of the future, but ACMA is still living in
the past, providing their report as a big lump of PDF and MS-Word
document, rather than as easy to read web pages. I suggest ACMA should 
try reading their 50 page PDF document on one of the smart phones their 
report says are popular.

There are some good points to the ACMA report, such as the extensive
references (apart from the Gartner Group ones) and the Glossary.

More comments and some excerpts from the report in my blog:
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/08/technology-developments-in-digital.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/