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The NBN legacy – Rising prices and falling global rankings

Remember when the NBN was going to bring Australia a feast of fast and affordable broadband? Then how is it that Australia is 82rd in the world and falling ever further behind? And how is it that broadband bills keep rising in Australia while falling around the world?

Bob James and I have written many times over more than a decade about the failings the structure and level of NBN pricing. The time seemed right to remind people of why we are in the present situation. See The NBN Legacy_Final

PNG broadband regulation and market entry

PNG – submission to NICTA May 2022

PNG and the Solomon Islands together with the Australian Government established a submarine cable system (Coral Sea 2). This links Sydney with PNG and the Solomon Islands together with the Australian Government established a submarine cable system (Coral Sea 2). This links Sydney with Port and Moresby and (on a separate spur) Honiara. The expectation was that abundant international capacity would be reflected in lower retail broadband prices. But this did not happen in PNG primarily due to the lack of retail competition.

The PNG telecoms regulator, NICTA, issued a consultation paper on whether it needed to use regulation to force data prices down. But since it issued that paper, Vodafone entered the market with prices suggesting that competition is now present in that market.

This submission to NICTA looks at what the regulator might consider doing given Vodafone’s entry into the market.

Pricing submarine cable for development

Conference Vanuatu

This is a talk I gave in Vanuatu and again (with some small changes) to the Submarine Networks World conference in Singapore on 8 September 2022.

It discusses how traffic pricing can increase cable utilisation and contrasts the different experiences of PNG and the Solomon Islands nearly two years after the beginning of service on the Coral Sea Cable in February 2020.

PNG submission to NICTA on pricing

PNG and the Solomon Islands together with the Australian Government established a submarine cable system (Coral Sea 2). This links Sydney with Port Moresby and (on a separate spur) Honiara. The expectation was that abundant international capacity would be reflected in lower retail broadband prices. But this did not happen in PNG primarily due to the lack of retail competition.

The PNG telecoms regulator, NICTA, issued a consultation paper on whether it needed to use regulation to force data prices down. But since it issued that paper, Vodafone entered the market with prices suggesting that competition is now present in that market.

This submission to NICTA looks at what the regulator might consider doing given Vodafone’s entry into the market. PNG – submission to NICTA May 2022

Changing business models n Australia and the Cook Islands

This paper is for telecoms operators and regulators who are trying to understand how business models for telecommunications have evolved and what this means for them today. It draws on the author’s forty years of experience in Australia and applies it to the specific case of the Cook Islands.

A close friend of mine made some very flattering remarks about this paper:
It’s the first time I’ve read an article with such a holistic and succinct overview of the evolution of telecommunications and the impact of global digitisation on telecoms operating companies providing transport and delivery infrastructures”. Richard Wiatr is a former senior executive and telecoms engineer who has spent 40 years in the industry.

Some operators are currently looking to regulators to fix the loss of revenues from the move into the digital era. This paper puts the issue into perspective and suggests what they should be doing.

See Changing business models

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