Economic benefit of the National Broadband Network

This paper argues that all regions benefit from the NBN but the economic effects are greater in the major cities because of their larger economic activity. Executive summary This paper is a partial summary of a study undertaken in the Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET) at the University of Melbourne. The study focuses on the potential economic impact of Australia’s NBN. The NBN affects the economy by making online services more widely available. Taking a conservative approach, we have considered just six categories of online services (cloud computing, electronic commerce, online higher education, telehealth practice, teleworking, and entertainment) from which there are documented economic benefits. We have attributed to the NBN only the additional benefit derived from its deployment over and above what we estimate would have been the broadband situation in Australia without the NBN. That is, we have not assumed that broadband availability would have stagnated without the NBN. We do expect, however, that future services will require higher access speeds, generally in the range 10-25 Mb/s. With this assumption and using a well-attested model of the Australian economy, we show that, in the long term, real GDP can be boosted by about 1.8% and real household consumption (a measure of national welfare) by about 2.0%. When we take into account the need to repay the cost of the NBN, GDP increases slightly but the benefit to real household consumption is reduced to 1.4%. Most of the benefit comes from telehealth and teleworking. Because the access speeds (downstream and upstream) required for the services are quite uncertain, we have looked at the effects of access speeds. If all the services except entertainment can be provided with no more than 2.5 Mb/s down and up (typical of implementations today), then the costs of the NBN outweigh the benefits. Real GDP increases by less than 0.2% but real household consumption declines by 0.4%. That is, building an NBN just for entertainment is not economically viable. An analysis of the regional distribution of benefits shows that all regions benefit from the NBN but the economic effects are greater in the major cities because of their larger economic activity

Submission to the Attorney-General’s Department on the Exposure Draft Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2015

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY As has been stated in previous submissions to Government, the Associations acknowledge Government’s desire to protect telecommunications infrastructure and the information transmitted across it from unauthorised access and interference. Indeed, Australian Carriers, Carriage Service Providers and Carriage Service Intermediaries (C/CSPs) and other industry participants have an active and vested interest in ensuring that the nation’s networks and communications infrastructure are robust and resistant to external attack. Industry is, however, unable to support the proposed Telecommunications Sector Security Reform (TSSR), as described in the exposure draft legislation, for reasons including that it constitutes regulatory ‘over-reach’ in the form of a framework that: will face challenges protecting communications networks, i.e. it will not deliver the increased protection the proposed reforms are aiming to achieve; is out of step with regulatory approaches to protecting networks adopted in other countries, including the UK, USA and Canada, thereby putting Australia at a disadvantage in fighting cyber threats and undermine Industry’s ability to support these important peers; hands unjustifiably significant additional and intrusive powers to Government and places regulatory burdens on Industry that will undermine its ability to protect against and respond to cyber attacks; risks being highly disruptive to the deployment of new network technologies that are more robust in preventing cyber attacks; will be a significant deterrent to technological investment in Australia; imposes additional costs on Industry and (ultimately) consumers undermining Australia’s competitiveness at a time when digital innovation is an important area for growth for Australia; fails to offer protection/indemnity to C/CSPs against the risk of civil litigation through ‘safe harbours’, thereby limiting information sharing and the ability to quickly respond to threats and to jointly engage in preventative action; carries the risk that competition in infrastructure supply will be reduced, to the detriment of all Australians; lacks transparency; and fails to provide adequate consultative mechanisms and avenues of appeal

GazeDrone: Mobile Eye-Based Interaction in Public Space Without Augmenting the User

Gaze interaction holds a lot of promise for seamless human-computer interaction. At the same time, current wearable mobile eye trackers require user augmentation that negatively impacts natural user behavior while remote trackers require users to position themselves within a confined tracking range. We present GazeDrone, the first system that combines a camera-equipped aerial drone with a computational method to detect sidelong glances for spontaneous (calibration-free) gaze-based interaction with surrounding pervasive systems (e.g., public displays). GazeDrone does not require augmenting each user with on-body sensors and allows interaction from arbitrary positions, even while moving. We demonstrate that drone-supported gaze interaction is feasible and accurate for certain movement types. It is well-perceived by users, in particular while interacting from a fixed position as well as while moving orthogonally or diagonally to a display. We present design implications and discuss opportunities and challenges for drone-supported gaze interaction in public