Australia is currently embarking on a unique infrastructure project that may change the nature of the Last Mile access to Australian telecommunications forever. The National Broadband Network is designed to bring 'Internet' access to 98% of the Australian population by a mixture of fibre wireless and satellite technologies. The primary argument in favour of this...

In recent years, the connection between economic growth and the take-up and use of broadband has been used to justify significant government intervention and public expenditure in broadband networks. In the United States, stimulus funding has been committed for broadband planning and deployment initiatives. In Australia, the expectation of significant economic benefit has been used...

The first sections of this paper will review how those issues have been addressed as the technology has changed and, with it, how the universal service has been defined, delivered and paid for in differing regulatory contexts. The Government's policy for the provision of a National Broadband Network (NBN), however, significantly alters the technological and...

Notions about innovation have been essentially been ignored during the debates about Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) project. This paper draws upon the work of two established theorists on innovation, Joseph A Schumpeter and Clayton Christensen (each from a different era and holding a differing perspective on innovation), to canvass issues about the possible forms...

This report provides an overview of the Australian telecommunications industry performance against a range of regulatory obligations. It provides an overview of the Australian telecommunications industry performance against a range of regulatory obligations including compliance with safeguards such as the Customer Service Guarantee, the provision of emergency call services and compliance with codes and standards...