Chief censor wants streaming video regulated
New Zealand’s chief censor wants government to regulate new forms of broadcasting. This includes streaming TV services like Netflix and Spark's Lightbox. Andrew Jack, who will soon retire from his chief censor role, says he fears these services show graphic scenes including suicide, rape and sexual violence without any regulation.
Jack says the government said it would introduce legislation last year, but has not yet acted.
Arts, Culture and Heritage Minister, Maggie Barry, says the government still intends to change the law later this year and will refer the matter to a select committee. She said the work to data has been complex. The law needs to allow for future technological changes.
Barry says any new law will exclude user-generated content and print media from regulation.
One Netflix show, 13 Reasons Why is particularly controversial. It includes rape and suicide scenes. Netflix says the show comes with a warning to viewers and an adult rating.
At the moment, streaming video material is not covered by New Zealand’s broadcasting act. Nor can viewers complain about streaming media to the Broadcast Standards Authority. One problem with regulating streaming video is that internet users may get their content from international sources, not through the official New Zealand services.
It was ten years ago today…
Ten years ago the National Party, then in opposition, first announced a plan to spend $1.5 billion to get fibre broadband to 75 percent of homes. Earlier in the year, then Prime Minister Helen Clarke told Parliament: “New Zealand needs a clear pathway to the roll out of fibre infrastructure, and we will be working with business and local government on that”.
In early 2008 National Party leader John Key expanded on the thinking behind investing in broadband in a speech he made to the Wellington Chamber of Commerce. He said:
“We need to carefully consider what the infrastructure demands of tomorrow will be and ensure we have a plan for meeting them. I have thought long and hard about what New Zealand must do to secure our place in the world. There is one modern technology that stands out in its terms of its ability to:
• Draw us closer to our trading partners.
• Put Kiwis at the forefront of technological innovation.
• Greatly enhance the way we do business and the way we communicate.
That thing is ultra-fast broadband for all New Zealanders.
I’m not talking about broadband speeds as we know them now. I’m talking about download and upload speeds many, many times faster than most Kiwis have ever experienced.”
Key told the audience he wanted to build a grid connecting almost every premise in the country to fibre. He also spoke of the need to make the network open-access and to enable competition between service providers.
Australia’s NBN shoots for gigabit fixed wireless
Last month NBN demonstrated a fixed wireless service delivering 1.1 Gbps down and 165 broadband. The demonstration took place on an NBN fixed wireless tower in Ballarat, Victoria. It was conducted in partnership with Ericsson, NetComm Wireless and Qualcomm.
NBN says there are no plans for a commercial 1Gbps service. There are problems with finding enough suitable spectrum. However, NBN does plan to offer a 100/40Mbps fixed wireless service to rural users from next year.
To get 1.1Gpbs NBN used carrier aggregation technology to pull together 11 LTE carriers. The demonstration used four in the 2.3GHz band and seven in the 3.5GHz band. It also called on MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output) and QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) technology.
The demonstration receiving equipment was located 1km from the tower and included several separate antennae. NBN says users will only need a single antenna when the new fixed wireless hardware being built for the service arrives next year.
NBN has big plans for fixed wireless broadband. Later this year it will reach close to half a million premises in parts of Australia where fibre is not economic.
The demonstration tower has fibre backhaul, but that’s not usual for towers on the NBN network which more often rely on microwave links.
Spark PSTN shut-down story gets mixed media coverage
On April 19 Fairfax journalist Tom Pullar-Strecker explained Spark’s plan to unplug the old PSTN technology and move to ip-based telecommunications. The headline could not have been any clearer: Spark promises 'minimal disruption' as it prepares to scrap landline technology from 1876.
Pullar-Strecker’s story tells readers that they’ll be able to do more with the new technology if they have the right equipment. He also noted that a small number of old devices would not work with the new technology and that things may not work as before if there’s a power cut.
He then goes on to quote Spark chief operating officer Mark Beder: “for most people the switch should be largely invisible, with minimal disruption to services. The vast majority of customers won't need to do anything and their existing phones and devices will continue to work normally. The migration entails a small outage of a few minutes, scheduled during off-peak times for residential customers.”
Five days later another Fairfax journalist had an entirely different take on the story in Change to landlines not good news for all. In this story Jane Bowron say the move will have older customers “fretting about the move to the dreaded cellphone”. An earlier version of the story went as far as saying older telephones would be unplugged.
Call for more digital inclusion
Despite all the recent advances, not every New Zealander can take advantage of the internet. In some cases the problem is money, in others it is access or a lack of suitable education.
A network of businesses and organisations has formed to address these issues. The Innovation Partnership wants government to pay more attention to digital inclusion and work with others to see people are not left behind.
There’s a clear incentive to get more people on board the internet. The Innovation Partnership says if every business and household had the skills and confidence to better use the internet the GDP could lift by $34 billion and the average household would save $1000 a year.
A study commissioned by the Innovation Partnership identified the main areas of exclusion and makes recommendations to improve digital fluency. This is mainly about giving people skills.
The report’s author, Policy Fellow, Catherine Soper says: “As more and more services go online there’s an assumption that we can all get onto our devices and complete these activities.”
“The reality is it might be easy for me, harder for my Mum and almost impossible for my Great Aunt. It’s vital for all Kiwis to have basic digital capabilities to operate in a digital world. Increasingly, digital is the way you communicate with family and friends, how you manage your health records , learn new things, do your banking and apply for jobs.”