Issues with IPTV - ‘Order Chaos and Anarchy’

In March this year, Swinburne University commissioned Mark D. Pesce of Smart Internet Technology CRC Pty Ltd to undertake a report on IPTV - entitled now as 'IPTV - Order Chaos and Anarchy'

Pesce highlights the issue of the slow broadband speed in Australia - not high enough for IPTV (needing to be a 'thousand times greater than the aggregate peak throughput offered by Australian ISPs' .) (Pesce 2007 p8) to function at its best and believes that the inability of the commercial networks in Australia to embrace the technology in the past has meant that 'It may already be too late to bring commercial IPTV to Australia'. (Pesce 2007 p4) Pesce also reinforces that he believes that Australia and its insistence on hanging onto the broadcast model of commercial television is behind other developed countries 'the most advanced nations – in
South Korea, Japan, Western Europe, and North America – broadcasting is leaving'. (Pesce 2007 p4)

He also highlights the "chaos" element - the opposition to the broadcast model - using the term '“hyperdistribution” (which allow any audiovisual content to be shared with anyone, anywhere, at little or now cost)' (Pesce 2007 p5) Here the issues of copyright are still being difficult to handle. (Incidentally, on the news the other day it mentioned down the track service providers being able to detect illegal downloading and then blocking users from the net).

At the moment, there is only one IPTV service in Australia - in Canberra. To have the service to the whole of the country - Pesce estimates it would require 'possibly tens of billions...and could only come from a partnership between industry and government' (Pesce 2007 p 8-9) So it will be interesting if the proposed changes by the Labor government will come into effect if the party wins the next election this September.

More soon...