I’m feeling good about the NBN Co because for the first time it will create real infrastructure-based competition: Mr Quigley’s address at the recent ‘Realising Our Broadband Future’ forum probably gave Austar, Optus and Telstra a fright as they realised that their RF-enabled GPON network will attract their premium video content hungry customers. Mr Quigley cited third-party research showing that video content delivered across fixed broadband networks is expected to surge and with NBN Co’s network making it very easy for new entrants to market niche service offerings in direct competition with established video providers, competition looms on the horizon.

I take the view that the business intent of NBN Co is to remove obstacles to competition rather than to create new barriers for retail service providers and that they intend to improve the lot of Australian broadband consumers, including the increasing numbers of thirsty video consumers, by lowering the barriers to entry for retail service providers.

This provides a good start to the process of bringing down the ‘video barriers’ and leads us nicely into the second phase. This phase requires much more innovative thinking than we have seen or heard to date in the broadband infrastructure space. I suggest the goal of this phase will be to make it easy for customers to choose, move or switch their video service provider by creating Set-Top Box portability across cable TV, fibre TV, and satellite platforms.

For sure, if you’re a Foxtel customer you can pick up your STB in Canberra and take it down to the holiday home on the coast: A common CAS for cable and satellite makes STB portability simple for consumers, which is good.

My suggestion looks at a different scenario: it’s about portability across the competing infrastructures.

The question is this; when NBN Co builds its RF-enabled GPON network in Longreach will a retail customer be able to pick up their STB and take it to Sydney and plug it in to the cable TV socket?

New broadband appliance
I floated the idea of a new appliance that creates STB portability across the broadband video platforms at a CommsDay summit in August. To my recent delight, the FCC in the United States released a Public Notice seeking comments on the very same concept. Indeed, the FCC positions the development of my mediation appliance as a natural development of their National Broadband Plan (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). This new UPnP appliance will have just a few colour-coded network interface connections for cable, fibre and satellite and consumer-side interfaces such as Ethernet, coax, HDMI and USB.

In the Australian environment TV is ubiquitous compared to broadband so we want to make it as easy as possible for consumers to get video content to TVs. Free TV is in 99.7 per cent of homes, Pay TV is in about 29% and 68% of homes have two or more TVs, with only 75 per cent of Australian homes having a computer and 67 per cent of homes having access to the internet. (Source: Free TV Australia).

To bring this ‘new appliance’ to life, the NBN Co might want to be innovative and sponsor its development, seeding the Australian video broadband market - and of course, make it easy for video broadband customers to choose their STB and of course to switch their retail providers.

Merry Christmas,
Dermot Cox
C-COR Broadband