ATUG Broadband User Group Nomination/ Callpoint's Campaign Efforts

In April 2002, Phil Sykes (then CEO Request DSL) nominated Callpoint's principal, Brian Beckor, to the newly formed ATUG Broadband User Group.  It was felt at the time that effort needed to be directed at a wider industry level in order to ensure the more 'ready and complete' availability of Telstra's geospatial datasets.

'Ready and complete' needs to viewed in context.  Back then, ULL carriers made approaches to Telstra Wholesale regarding the Exchange Service Areas for which boundary and Large Pair Gain polygons were requested.  Telstra Wholesale reviewed the list, and, for those ESAs it granted approval, delivered the polygons - some 6 or 12 months after the request was made!

This "handful of polygons" situation was a far cry from the readily obtainable National Exchange Number Prefix list.  When one considers the micro-geographic and other characteristics of broadband technologies such as DSL (which impact the usefulness of prefix lists, inc. for instance that there is no number prefix/ large pair gain mapping) and that Telstra's DSL planning and business groups had access to the full national polygon set, Australia's infrastructure based competitors faced a significant disadvantage.

Given the above situation and the Number Prefix mindset then prevalent within industry, Brian Beckor embarked on an educative campaign regarding:
- What constitutes geospatial data and how it can be used
- The differences between number prefix and geospatial approaches
- The specific additional value that geospatial approaches provide, and its importance to Australia's broadband industry
- Telstra's geospatial exchange datasets - availability, completeness and delivery timeliness issues
- What needs to be done

This campaign continued with for instance:
- Submission to Broadband Advisory Group (Aug 2002)
- Article for Exchange Newsletter regarding Telstra Exchange Boundaries (March 2003)
- Private discussions with and/ or submissions to ACCC, ACIF, ACMA, ATUG, the Competitive Carriers Coalition, SPAN, GIS vendors, Telstra Wholesale and certain State Government representatives (various 2002-2004)
- Initial response (via ATUG) to the Senate Broadband Inquiry (Sep 2003)
- Mentions during Callpoint's SPAN Regional Broadband presentation (Feb 2004)
- More specific 'geospatial dataset' contribution to the Senate Broadband Inquiry (July 2004)

The above campaign had largely served its purpose when Telstra Wholesale appointed a reseller for its exchange datasets in late 2004.