Wholesale Industry Group

During early 2006, Mr Paul Budde (Managing Director, Buddecomm, initiated a series a industry meetings regarding telecommunications infrastructure in light of DCITA's Broadband Connect, Connect Australia and related programs.

It seemed to Paul Budde that a comprehensive knowledge of existing broadband infrastructure across regional and rural Australia would be an essential pre-requisite towards:
(i) The efficient allocation of government funds
(ii) The future vision of an open access network environment

These meetings were well attended by key telcos, DCITA and broadband vendors.  In April, Callpoint's principal, Brian Beckor, was invited to present an outline of how a comprehensive infrastructure map could be created.

Paul Budde's introduction: "In order to understand where the broadband problems are in regional Australia, we need to have a map of the networks that are already in place, this will give us an indication of where the gaps are, for that reason I have invited Brian Beckor, Australia's foremost expert in this field, to the meeting to explain how we can develop such a map."

For meeting outcomes please refer Communications Day, 12 April 2006.

Callpoint invested considerable effort into the details of how telco's GIS data could be handled.  On the one hand, most wireless operators were openly keen for all to know their tower locations and capabilities.  On the other hand, fibre carriers expressed reluctance to participate unless assurances were made that their GIS data would not be made available to any other party.

Note that Callpoint's principal was already mindful about fibre GIS data sensitivity as a result of Non-Disclosure Agreements from earlier client projects.  This aspect was echoed in his Rural Bash (March 2005) article about Australia's fibre data assets.

To address these sensitivities, Callpoint devised a "composite, anonymous GIS data" process:
- The only entity that would receive GIS layers (in composite, anonymous form) would be DCITA
- Other GIS contributors were entitled to receive the composite, anonymous output maps (as PowerPoint slides) -- but only after they signed an NDA
- Non-contributors would not be allowed to receive the outputs (not withstanding strong interest received by Callpoint)

The project details were outlined by Brian Beckor during the May 2006 meeting.  Significantly, DCITA expressed strong support for the project, which assisted to galvanise a number of potential participants.  DCITA also agreed to fund the project (without which it would have quite likely stalled!), and explained the significance of the timing in relation to the forthcoming Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program.

In all, fibre route GIS data was received from 9 participants.  A total of 2,099 tower sites was received by the wireless operators.

Callpoint DCITA-Wholesale Industry Group presentation (July 2006)