Australia: the national broadband project will reshape the industry, with a new regulatory framework

[The Australian] The federal government has brought forward plans to overhaul Australia's media laws to accommodate its $43 billion plan to give 90 per cent of the population access to high-speed broadband.

Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy last week told technology industry representatives many media regulations would not survive construction of the national broadband network.

He said he was holding meetings to discuss the issues thrown up by both the NBN and the switch from analog to digital free-to-air transmission with stakeholders.

"We're very conscious that the existing regulatory framework that exists -- particularly in the media sector -- is going to struggle to survive in a truly digitised world," Senator Conroy said. "Convergence has happened. The broadband network is going to radically reshape the media sector.

"Some get it a lot, some don't quite get it yet, some have been in a position of privilege for sometime and had competition kept away from them.

"I'm very conscious of it and we're working behind the scenes on discussions about this at the moment," he said.

Senator Conroy said he was particularly concerned that internet television services made possible by the future high-speed broadband connections, known as IPTV, would render the rules governing broadcast audience-reach obsolete.

For instance, if a major network player was to start streaming all of its TV content over the internet, federal laws preventing broadcasters reaching more than 75 per cent of the population would break down, he said. That has already begun to occur, with the Nine Network streaming news bulletins and access to other programs over the internet on Ninemsn, Seven offering news and programs on its Yahoo7 portal, and Network Ten offering a range of entertainment programs to be viewed online.

Cross-media ownership laws would also be up for discussion as more print media operators started taking advantage of IPTV, for example by streaming video news bulletins online.

Professor Michael Fraser, director of the Communications Law Centre at UTS, said the government faced a tough balancing act retaining local media diversity while ensuring media companies stayed large enough to survive as broadband globalised the industry.

"It is totally disruptive because it is such a big pipe it allows you easy access to all the media in the world. But I think, as an Australian audience, you'll still want ... to get Australian media," Professor Fraser said. "You've got to make sure that there is competition among the Australian media on the one hand, by not allowing a monopoly situation. But on the other hand, you've got to make sure that they are big enough to survive. So you have to balance diversity against size."

Professor Fraser rejected arguments that new forms of media arising from the growth of the internet, such as blogs and other forms of social media, could inject sufficient quality journalism to overcome concerns about diminishing diversity.

"Some people would argue that all the blogs and other sources of opinion give you sufficient diversity. I don't agree with that," he said. "I don't think that they are of the same standard, and people will look for those brands as a marker of quality, that there are professional standards and journalistic ethics being applied.

"Obviously you have to read the media sceptically no matter what the source and think about where they're coming from.

"But I think that major news organisations with major proprietors that have the resources to sustain that kind of professional journalism will flourish, and the blogs don't offer that."

National broadband will usher in a reshaped industry