Progressive Party
Response to Questionnaire - Progressive Party.
Broadband
While New Zealand lumbers towards speeds of 10-20 megabits per second across old copper wires, countries at the top of the OECD are targeting speeds between 100 megabits per second and one gigabit per second across fibre access.
1 - Using a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is irrelevant and 10 is critical; please rate the importance of an Internet-enabled digital future to New Zealand’s society and economy?
Probably seven. High speed broadband is a critical piece of infrastructure if we are going to continue to increase New Zealanders’ competitiveness and living standards. aving said that, other infrastructure is critically important too – some, such as water – are plainly a ‘10’. So the rating on this question is relative.
2 - Should the investment model for rolling out fibre access be private sector or public private partnership, and what is the appropriate role for government, both central and local?
There should be a partnership between public and private sector involvement to ensure sufficient investment is made. This doesn’t necessarily mean the government will be an owner, or even a funder, although that may be the best role in some circumstances.
The government needs to be ready to step in where the market is not providing enough investment fast enough.
As a result the Labour-Progressive government is investing $500 million in broadband infrastructure to get fast broadband to New Zealand homes and businesses.
We believe substantial government capital may be necessary to make capacity upgrades in our international links available.
We also support continued government partnership with industry to ensure rural New Zealand has access to high quality broadband links.
We support the development of our broadcasters to move more content online, and will support investment by SOEs in broadband infrastructure to ensure more video content can be delivered over the Internet.
The government has a crucial role as regulator. Progressives support strongly pro-competitive regulation.
We support the unbundling of Telecom – any networks with a dominant market position in any technology will need to provide access to competing providers on a fair commercial basis.
3 - Do you consider the existing international connectivity to be a bottleneck? If yes, what options would you pursue to deal with this?
Yes. The Broadband Investment Fund will co-invest in an additional international cable.
Progressives also support investment by SOEs, if they can make an adequate business case, to enter the business of growing our international links.
Infrastructure
Passive infrastructure, such as ducting and laying the fibre cable itself, can account for up to 70 percent of fibre access deployment costs.
4 - What policies would you support that would encourage co-investment and/or coordination in laying fibre cables?
We support SOEs entering this sector. We support pro-competitive regulation.
5 - Would you support requirements on duct access, sharing of fibre access inside buildings, and requirements to install fibre in new buildings?
No. It would not be possible to distinguish between those buildings needing fibre access and those that don’t without imposing enormous compliance costs. For example, would a new barn or storage warehouse be required to include fibre connections? If there were a business case, the owners are likely to put in the infrastructure they need.
The focus needs to be on ensuring high speed connections are available to buildings anywhere in the country.
6 - Do you support an open access model for local fibre in which the network provider sells passive network capacity to other services providers to sell, or lesser requirements of equity of access to wholesale services from network providers?
The Telecommunications Commission should be strongly supported to make pro-competitive regulation.
Progressives are open to the Commission’s views about the best mechanism to achieve a pro-competitive balance.
Digital Divide
The term ‘Digital Divide’ refers to the gap between those with effective access to digital and information technology and those without. The recent World Internet Project survey said that Digital Divide issues in New Zealand are driven by household income and location. The more rural you are, and the poorer you are, the less likely you are to have good access to the Internet.
7 - How will your party assist the poor in New Zealand to get decent access to computers and the Internet, and what will your party do to ensure every school, library and polytechnic has fibre access?
The Labour-Progressive government is investing $500 million in broadband infrastructure to get fast broadband to New Zealand homes and businesses.
$160 million will be invested in broadband across the health and education sectors over the next five years, lifting productivity and effectiveness.
By 2012 all educational institutions will have access to a high-speed National Education Network, transforming the way our children learn. Libraries, schools and researchers will be connected, allowing them to enrich their content and assisting them to collaborate.
The world internet project findings have limited application to New Zealand. In New Zealand, rural communities are not noticeably poorer than urban communities economically speaking.
However rural broadband services are far below urban standards. Rural services are slow and expensive, high prices and the relatively limited broadband applications available when compared to high-speed DSL (wired) services.
Project Probe ensured every school, and thus every community, in New Zealand has access to high speed internet. Progressives support continued ongoing investment to upgrade the quality of those connections.
8 - The rural sector is often called the engine room of our economy – how will you improve rural connectivity and access to high-speed broadband?
At the moment there is almost no competition in rural broadband. Rural broadband is slow and expensive.
The Labour-Progressive government’s Broadband Investment Fund has committed $75 million for rural projects - twice the rate per 1,000 population as that for urban areas. The rural fund is aimed at extending the reach of broadband into remote rural areas that do not currently have broadband capability.
In addition, new low frequency (900MHz) bands have improved the affordability of rolling out mobile based internet access in rural areas – both Vodafone and Telecom have announced plans for significant investment.
Copyright
Copyright law lets people benefit economically from their creative work. It should balance the rights of individual users with those of the copyright holders but in recent times significant concerns have arisen that the balance has shifted towards copyright holders as society grapples with the implications of digital media.
9 - How far should Government go to protect the interests of copyright owners against the rights of citizens and do you think our copyright laws are being unduly influenced by the US entertainment industries?
Copyright holders are citizens too. Copyright is a crucial element in encouraging innovation and copyright holders need to be able to enforce their legal property rights.
However, Digital Rights Management technologies are too often far too intrusive. The prevalence of DRM despite consumer rejection of intrusive technologies suggests competition law may not be keeping pace with consumer needs.
When iTunes began selling music with no DRM, there did not appear to be any increase in copyright violations resulting. Consumers want access to high quality products, not products that treat legitimate consumers as criminals. There is little evidence that going along with extensive and crippling DRM models has helped to grow New Zealand’s artistic businesses and get them online internationally.
We therefore favour copyright laws that allow copyright holders to uphold their rights, while ensuring consumers are not burdened.
10 - As a result of industry pressure, the Government has delayed Section 92A of the amended Copyright Act, which will require ISPs to terminate the accounts of repeat copyright infringers. What is your position on s92A and how would you resolve the issues?
ISPs should not be made policing agents and should not be liable for the use that end users make of the infrastructure they provide.
Access to the internet should only be terminated on a court order after due process. We are concerned about sledge hammer approaches that can see innocent people lose their connections.
As an alternative we would prefer the Consumers’ Institute submission, which supports a “notice and notice” approach where if an ISP is notified about a copyright infringement, they have a responsibility to forward the notice to the customer.
11 - Will you commit to a balanced approach to copyright reform that reflects the views of all New Zealanders by pledging: to respect the rights of creators and consumers; to not support law change that undermines or weakens copyright user rights; and to fully consult with New Zealanders before introducing law changes or signing international treaties that would impact copyright user rights?
Yes.
12 - Should there be a first-principles review of New Zealand’s Copyright Law and, if so, when would you begin this work?
The law needs to be kept under review because of the speed at which technology and the international environment are raising new issues. We would see this as an ongoing work programme for the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Culture and Heritage.
Cybersafety
Connection to the Internet exposes the public of all ages to inappropriate material, online predators, and net nasties such as viruses, worms, Trojans and malicious software.
13 - Last election there were pledges of 1,000 more cops on the street. What about online? How many more cops do we need in cyberspace? And will you increase the capability of the Police E-crime Lab, Internal Affairs Censorship and Anti-Spam Units, Customs, and the Centre for Critical Infrastructure Protection?
Decisions about police staffing priorities should be left to the Commissioner.
The first prosecutions under the anti-spam laws have been announced and we would like to allow time to see if resources currently are adequate. If insufficient resourcing emerges, we support growing it as fiscal conditions permit.
14 - Does NZ need to establish an NZCERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and if yes, what role should Government play in the establishment, operation and funding of an NZCERT?
No policy no this.
Privacy
The UK Government is planning to spend £12 billion on a database to monitor and store all its citizens’ Internet browsing, emails and phone calls, in the face of huge concerns globally about privacy breaches surrounding Government and corporate data.
15 - What is your party’s view of the UK approach? Are you in favour of more, or less, intrusive actions by Government and enforcement agencies? What will your party do to ensure the privacy of each individual’s identity and information online?
We do not have policy on the UK government. In general, the rules relating to privacy online should be the same as those elsewhere – that is, the Privacy Act should apply, and for exceptions (such as terrorism and general crime) government agencies should need to show a judge there is proper cause in order to obtain a warrant.
IPv6
The Internet is currently reliant on IPv4 as the network layer IP addressing protocol. The entire IPv4 address space amounts to around 4 billion addresses available globally and exhaustion of this address space is likely to occur within the next two years.
Governments are increasingly concerned with the lethargy of conversion to IPv6, the next generation of IP addressing, and the USA and Australian Governments are showing determination to migrate, particularly in the area of their Defence Forces.
16 - What steps do you intend taking to accelerate the deployment of networks using IPv6 in New Zealand, particularly inside Government?
The Labour-Progressive Government's Digital Strategy maps out a goal of moving to IPv6 by 2018. We support the development of departmental work programmes to help achieve this goal.
Convergence
The Internet and traditional broadcast media are converging and the Government is reviewing broadcasting and content regulation. The boundaries are breaking down between digital and analogue worlds, across business models, delivery channels and access devices and fundamental differences between traditional broadcast and the Internet need to be addressed.
17 - How will your party address the issues of regulation of content in New Zealand as content becomes more and more available online and outside of traditionally regulated broadcasting channels?
We are not convinced that any change to regulation of content is required.
18 - Do we need a converged regulator of broadcasting and telecommunications, and if so, should there be two such converged regulators, one for content and the other for infrastructure?
This may be the direction of the future, but it is premature to make changes yet. We support the regulatory agencies that we currently have.
19 - How do you see the increasing delivery of media content over the Internet affecting the way content creation is funded by Government?
Progressives support moving more government funded content online. Within three years we would like to see NZ On Air regularly funding programming delivered over the Internet. As fiscal conditions permit, we support funding public broadcasters to move content delivery to the Internet.
We support investment by SOEs in broadband infrastructure to ensure more video content can be delivered over the Internet.
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