Tune in weekly for Twisted Wire, Phil Dobbie's weekly podcast on the tangled mess that is Australia's telecommunications industry.
Phil Dobbie has a wealth of radio and business experience. He started his career in commercial radio in the UK and, since coming to Australia in 1991, has held senior marketing and management roles with Telstra, OzEmail, the British Tourist Authority and other telecommunications, media, travel and advertising businesses.
Hot on the heals of the release of a new Communications Alliance discussion paper, Phil Dobbie spoke to four industry players to tackle some of the fundamental questions that the industry, and hopefully the government, are asking.
Why do we insist on going into the office every day? The technology is there for us to work from home for part of the week.
Will we see mass adoption of VoIP calling on our mobile phones? Does VoIP over 3G provide the quality of voice call that we've grown to expect? Can we expect the mobile carriers to fight its adoption and control access on their networks?
Will ninemsn and Yahoo7 maintain their dominance in the fight for the share of our internet time? Will they continue to adapt and survive?
Dodo has been taken to task for misleading advertising. But is telco advertising in Australia misleading in general? What can be done to make it easier for consumers to understand?
Will the NBN provide a boom for local application developers? If so, have we got enough local expertise to develop these applications? A visit to many government department websites will show how poor the user experience can be. With the new network will we just get more frustrated quicker?
Paul Fletcher has seen two sides of the telecommunications industry. First as an advisor to Senator Alston, the communications minister under the Howard Government, then he headed Regulatory Affairs for Optus. So what insights can he provide on the industry over the last decade?
Podcast: Australia is hurtling slowly towards one of the fastest broadband networks in the world, but what are we going to do with it?
Next month digital radio will be rolled out in most Australian capital cities. But is it too little, too late? Is the real future for radio moving online?
Is the NBN announcement a good thing? The industry at large seems to say yes. The Opposition is less sold on the idea, as you'll hear from Nick Minchin.