Member Portal
Categories

WLG-IX Launches!

Unfortunately, last month, New Zealand Internet Exchange’s plan to launch the much-anticipated WLG-IX was pushed back due to lockdown restrictions preventing important work needed to get it up and running. Thankfully, as Wellington lifted to level three restrictions, work resumed, and the new IX is now completed and in production, with the official launch date set for November 1 2021. WLG-IX is starting with a 12-month FREE period. Happy peering! 

All those eager to hear about the launch should keep an eye out on NZIX’s social media accounts.

 

Google Joins VIC-IX

We are excited to announce that Google has joined VIC-IX! With Google being only one hop away across VIC-IX, your customers can now access a wide range of their favourite content through our network.  

It’s always good to have quality content providers joining. If you have any content providers that you would like to see on our IX’s, we would love to hear from you! 

 

Policy Updates

October’s Advocacy Corner Update

The Federal government is continuing to ramp up its program of legislation aiming to control the perceived and real threats from the online world. We’ve written about our participation in the defamation workshops, but just recently it has become clear that the government would like to see defamation regulated the same way as it wants to regulate more obviously dangerous material, ie through the eSafety Commissioner and alongside the Online Safety Act. 

There are some very real risks we see with this approach: it is not clear where the liability and responsibility for defamatory material will lie, nor even whether this can be efficiently or effectively implemented. It became increasingly clear throughout the workshops that while it was accepted that straight carriage service providers won’t be liable (as “mere conduits”) other services usually included in an internet access service such as DNS, email, and web hosting, where ISPs have no effective part in the publication of material, may well have liability. Rest assured, we are doing our darndest to reinforce the fact that making a domain name available via the DNS is not an act of defamation, but unfortunately there are no guarantees that legislators won’t do something really stupid. They seem to find it difficult to separate certain large social media platforms from “the Internet” and are increasingly keen to enforce takedowns further and further down the technology and infrastructure stack. 

An amended Critical Infrastructure Bill through the House of Representatives last week. Introduced as part of the PJCIS’ report on the Critical Infrastructure Bill, this legislation will see the introduction of a new mandatory notification scheme for cyber incidents. It will also provide Home Affairs with the power to issue information gathering, intervention and action direction requests. Part II of the Bill, which will focus on risk management plans and the declaration of Systems of National Significance (SoNS), is expected to face further consultation with industry. 

Communications Alliance released a new code C666:2021 Existing Customer Authentication, which provides an improved framework to authenticate the identity of customers making transactions involving their telecommunications service. So new rules there for people to apply when gaining or transferring customers. 

Submissions

Recent Submissions

In October, we made submissions to: 

 

Open Submissions

Reporting of Telstra delivery of voice services | Department of Communications 

The Department of Communications has proposed that Telstra should improve their reporting of their voice services delivery in regional areas and provide quarterly reports to ACMA and Department of Communications relating to service quality and delivery. 

Record Keeping Rules Consultations | ACCC 

The ACCC is consulting on changes to the Record Keeping Rules for Telecommunications Infrastructure Assets. The Record Keeping Rules requires specific carriers to report on their core network and customer access network infrastructure to help the ACCC analyse competition within the telecommunications market.  The ACCC is seeking to update their list of record-keepers and introduce new reporting requirements for end-user equipment and mobile infrastructure.  

The ACCC is also seeking to amend the NBN Record Keeping Rules, including introducing reporting for enterprise ethernet services and businesses satellite services. They will also gather additional data on CVC capacity and utilisation data and ask NBN Co to report on performance against service standard commitments set out in the Wholesale Broadband Agreement. The latter agreement is still open to review, despite some members reporting they felt pressured to sign version five already. 

End of Year Network Change Embargo

This year, our network change embargo period is from 22nd December 2021 through to 10th January 2022 inclusive. This means that we won’t be provisioning any new services or changing any existing services during this period. Support staff will, of course, be on call to deal with urgent issues or network emergencies should they arise. 

Please remember all orders and change requests need to be received by 10th December, 2021. Login to the portal now if you need that upgraded or extra port! 

From the CEO’s Desk

There’s nothing like setting the dates for the end of year change freeze (22 Dec – 10 Jan) to make you sit up and notice the year is almost over! At least most of us are out of lockdown in time to do some seasonal shopping. On our shopping list is a brand new out of band network, and a few extra switches to accommodate all the member growth we keep seeing! The big Facebook outage recently demonstrated just how important your out of band access is when the network is broken, and that out of band access is vital for ensuring you can get access to sort whatever problem the network or our own humanity causes. Our existing out of band network is old and barely serviceable, so it’s definitely time for a replacement. 

Speaking of replacements, we are currently advertising for a new Policy Officer and Network Engineer, both of whom are off to new roles. If you know of anyone that might be suitable, drop us a line – they need to be totally fluent in internet acronym-speak, albeit somewhat different ones for each role, and be truly dedicated to serving our industry and making the Internet better. 

We’ll also be recruiting soon for an Advisory Council. The council will comprise members/member representatives and is to assist us in forming our positions on the various regulatory and policy issues and will meet about four times per year to give us that guidance. We’d love to hear from your policy nerds or even business people that have an interest in sensible rules within our industry. If we can pick the brains of a few of you, our submissions and representation will be even better! 

A huge congratulations to the team and to NZIX with the launch of WLG-IX. With two initial points of presence, this is a great expansion to the existing services across New Zealand. The POPs are in Xtreme and Spark’s Featherstone sites so nicely accessible to many of the Wellington service infrastructure.  

You may have noticed that auDA has finally launched the timetable for direct registrations in the .au namespace. This means you will be able to register your own domain names as a second level domain directly under .au. If you already have some_example.com.au then you will have priority in getting some_example.au as long as no-one else has some_example.org.au etc. Most countries have direct registrations already and it didn’t break their internet when it was introduced, but members should be aware that this change is coming, and it might mean extra effort in your DNS or customer support. Or you might want to try a whole new marketing approach with your shiny new short url. Check the auDA website for the full rules and the timetable. 

Last but not least, I must extend my thanks to member Ciphertel for stepping into the breach when we couldn’t get to QV1 for the power outage this month. It is brilliant to see the value our members bring. I just hope the coffee in the new café is good enough to justify the hassle. 

As ever – please feel free to get in touch to give me your views on any of the topics in this month’s newsletter. 

Narelle Clark  

Copyright © 2025 Internet Association of Australia Ltd | Privacy Policy | Terms and Conditions

Sign up to IAA's mailing list

Complete this form to receive all our latest news, events and updates.