Join us for our latest online event where we will be exploring the topic of internet regulation and delving into various industry regulations and their effectiveness to protect us against things such as cyber-attacks, unlawful access to data, and online content.

With a panel of experts from Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, who all have experience in the seeming avalanche of internet regulation, we will be asking their thoughts on the key issues for internet regulation today and what the future might look like for the internet industry.

We will be discussing government’s attitudes to encryption, online safety bills and the increasing approaches towards constraining platform operators, plus much more during our open social at the end of the event.

Date: Thursday 10 June, 2021
Time: 3.00pm (AWST) / 5.00pm (AEST) / 7.00pm (NZST) /
Venue: Zoom (Online)

Speakers

Jordan Carter – Chief Executive Officer, InternetNZ

Jordan is responsible for overall leadership, spokesperson for Internet issues, and executing the strategy for InternetNZ which manages the .nz domain name space. Jordan cares deeply about the difference the Internet can make for good in people’s lives, and he gets out of bed every morning because of the difference InternetNZ makes. In his spare time he likes reading, film, exploring Auckland and the odd bit of tramping.

Konstantinos Komaitis – Senior Director, Policy Development & Strategy, ISOC
Konstantinos provides analysis and strategic advice in support of the Internet Society’s policy, advocacy and mission, including the promotion of the open development, evolution, and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world. Konstantinos has extensive experience in Internet policy and governance arrangements.

Lucie Krahulcova – Executive Director, Digital Rights Watch

Lucie is a professional activist and digital rights advocate, specialising in surveillance, law enforcement powers in the digital era, export controls, encryption, data retention and telecoms regulation. Lucie previously worked in Ottawa and Brussels, and spent five years at the digital rights NGO Access Now, bringing an international dimension to the DRW team.

Patrick Fair – Principal, Patrick Fair Associates

Patrick Fair is an experienced commercial lawyer with expertise in telecommunications regulation, intellectual property, information systems, radio communications, data governance and commercial contracting. Industry Professor Deakin University School of Computing and Chair Communications Security Reference Panel at Communications Alliance.

Members and non-members can register for the event via Zoom.

IAA is excited to be partnering with Women in Technology WA (WiTWA) and NextDC for an in-person event in Perth.

The event, which is taking place at NextDC’s P2 site on Thursday May 20 will be looking into the Internet of Things, what it is, what it can do and what it means for us and for businesses into the future.

Date: Thursday 20 May
Time: 5.30pm – 7.30pm (AWST)
Location: NextDC P2, Perth

There will be a panel discussion featuring speakers from various areas of business and academia. Prior to the panel there will be the opportunity to take a tour of NextDC’s state of the art P2 site.

Registration will open shortly and the link to register will be shared with members and on our socials. Places are limited and these events sell out quickly so if you would like to attend get in quick!

Join us on Tuesday 20th April as we take a look at digital connectivity in regional Australia. Digital Networks in Regional Australia – Field of Dreams or Highway to Hell will focus on the issues surrounding regional communities and their access to the internet.

Regional Australia is a vast area with great distances between population centres, often with low population density. Despite this low density, regional production value rivals that of metro production. NBN, however, has chosen population density as its metric for technology delivery resulting in almost all regional Australia’s internet demand being served by two Sky Muster geosynchronous satellites with fixed capacity and limited speed.

DPIRD’s Digital Economy Manager, Robert Smallwood, will review the challenges faced by West Australians and discuss the initiatives being delivered by the WA Government to provide world-class terrestrial broadband networks across the vast areas between population centres.

This session will be preceded by a short update from the IAA Tech Team on some of the recent BGP gotchas for young and old in the world of peering.

Members and non-members can register via Zoom.

IAA is excited to announce the first event in our 2021 program.

Join us on Thursday 25^th February as we ask a panel of experts for their predictions on what we should be looking out for this year. Technology Outlook 2021 and its Impact on the Internet will look at new technologies, gadgets, as well as emerging regulation trying to constrain technology.

5G, Artificial Intelligence, online courts, and an increasing number of weird items forming the Internet of things are just a few of the technologies that have been playing out in our industry over the last year, but what will have the biggest impact on Internet networks in 2021?

We are fortunate to have secured Professor Katina Michael from Arizona State University, Professor Lyria Bennett Moses from the University of NSW and technology commentator and well-known gadget man, Trevor Long to join us to discuss the topic.

Members and non-members can register via Zoom.

Send us your questions ahead of the session and we will get them answered up front.

We were hoping to resume in person events in the new year but given our unpredictable travel situation, we will continue the program online, for the first few events at least.

Our most recent (and most lively!) event featured our new IAA Board Secretary, Matt Enger, relating his experience building an ISP from spare parts and a handful of customers to 10,000 customers, multiple POPs and high reliability on a shoestring budget. Members and friends enjoyed a lively discussion afterwards on the various technical and operational approaches for keeping to budget whilst maintaining high customer retention and satisfaction. It really rated as one of our best events yet, so keep an eye out for the video.

As Melbourne emerges from lockdown, we are continuing our online event series, this time looking at building an ISP on a budget.

Life Under Lockdown: Roll your own ISP, how to build a scalable, reliable ISP from low cost components will take you on a journey from start up to successful service provider.

IAA Board member Matthew Enger runs X Integration, an ISP that he started and has grown from a few hundred customers to thousands. Join Matthew as he talks us through obtaining and repurposing the parts, operating and scaling his network, and the gotchas he has seen along the way. From dDoS to regulation, this will be a useful and entertaining “how to” for everyone in the industry.

Date: Tuesday 24th November 2020
Time: 2pm AWST/5pm AEDT
Location: Zoom webinar and social

Come along and share your experiences or maybe get some ideas for a future start up project.

Members and guests can register via Zoom

IAA members were treated to in depth look into how the ACCC’s broadband monitoring system works during this month’s Life Under Lockdown event. Presentations from the ACCC and their performance testing provider SamKnows explained the rationale and technology used to assess Australia’s broadband network performance.

Sean Riordan, Head of the ACCC’s broadband performance monitoring program, explained that as the economic regulator of the communications sector, the ACCC’s main objective has been to promote the long-term interests of the users of internet services. The monitoring program aimed to promote competition and consumer outcomes by providing transparency on the quality of fixed line broadband services on offer to consumers via different NBN retailers.

The SamKnows system comprises a small ‘white box’ that NBN consumers install on their home networks. It simply measures rates of transfer without interfering with download performance and the company has been working with internet companies to create specific performance tests well beyond simple ping times.

Feedback following the event showed attendees were impressed by the comprehensiveness of the measurement system and its ability to track performance and were interested to see the changes in traffic and advertising, after the monitoring program started.

The event was also live streamed to our Facebook page. If you missed it on the night, it is still available to watch.

Our Life Under Lockdown events are proving popular and we are trying to bring topics that interest members.

Please feel free to circulate our event notices within your organisations, amongst your colleagues and friends we would love more of you to attend. If there are any specific topics you would like covered or speakers you enjoy – get in touch and we will do what we can to schedule.