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IAA staff posing for a photo at the WiTWA awards evening

WiTWA Conference and Awards: a recap

IAA proudly joined the annual WiTWA Tech [+] Conference as silver sponsors this year. We passionately support Women in Technology WA’s mission to increase gender diversity, equity and inclusion in technology-related fields, as it aligns with our objectives too.  

Held in Perth this month, the one-day conference played host to a variety of exceptional speakers; their speeches underpinned by the same motive: to drive sustainable change in the tech community. We had a booth at the conference, where the IAA team promoted our own efforts in encouraging and supporting women. The centrepiece of our advocacy work in this area is the IAASysters program. We launched it in 2021 after wanting to do something about the low participation rates of certain sectors in the Internet industry.  

The glamorous WiTWA Tech [+] Awards followed the next evening, and several of IAA’s Perth-based team had the privilege of attending this event also. It was a memorable night for Lisa, Fatima, Sabrina, Kitty and Jemma, who had a great time celebrating the inspiring women making an incredibly important impact in tech.

So, what did it take to Keep Ukraine Connected in a war zone?

If you can’t answer this question, it must mean you didn’t attend our online event and hear the incredible René Fichtmüller share his experience on building and operating a network in a war zone. But don’t worry: you can still discover what it took to Keep Ukraine Connected – we recorded it so no one would miss out. The full one-hour online session can be viewed on our Facebook page. 

You’ll spend a very worthy hour learning how the Keep Ukraine Connected task force came together, from planning and organising to delivering equipment. René provides insight on the infrastructure, how the task force mapped the backbone data lines, the supply and demand tool used to determine the equipment needed to keep communications going, and so much more.

Watch it today, you won’t regret it!

graph of IAA IXP traffic

NSW-IX reached a traffic milestone!

We achieved an aggregate peak data flow of over 500 Gbps across NSW-IX. This occurred on Wednesday 16 November when Call of Duty: Warzone 2 was released on Steam – the game data was served to members from our Steam content caches.  

IAA has never had that much traffic across NSW-IX (or indeed any single IX) in our history. Not bad for our second-youngest IX, which is already our largest by data volume. 

It’s great news for members as it’s further evidence that getting data via settlement-free peering means a massive reduction in expenditure on internet-transit costs.

Keep an eye on the CDR

While we’re sure we would all like to pretend that the telecommunications sector’s participation and compliance with the Consumer Data Right (CDR) won’t be mandatory, that’s far from the truth.  

According to the draft rules, telcos with at least 30,000 services in operation will be subject to the scheme with smaller telcos able to elect to participate in the scheme, which will apply to fixed internet services and public mobile services. 

While the rollout timeline does not yet specify the telco sector, the Department of the Treasury continue to work on the standards and rules which will apply. We do know that once the rules come into place, the implementation will be through a 2-part process, requiring Telstra, Optus and TPG to be subject to the obligations, followed by the rest of applicable telcos in the second tranche.  

We encourage you keep an eye on the development of the standards and rules and respond to the consultations where you can.  

The rules will be in place with your compliance mandatory before you know it… 

Are your contracts free of unfair terms?

The government has passed legislation that will amend the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, which includes the Australian Consumer Law (ACL). The new amendments, which will come into effect from late 2023 (12 months after Royal Assent), include big changes, primarily with respect to penalties for anti-competitive conduct and breaches of the ACL.

The amended maximum penalties will be the greater of $50 million, if the court is able to calculate the value of the benefit, then 3 times that amount, or if the court is unable to calculate the value of the benefit, 30% of adjusted annual turnover during the period in which the breach occurred. These represent significant fines, so it is important to check your current contracts.

The ACL’s unfair contract terms regime will also expand ‘standard form’ contracts and ‘small business’ contracts, meaning you may now find that your business falls under the regime.

As the amendments don’t kick in for another 12 months following Royal Assent, this period is intended to allow businesses time to review their contracts. It will also only apply to new contracts (and renewals) entered into on or after the legislation comes into effect.

We recommend that affected members seek legal advice to ensure your contracts are free of unfair contract terms before the amendments come into effect, so you aren’t subject to these hefty fines.

Please note that the contents of this article do not constitute legal advice and are not intended to be a substitute for legal advice. You should seek legal or other professional advice in relation to any matters you or your organisation may have.

What is the Low-Income Forum?

The policy team met with NBN Co to discuss their preliminary questions before the launch of their Low-Income Forum. The Forum aims to address the issues facing low-income and other vulnerable consumers with respect to the provision of NBN Co products and services. The Forum will likely kick off in 2023 Q1.

We emphasised that the focus should be on ensuring concrete changes to NBN Co products, features, processes and services so they work efficiently for both consumers and industry. In this way, there will not be any need to develop specific low-income products. RSPs should not need to get involved in determining whether a consumer is a low-income, or an otherwise vulnerable, consumer. We took the view that if services are easy and affordable for industry to get, operate and offer, consumers will also be able obtain affordable and reliable services.

In response to their question as to the scope of the Forum, we suggested that while the primary remit should be NBN Co products and services, this sort of forum could present a good space for industry and other stakeholders to address issues concerning low-income consumers and telecommunications services that could be fed back to government, which they could then use to develop funding, educational and/or awareness programs and services.

NBN Co is considering what sort of form the Forum will take, with the likely view that there will be specific working groups for different issues including the appropriate stakeholders. IAA will continue to be involved to represent our members on matters that affect RSPs. If you have any thoughts or concerns, please get in touch!

The first year of our Public Policy Advisory Panel

The Public Policy Advisory Panel plays a fundamental role in informing IAA’s advocacy work. The Panel began in 2022, with the first meeting being conducted in April. Since then, IAA’s policy team have established its public-policy principles, released various educational material, responded to over 15 consultations and made a genuine impact in policy affecting the telecommunications sector.

In our last meeting for 2022, we had a chance to review and consider with the Panel the strategy and focus of IAA’s policy work for the future; our stance on Australia’s privacy and security regimes that is likely to continue being points of focus in the next year; and other policy areas of concern for Panel members. We were also grateful to have APNIC speak to us about its policy development process and consider areas that may be useful for IAA to be involved where IAA’s members are concerned.

We are very grateful for each Panel members’ time and assistance over the past year and very much looking forward to continuing our advocacy efforts with their help in 2023!

November’s Advocacy Corner Update

It has been another busy month for the policy team, from responding to consultations and meeting with NBN Co over the launch of the Low-Income Forum to holding our last IAA Public Policy Advisory Panel meeting for the year – while 2022 may be coming to a close, there’s still lots of work being done on the public policy front. Make sure to read our articles for more information on the work we’ve been doing this month. As always, if you would like to discuss any of the below reforms or if there are any other policy areas/issues of concern, please feel free to shoot us an email.

Completed Submissions

Variation of the Telecommunications Numbering Plan 2015 | ACMA
We didn’t see any substantive issues arising from ACMA’s proposal to vary the Telco Numbering Plan. However, if these variations are effected, this may mean some changes for the industry and your business, such as an obligation for donor CSPs to check the registration status of other CSPs to which they have assigned numbers. As such, we primarily advocated for ACMA to ensure efficient and reliable notification mechanisms and to conduct an awareness campaign to ensure CSPs are aware of any new obligations or systems. The Numbering Plan is set to sunset in 2025 and so we anticipate there will be further reforms in the future.

Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill 2022 | Attorney General’s Department
In our response to this fast-tracked legislation, we raised our concerns about the government’s focus in the wake of the recent major data breaches in Australia. While IAA acknowledges the importance of having adequate laws to ensure a strong security posture, we are concerned about the efficacy of the Bill. The Bill, which was further reviewed by the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs at a public hearing on 17 November, is primarily focused on increasing penalties for serious and/or repeated breaches of the privacy regime. However, this suggests that many companies are wilfully negligent about their privacy obligations. We argued that companies, particularly smaller businesses, struggle with the complexity of regulation and the lack of sufficient training and resources provided. Meanwhile, the sophistication and frequency of attacks only increases. We emphasised that the more pressing issues that require government attention are clarifying different regimes that mandate how much data companies should collect and retain, and provide support, particularly to small businesses, to ensure improved security and privacy practices. As the Privacy Act is still undergoing review by the AG Department with the Government report expected by the end of the year, IAA will continue to be involved in ensuring the development of an effective and practical privacy regime in Australia.

Open Submissions

WBA5 – First Consultation Paper on Implementing a Varied SAU | NBN Co | 6 December 2022
The NBN Co has issued its first consultation paper detailing some of the prioritised changes that will be implemented by the varied SAU. If you have any comments on these changes you would like us to include in our submission, please contact us.
Utilisation-based billing: NBN will change the TC4 Billing Model from ‘provisioned’ CVC to ‘utilised’ for TC-4 Bundling so that RSPs no longer have to actively forecast and manage CVC provisioning and will only be charged for what is utilised.
CVC inclusions adjustment: defined rules for bi-annual adjustments to CVC inclusions reflecting actual changes in end-user download usage over time for TC4 Bundled Offers.
Voice-only bundling offering: new voice-only $12/month at 12/1Mbps speed tier. Different prices applying to voice online and broadband will be based on a threshold data test.
Overbooking of CVC TC4 on NNI: NBN Co will allow RSPs to order aggregate CVC TC4 capacity in excess of NNI capacity.
Overage waiver: during the transition between bundled TC4 to flat rate offers, the overage waiver will be modified by changing the waiver threshold.

Superfast Broadband Access Service Final Access Determination Inquiry | ACCC | 9 December 202
The ACCC has released its draft decision on the SBAS Determination. The new measures proposed include regulation of access prices at the 50/20 Mbps speed tier, and charges for customer connections, transfers and appointments. There are also new requirements purported to improve the transparency of SBAS network performance and reliability.

Internet Association of Australia concerned that Privacy Legislation Amendment will not effectively address privacy concerns

7 November 2022

The Internet Association of Australia Ltd (IAA) today raised concerns that the Privacy Legislation Amendment Bill will not address Australia’s urgent need for data security and privacy protection.

IAA asserts that more so than enforcement measures, the government should focus on encouraging compliance by both increasing its education efforts and mitigating the harm to individuals in the case of a data breach by reviewing its data retention laws so that companies don’t hold unnecessary personal information in the first place.

“Legislative reform is obviously necessary to improve Australian businesses’ security posture and we support the government in this, but we need to really consider what that should entail,” said IAA CEO Narelle Clark. “In today’s context of ever increasing sophisticated online attacks, do stronger enforcement measures effectively address the actual data security issues that we are currently facing? Where is the focus on proper training, consumer redress and harm-mitigation measures? Where’s the guarantee that the revenue from the proposed hefty fines will actually go to redress or training?”

IAA’s submission to the proposed Bill particularly points to the disproportionate effect the increased penalties would have on smaller companies, and the potential to fail in achieving its intended outcome to create incentives for compliance.

“The increased penalties, while reflective of the serious nature of data breaches, suggests that companies are being wilfully negligent of their privacy compliance obligations,” said Clark. “What we see more often is that companies, especially smaller entities, struggle with the complexity of legislative and regulatory obligations. What we don’t want to see is more effort placed in the paperwork associated with privacy, than in actually improving data security. We need incentives to change the culture of data hoarding.”

“We look forward to continue working with government, industry and other stakeholders to ensure a privacy and data security framework that is genuinely effective and best serves all Australians,” said Clark.

The Privacy Legislation Amendment (Enforcement and Other Measures) Bill is currently with the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee for review and closed its submission due date on 7 November.

 

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