Chairman's Column: AND, WHERE DO I START?, The

Telecommunications Journal of Australia, Winter 2006 by Coutts, Reg

AND, WHERE DO I START?

This is my first Chairman's Column, and like Jim Holmes' words in his final Chairman's column the issues 'are not particularly related' - or are they?

The 'telecommunications' industry?

It is worth reflecting on the 'boom and bust' of the telecoms industry as we knew it prior to 2001, and asking ourselves what is the 'industry' that is emerging . In the late 90's the OECD coined the term the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry, neatly capturing the convergence of the IT and Telecommunications industries. In 'polite' circles the old terms 'IT&T' or 'Infocommunications'[1] are regarded as passé, while 'telecommunications' commands a certain respect for history. But what of the future? What does this blurring of industry boundaries mean for our sponsors and our members?

I have been following the activities of the Australian Computer Society (ACS) in recent years, particularly through my third career as a Professor of Telecommunications at the University of Adelaide. For those who have not checked out the mission of the ACS recently at http://www.acs.org.au/, they represent professionals in the ICT industry! While the Telecommunication Society of Australia was founded in the 19th century, ACS only started in 1966 - the beginning of the computer age. In line with their new mandate to represent ICT (not just IT) professionals, last year the ACS accepted me (a reconstructed telecommunications engineer) as a Fellow of ACS.

While at the University, I developed excellent working relationships with both the Computer Science and the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Departments, developing an understanding of their respective views of critical 'pedagogy' and 'core content'. It can be summed up by the statement of an unnamed ACS member that 'computer scientists created the Internet' while 'engineers built the phone network'. In universities around the world these two discipline silos, as I call them, albeit with different labels[2], continue their warfare to mould graduates in the true way forward!

Thus while the telecommunications industry still very much exists, the nature of the value chains within this broader ICT industry [3] are changing the focus for all the stakeholders, including our current and potential future members.

Australian R&D in 'telecommunications'

The TSA has established a working group to examine the changed nature of telecommunications research and development (R&D) in Australia in the last five years since the 'bust'. I can highlight just a few telecommunications R&D groups that are no longer with us:

* A number of university centres such as CTIN [4] CIRCIT, CLC

* The CRCs concerned with telecommunications including ATcrc, Photonics, Satellite Systems

* Major telecommunications supplier research groups such as Nortel, Ericsson

* Telstra's 'research laboratories' known as TRL

And yet during this same period we have seen the Government increase investment in:

* The National ICT Centre NICTA

* The ICT Centre of CSIRO

And the members of this group are struggling to identify the right questions to ask, and whether we should be concerned. Is it just the changing nature of innovation in this increasingly converged and globalised ICT industry?

My question is this: what is the critical juncture between R&D and innovation in this new ICT industry? Are the institutional structures in Australia in our Innovation System relevant to commercialising ICT R&D, or are we just too far away and distance does matter?

In successive issues of the Telecom Journal, we plan to publish papers very relevant to this issue, and this time Professor Andrew Parfitt from the Institute of Telecommunications at the University of South Australia will tell us how they have survived the crash as a niche R&D provider in this global industry.

Patents and Innovation in ICT

Recently I wrote an 'opinion' piece [5] entitled 'CSIRO - brave defender of Aussie Innovation' in which I summarised the recent fantastic financial returns of over US$450 million to the US firm Interdigital on its royalties from patents granted in the mid 1980's. Interestingly the 'Aussie innovation' of Telecom Australia in the early 1980s known as DRCS was cited by Ericsson and Nokia in their attempts to invalidate the Interdigital patents.

As the title of the article suggests, I could not help but compare Interdigital - a fully private and very innovative US company, very much part of the ICT industry winning its reward - with CSIRO, a public company attempting to take on the industry of which it is not a part.

As an Australian ICT professional wanting to see wealth creation out of innovations in ICT, I wish CSIRO well as it takes on Intel for unpaid royalties to CSIRO. I am unsettled when I consider that the millions of dollars being spent of taxpayers' money defending a very broad patent might be better spent on innovations.

Is there a connection between these three topics? I believe there is - and I hope our readers will involve themselves in the public debate. Overall, my concern is that in Australia we are increasingly peripheral to the ICT industry as such and whether we should be asking how ICT innovation can enhance our competitiveness in industry sectors where we do have comparative advantage - such as mining or brewing?