The recent Australian Broadcasting Summit in Sydney discussed digital services, DRB, personal recording technology, interactive content, streaming, new advertising opportunities in the digital media and many more topics.

In his opening address the Chairman of Broadcast Australia, Gerry Moriarty summed up a lot of issues facing broadcasters at this time of convergence and digitisation. Here is some of what he had to say:

Picture yourself in ten years time, in 2013. Ask yourself this question; how will I, and other people, be consuming and interacting with various broadcast services? Perhaps you can picture yourself with your family, in your home, or travelling in your car. Picture people who have jobs that require them to be mobile and what their information and communication needs will be. Think of the people like the fire brigades, the police and the ambulance services. Picture how all these people might use broadcast services and wireless communications in their working environment and in their leisure time.

I will begin by posing two questions that I hope to address in this presentation: What will the broadcast industry look like in 10 years time and, just as importantly, what is required, or what has to happen, to get us there?

In my view, broadcasting in Australia will change dramatically in the next ten years. Most of the change, in isolation, will be gradual or incremental, but the combined impact of multiple evolutionary changes will add up to significant overall change for the industry. Importantly, terrestrial broadcasting, both television and radio, will continue to be a vital medium in peoples lives, as it is today; it may, however, be used in somewhat different ways. This, I believe, will be based on it’s strengths in meeting the increasingly mobile needs of consumers and it’s low cost of delivery.

Digital broadcasting has the potential to change every part of our lives – business, social, political and educational. Firstly, let me ask the question; Why will broadcasting change? I believe the broadcasting sector will have at least FIVE key drivers of change:

· 1) Competition: The increased intensity of competition for peoples eyeballs and leisure time and the competition from different media will drive change in our industry

· 2) Mobility: our society is becoming increasingly mobile and people are wanting, and expecting, access to information in a timely and efficient manner while they are on the move. In many cases they require fast and immediate access to information. This will drive changes in business and consumer requirements.

· 3) The automotive industry as a driver (no pun intended): the automotive industry will increasingly install in-car digital broadcast equipment that will allow content providers and business application providers as well as traditional broadcasters to deliver new and innovative services. The technologies required to use these services while people are mobile will also be installed in public transport vehicles such as trains and buses. This will drive change in our industry.

· 4) The outsourcing of public sector communication & broadcast facilities. Due to the inability of the public sector to fund the large capital investment projects required for the delivery of new digital communication and broadcast services, outsourcing arrangements will allow private sector capital to be accessed which will drive further change in our industry

· 5) that digital TV is far from achieving its full potential. Not only is technology changing at a fast pace, but when terrestrial broadcasters begin to exploit the potential of increased video compression and interactivity, this will drive the industry. It will encourage new players who in turn will inject further competition into the industry, providing an unpredictable yet exciting dynamic…

The first theme … is mobility. More accurately, the ability of broadcast services to deliver both information and communication and therefore meet the mobility needs of end users.

The second theme … is that technology is no longer the barrier to the sorts of broadcast services that can be delivered to businesses and consumers. What is a barrier, is understanding how commercial broadcasters can profit from all these new services and how public broadcasters can use them to meet their objectives. For no matter how great the technology, a service won’t be implemented unless it can be financially viable. There is an important “stimulus” role played by the public broadcasters…

It’s true we don’t have that feeling yet about digital television and digital radio. DTV is an evolution of analogue TV and likewise for digital radio. DTV has been a revolution for engineers but it hasn’t been so for consumers – but it will…

For the consumer, change will not come suddenly, change will be gradual. We should be mindful of the time it takes new standards to evolve and acquire approval, the time required for legislation, the time required for commercial implementation and consumer acceptance. The evolutionary “cycle” for past major developments in broadcasting in Australia appears to have had a cycle period of about 20 years…

Let us for a moment look at a service that is often referred to as a competing technology to terrestrial broadcast services: streaming media across the internet… The first point I would make is that there will be competing technologies in the future and I believe they will co-exist and people will use them in different ways. However, there are many reasons to believe that terrestrial broadcasting will remain the visual and aural medium of choice. Broadcast networks provide a significantly lower unit cost of delivery compared to fixed and mobile telecommunication networks. Broadcast is content rich and has a higher share of attention with a proven business model and is ideally suited to meet the increasing mobile needs of consumers at a low cost of delivery. That is it’s greatest strength and why I believe it will remain the medium of choice. Our collective challenge is to build on these advantages…

Let us remember the fundamentals, which are (1) that the technology is not the barrier and (2) as more and more studies are showing, choice is the “killer app” for consumer take up of digital TV, and indeed, so far as we can tell, for digital radio too. There is of course a trade off between choice and price …

Interactivity, another much hyped capability, while not a financial success to date, will come to the fore with more experience and the convergence of television sets, PVRs, set top boxes and personal computers…

The advent of a wireless return path for terrestrial television digital set top units and television sets, namely DVB-RCT, introduces new economies and convenience for digital customers… Broadcast Australia will be conducting a DVB-RCT trial in Australia this year …

A second example of technology not being the barrier to innovation and delivery of broadcast services, is the use of Single Frequency Networks or SFNs. Broadcast Australia has designed and built SFNs for the ABC and SBS digital TV services in 5 areas around Australia. We had some teething issues but these are bedded down now and we are proud of our achievements in this arena. This does prove that SFNs can be used for digital TV, and also therefore for digital radio, around Australia. This is important for the provision of efficient and user friendly mobile terrestrial audio and video services.

Permit me to jump from the technology to the legislative environment for a moment, because what is technically possible can have an important impact on the legislative environment, and this has implications for compression standards, set top boxes and digital radio to name just three. The biggest decisions are the political and business ones.

If we look at the UK DRB market we can see the benefit of clear legislative foundations. Digital Radio Broadcasters receive an initial 12 year licence period with a further 12 year extension and a guaranteed analogue extension period if they simulcast in digital. Here is the proof of the policy pudding; in the UK there are now two national digital radio multiplexes, one covering 85% of the country, the other 65%, and both providing over 20 national digital radio stations. There are 38 regional or local multiplexes providing over 300 local digital radio stations.

So which business model for DRB will be successful in the UK is too early to tell However, an interesting note to DRB in the UK is that it is the commercial networks that are leading the roll out of DRB.

Although Digital Radio might seem a long way off, I encourage the Federal Government to plan now for the national roll out of digital radio services and look to the success of digital radio policy in the UK and to the automotive industry as a driver for change in this part of the broadcast sector. Digital radio and datacasting could easily deliver significant benefits to people on the move – for drivers and passengers, for people requiring entertainment to people requiring work related information.

As a general guide to understanding the roll out and take up of digital radio, I believe, what was true for FM radio will be true for digital radio. And what was true for FM radio was that the automobile industry drove the take up and acceptance of FM. Car manufacturers know consumers very well. They know that the car radio is important and that new technology in the console, like satellite navigation for example, is always in demand. Once people have DRB in their cars, it will become “the norm”. Large production volumes, driven by automobile industry sales will drive down prices, just like they did for FM…

Naturally I sit in the infrastructure provider camp and we can make a useful and necessary contribution to the policy making process. Broadcast Australia is very keen to be an active player in the many broadcast services I have mentioned…