Stephen

Regulation of the data market is essential to Australia's legal and political stability, this is a given. The commodity that is traded when we talk about the internet is data, thats all. A modem is no different to an electricity meter box or a water meter box. They facilitate the transfer of a resource between the world at large and an individual person or companies location. The modem's commodity is data. The utility industries are heavily regulated, and a similar structure needs to be used in the data market. The only major difference is that instead of there being a single major source of the resource, each user is also a generator of data (although if distributed electricity generation gets off the ground the same will be true for electricity). An electricity retail provider is not liable if their product is used to make terrorist weapons, even if the place is using a noticably large amount of electricity that should set off warnings. Thus it must be the same that ISP's are not responsible for the use of the data on their network. Just as with electricity and the media the infrastructure/ retail/ and content sectors of the industry must be kept seperate. If a retailer also runs the infrastructure then there is no way another retailer can be on an even footing as the law is too ambiguously written and always results in expensive court cases to argue about terminology. A retailer must also not be allowed to be a content provider, as they will use this ability to bundle their services in a method another retailer cannot compete with. Imagine if Telstra owned Google, whats to stop telstra from excluding google searches in its data allowance, Optus cannot compete with that. Its the equivalent in the electricity market as if Channel 10 owned Origin, if the technology existed they could offer the deal that you dont pay for the electricity used to watch only channel 10. Obviously this would never be allowed (if it were possible), yet an equivalent antitrust situation is occuring with telstra now where they offer freebies with there bundle packages, over a range of markets that should be seperated. Home phone (infrastructure, data), Internet (data), Foxtel (media), mobile phones (infrastructure, data). Smaller ISP's dont have access to the ability to discount home phone calls or subsidise the cost of pay tv, so they are at an unfair disadvantage. This is how the regulatory system for telecommunications should be, its a utility industry after all and should be treated as such.