Published Wednesday 7 Apr 2010
This month's Broadsheet looks at the digital enforcement measures proposed in ACTA and provides an update on Ultrafast Broadband standards, the Customer Transfer and Mobile Messaging Codes.
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In this issue of the broadsheet you will find information on:
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David Stone,
TCF Chief Executive Officer |
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The past month has been a very busy one with considerable activity on a number of issues. There has been a substantial amount of work done in the UFB Standards Working Party on developing the standards. This working party is working to very tight deadlines to meet the timeframes set by Crown Fibre Holdings. Refer to the update below for more detail.
In addition there has been much media attention around 111 calling and the Minister's push to get members signed up to the recently completed Emergency Services Calling Code. The TCF Copyright Working Party has also submitted on the Government's Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill as well as keeping an active watching brief on what comes out of the ACTA negotiations. The TCF/NAD Joint Working Party has received and reviewed public submissions and is now in the process of discussions with both the Commerce Commission and Internet NZ.
David Stone
Chief Executive
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The TCF UltraFast Broadband (UFB) working party set up to develop industry standards for the Government’s $1.5 billion ultrafast broadband initiative has now developed its work programme for the year.
The first phase of the programme will focus on the dark fibre and layer 2 industry standards. These are scheduled to be finished by 30 June. The second phase will focus on the OSS/BSS standard. It is scheduled to be finished by 30 September.
The working party has also appointed a steering group to oversee the work programme and address any issues that may arise. The steering group met for the first time on 1 April. The steering group is made up of Chorus, TelstraClear, Vodafone, Kordia, Vector, Northpower, Enable Networks, Callplus, the Telecommunications Users Association, and the Ministry for Economic Development, Crown Fibre Holdings and the Commerce Commission.
The Government has made a commitment to accelerate the roll-out of ultrafast broadband services to 75 percent of New Zealanders within the next 10 years.
Further information on this workstream can be found here. |
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The TCF has made a submission to the Commerce Minister Simon Power on the digital enforcement measures proposed in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA).
ACTA is a voluntary international agreement being developed to set a new, higher benchmark for intellectual property rights enforcement.
The TCF’s main concern about ACTA is that it may impose a different regime on internet service providers (ISPs) from the regime proposed in the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Bill, which was introduced into Parliament in February.
Once the Bill is enacted ISPs will have to change their systems and implement measures to meet its regime. The TCF is concerned that if ACTA has a different regime the Bill would then have to be changed to align with the international regime. This would mean that New Zealand ISPs would have to make more changes – a process that could be both expensive for providers and confusing for users.
In its submission the TCF has suggested that ACTA should adopt a similar approach to digital enforcement as that already taken by the Bill, to prevent this from happening.
The submission also reiterated the TCF’s belief that terminating an infringer’s internet account is a disproportionate punishment, particularly if they are blocked from the internet entirely, and that intellectual property owners should not have the right to an ISP’s customer details without a Court order or something similar.
Read the full submission. |
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The Customer Transfer Code working party is now revising the draft Customer Transfer Code after reviewing the feedback it received in submissions on the code.
The working party is focusing on three main streams of work. The first involves looking at ways to simplify the supply chain information which the draft Code proposes should be displayed on the end customer's bill.
The working party has also issued a Request for Information to selected vendors, asking them to come up with an estimated cost for developing a central transfer register to store the supply chain information for an end customer's services, rather than displaying this information on the end customer's bill. Responses to the RFI are due by 12 April.
The third stream of work involves using the feedback in the submissions to make changes to the draft code that are not related to supply chain information.
Once the working party has finished these three streams of work it will make recommendations to the TCF Board on what the next steps for the draft Customer Transfer Code should be. |
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The Mobile Messaging Services working party has almost finished drawing up guidelines for non-premium mobile messaging.
These guidelines will be incorporated with the existing guidelines for premium mobile messaging to create a new code covering both kinds of mobile messaging. The draft code is expected to be submitted to the TCF Board for review in May.
Members of the working party are Fronde, Mobile Messenger, Modica, Sybase, Telecom, The Hyperfactory and Vodafone. |
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Contact Information |
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