re: IP: Australia Diary -- some very good comments on what the problems are for Australia and what the future holds [...]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2001 00:31:17 +1000
> From: cfb <cfb () nirai ne jp>
> To: dave () farber net
> Subject: IP: Australia Diary [...]
>
> Hi,
>
> I have a couple of belated comments to make about your Australian
> trip (I just missed your talk when you were in NZ a year or so ago
> and just happened to not be in Australia on your most recent travel.
> we're going to have to stop not meeting like this...)
>
> I've noticed one important fact about Australians during my stay
> there.  Australians are innovators and entrepreneurs in *exactly*
> the same way that Americans are (as are all opposably thumbed
> humans)... with the exception that their efforts seemed to be
> much more muted, by government and to a lesser extent by cultural
> factors.  Two major changes need to happen to accelerate the
> natural march of progress:
>
>    taxation (now over 50% for earners over US$35k/year)
>    bandwidth tariffs
>
> The taxation issue is obvious.  All you have to do to realize it's
> impact is look at tech job adverts.  Key people are obtained by
> advertising an overseas assignments (of which up to US$40k is tax
> free (a very good deal for other markets like the UK/CA/US and a
> really good deal for the employee).  Innovators go elsewhere to
> preserve the return on their intellectual sweat equity; if you
> consider that the asian population is the fastest growing
> statistic, the taxation issue *must* be addressed eventually,
> otherwise, Australia runs the risk of becoming a "vacation
> economy" (dual passport holders take their innovations back to
> China, Korea, Taiwan, etc. and live in Australia).
>
> Bandwidth tariffs... well, all really have to do to understand
> this issue is poke around the Australian ISP lists, look at how
> Telstra is trying to force tariffed internet connections on both
> the customer and Internet Service Provider and look at the past
> protests for remuneration that Australia has put to international
> telecommunication committees.  If you look at ISM band wireless
> regulation and community/township councils attempts to tariffs
> cable and ADSL lines that run through their communities, it's easy
> to understand what a bad trend bandwidth tariffing represents.
> It's hard to find a good Rackspace like colocation facility and
> the bandwidth prices in near-by countries is finally dropping
> to sane levels.  The risk that major hosting opportunities will
> move off shore is still *very* real.  In my opinion, Telstra
> and other telecoms would be far better off tarrifing moble data
> rather than attempting to push the international tariffing
> issues (which appears to be very similar to the CLEC-like pursual
> of call termination fees... and we both know how that ended).
>
> Another trend that I've noticed coming to fruition (wired has
> had articles on this for yonks) is the blossoming of India's
> tech savvy.  What's interesting is that India isn't making it
> by cranking out code using 5% of their 1 billion people for
> $1 an hour (the bill gates gambit).  Instead, India's british
> language skills are coming front and center.  There was a news
> story on Australian TV about 6 months ago that detailed how
> call centers had begun mass migration out of the UK and Australia.
> Turns out, thanks to satellite TV and undersea cable, the people
> of India are more that able to provide call center service for
> these markets.  Call center customer service reps. keep spun up
> on local sports, soaps and other pop culture tit-bits through
> the collective reality of TV (so they can have an idle
> conversation with the customer that makes them believe that the
> rep. is local).  In addition, the call centers provide brush-up
> language training to make sure the accent presented to the
> customer is regionalized and culturally correct).  The big news?
> Software/Hardware customer support help desks for the tech
> industry are next.  Of course techs. are less likely to be
> worried about the sports, soaps or weather, so... product
> spin-up will replace the language lessons for folks answering
> the phones.   The impact this will have on the job market and
> industry in general will be tremendous.
>
> The point is that the computer industry is going to be hit on
> two fronts.  China is destiny is manufacturing... India's
> future headed very definitely in a service direction.  Using a
> skeleton crew who have visas in the US/UK/Australia, telecom/
> network connections can be configured, equipment can be drop
> shipped and using IPv6 auth-configuration figures, the help desk
> in India can talk the secretary through the hardware
> configuration (plug it in) and use of their company's .net
> application hosted by a token company that has rack space in
> texas.
>
> Easy-to-do tech jobs are going to be moving off shore.  Tech
> needs to return to it's research and development roots.
> Obviously that can be no research and development without sales
> and profits, so this off-shore trend will need to be embraced
> and the process by which products go from R&D to production
> will need to be *well* oiled.  Right now, I believe there are
> more than a few of tech companies that can not meet these
> future requirements.
>
> Overall, I'm very bullish on Australia.  It has a similar
> land-of-immigrants melting pot history, vast natural resources,
> stratgic placment and as close an approximation to democracy as
> any democracy can claim these days.  The government and certain
> aspects of their culture/society need some minor tweaking...
> but which country can claim to be free of those needs?



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