Good morning distinguished delegates, colleagues and friends from across the Pacific and Timor-Leste.
I am excited to welcome you all to Melbourne for the inaugural Telecommunications and Radiocommunications Training Program – the TRTP.
I also welcome colleagues from the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, especially the Cable Connectivity and Resilience Centre, who are key contributors to the TRTP.
I acknowledge the vital support of the Minister for Communications, the Hon Michelle Rowland MP and the Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Hon Tim Watts MP in helping to bring the idea of this program to fruition.
Assistant Minister Watts has recorded a message for today that we will show soon.
I also acknowledge the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity and Secretary General Kondo-san for his leadership in delivering the TRTP.
While he cannot be here in person, the Secretary General has also recorded a message for you all.
The ACMA is pleased to once again work with the APT in delivering training to the region.
Programs such as these reflect the importance we place on our relationship with the Pacific.
This particular program has been developed given our interactions over a number of years with many of you who have shown the desire for greater knowledge-sharing and capacity-building as policy makers and regulators.
There has been a collegiate effort to bring this gathering together and I know that spirit of collegiality will imbue this conference over the next 3 days.
Common challenges/common goals
As an island continent, Australia has historically battled the tyranny of distance.
We are a nation dotted with islands of cities and towns interspersed with smaller communities, separated by huge areas of largely uninhabited country.
To give this some perspective, the distance from where we are here in Melbourne to Darwin is nearly twice the distance between Darwin and Port Moresby. And it’s more than 4 times the distance between Dili and Darwin.
Australia’s reliance on communications infrastructure to connect with each other as a culture, economy and as a nation cannot be understated.
However, a continent even larger than Australia lies to our east and north-east.
The Blue Pacific Continent holds within it many of your nations with your own proud diversity of cultures, languages, faiths and heritage.
But within our broader region there are also the shared values of a deep connection to the land and the ocean, and a commitment to security, social inclusion and prosperity.
The 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent sets the goal I know we all aspire to – for a well-connected region that ensures inclusive, accessible secure and affordable ICT infrastructure and services.
I acknowledge we are all at diverse stages in the development of our communications and digital transformation, but the effective harnessing of that infrastructure is fundamental to this transformation and to all of our futures.
What we will be talking about over the next 3 days are in essence the building blocks for nation-building, economic prosperity and regional security, as essential as physical infrastructure like roads, ports and airfields.
This communications infrastructure not only supports our maritime and aviation services but also enables innovation, supports education and skills development, underpins productivity and economic growth and increasingly provides the platforms for the dominant way we interact and connect socially.
Each of our nations face challenges individually and collectively in our digital transformation, but what we learn from each other over the course of the program, the connections we make and the information we share all go some way to meeting those challenges.
Over the next 3 days we will traverse a number of topics that cover both the regulatory mechanisms required to facilitate the communications infrastructure and the technologies that compose it.
Subsea cables
The peoples of the Pacific are the custodians of an ocean that covers close to a third of the Earth’s surface.
It is no surprise then that subsea cables are such a vital component of the communications infrastructure mix for our countries.
As we have seen with the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific, there are growing opportunities for partnerships between countries to develop interlinking subsea cable networks that support digital connectivity to deliver essential services and add redundancy.
Later today we will hear from a number of speakers about the fundamental importance of resilience and protection of cables, the nuances and practicalities of regulation when there are multiple jurisdictions involved, and regional investment in cable-building.
Satellite
Moving from the depths of the ocean to space, we will also take a look at industry developments in geostationary and low earth orbit satellites.
Advancements in satellite technology and availability offer different opportunities and present different challenges.
For a country like Australia, with low population density and where we have mobile coverage to around 30% of the landmass, direct-to-device connectivity from space may offer solutions to that tyranny of distance that terrestrial services cannot currently overcome.
The utilisation of satellite technology is not without its challenges though. There is a reliance on third-party providers, there are spectrum management challenges to address and industry maturity is still developing for newer technologies like LEO-sat.
There are always trade-offs in looking at the investment mix in infrastructure for consideration, but also opportunities to shape the future.
I’m sure discussions around satellite technologies will be incredibly informative for all of us as we consider its potential utilisation.
Resilience and security
No matter the technology mix, it is critical that we build in capacity, reliability, security and resilience.
This is particularly vital when addressing vulnerabilities to natural disasters.
How we minimise these risks and prepare to recover if they occur are an increasingly important job for regulators and policy makers alike.
Later today we will look at resilience and security for critical infrastructure, the importance of vendor selection, incentivisation, regulation and risk.
Importance of regulation
Given the radiocommunications focus of much of the next 3 days, we will also look at spectrum planning, licensing and allocation.
Being a regulator essentially means always striving to get the balance right.
Sometimes this can be an art as much as a science.
The technical and regulatory complexities are important, and our goal in this program is to collectively develop our skills and knowledge to make good on the promise these communications technologies offer.
Global cooperation
In addition to the need for careful consideration of the underlying technical and regulatory aspects, a further common thread is that there is a global perspective to all of the issues we will discuss.
While each country clearly can make its own sovereign decisions on whether and how to enable these technologies and services, there is also an international dimension.
Whether these are the underpinning international spectrum management considerations to be addressed, or the development of global technology standards, there is a clear need for global awareness and collaboration on the issues.
A further objective of the TRTP is to help build on existing international relationships and improve the avenues for us to all share experiences and learn from each other.
Closing comments
In every sense, communications services create global networks.
And that’s also the intent of this program.
To share our collective knowledge, experience and wisdom on the policy and regulatory implications arising from the ever-changing telecommunications and radiocommunications industries.
Even more importantly, we don’t want to just share knowledge but also make sure that the TRTP serves to build relationships between our countries and organisations.
I hope that, in addition to us collectively learning from each other, we leave knowing each other a bit better and feel we can call on each other as colleagues in the future.
Thank you again for making the time to attend this program. I am sure you will find it a worthwhile experience.