Journal articles on the topic 'Integrated services digital networks; ISDN; broadband communication'

The implementation of a digital switched transmission net work, whilst primarily for voice, offers several advantages over the traditional analogue mode of transmission. One of the most important benefits to be offered by digital switched networks is that they provide the opportunity for the integration of a whole range of voice and non-voice traffic on an end-to-end digital link. Indeed, the facility to access information in a wide variety of formats and media through integrated networks is becoming increasingly important for information services. Most leading industrialized nations are developing such Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN). Developments in the UK and the RACE (R&D in Advanced Communications Technol ogy for Europe) programme initiated by the EEC are discussed to give a taste of things to come. The implications of the availability of ISDN for information management are also examined very briefly.

Information technology has an increasing impact in the development of rural areas but the development and implementation of telematic services in these areas present special problems such as the appropriate mix of communication technologies, the commercial prospects of recovering the cost of investment, the social problems etc., which currently limit their effective use. With the recent introduction of narrowband ISDN (Integrated Services Data Networks) in Europe it is now possible to offer various services on a single subscriber line. In addition, with the development of both high reliable fibre-optic transmission and very fast switching systems, the introduction of broadband ISDN can also be considered. Unfortunately, the less favoured regions of EC (European Community) lack infrastructure. The development in these areas will be a gradual process. Large investments will be required, and the systems installed will have a lifetime of some decades. Therefore the right decisions on the chosen technologies and on the appropriate system configurations have to be taken to ensure success. In this work, the teleworking prospects as an IT tool for rural development are studied in detail. The motivation, the technology and the prosperity of teleworking in the less favoured regions of the EC are analysed and discussed. The analysis considers the existing telecommunication infrastructure in each one of the six peripheral member states in relation with the development and implementation of some important telematic systems in these areas. The main features of the proposed technologies as well as the establishment of the possible cost effective strategies for IBC (Integrated Broadband Communication) implementation in rural areas is also provided. It appears that teleworking is a key element for rural development and can be implemented through the realization of the IBCNs (IBC Networks). By taking lessons from some of the most important experimental initiatives which have already been introduced in some countries, useful recommendations in the policy to be adopted by the EC are drawn and presented.

This paper begins with an overview of multicast algorithms, which are the most promising candidates to be in wide use in first generation Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) based Broadband Integrated Services Digital Networks (B-ISDN). Since the Multiple Destination Routing (MDR) problem and the associated Steiner Tree problem are known to be NP-complete and therefore a number of heuristic algorithms have been proposed in the literature, we first need to establish which of these are the best candidates for the B-ISDN. We conclude that the weighted greedy -type algorithms are promising ones, and therefore we examine the behavior of these algorithms in terms of blocking probability and network utilization. In doing so, we use a B-ISDN call level simulation program, which proves to be an indispensable tool in the quest for efficient multicast algorithms. We find that shortest path routing with appropriate (adaptive) weight functions combined with the complete partitioning link allocation policy may give satisfactory blocking values and good network utilization in networks of different sizes.

Today, satellite communication networks are being integrated into the infrastructure of modern Terrestrial communication networks and becoming popular for the delivery of educational content and data, as well as education-centric services, including information, tele-conferencing, entertainment, or ‘edutainment’ services. With fresh demand for new services and applications, it is becoming essential that wireless network architecture seamlessly interoperate with new and existing technologies, protocols and standards. This paper presents recent work on the use of hybrid wireless network infrastructures for delivering tele-education and e-learning applications to remote communities by combining a variety of satellite, terrestrial and wireless technologies, and provides the results from live scenarios carried out employing various methods of interoperability testing. The analysis of the results examines a number of different issues such as delay, jitter, packet loss, latency, throughput measurement, and bandwidth. By combining satellite and terrestrial (wireless) technologies, full coverage and high capacity can be achieved for true broadband services for delivering educational content. The interoperability among such diverse networks imposes a number of challenges regarding service provision and management.

The Internet has emerged in the last few years, not just as another communication means, but as sheer power and access to it provides access to a lot of information. Lack of access to internet will bring strong digital divide between rich and poor countries and also brings strong divide within the rural and urban communities of a country which in turn will affect the socio- economic development of a country. So there is a need for low-cost information technologies that are suitable to the conditions prevailing in a developing or third world country. Broadband CorDECT is one of the cost-effective fixed wireless broadband Access Solutions used for networking and building knowledge societies in a developing country. It is based on the DECT standard specification from the ETSI. It provides a complete wireless access solution for new and expanding telecommunication networks with seamless integration of both voice and internet services. It has been designed and specified to inter-work with many other types of network, such as the PSTN, ISDN, GSM and more. Broadband CorDECT provides the basic telecommunications as well as broadband Internet services and thus bridges the digital divide and such a service cannot be provided by any other product today in the world even double the cost. This paper discusses the relevance of broadband CorDECT in the context of current trends and provides a description of the technology.

Introduction/purpose: The article should specify the network signaling type Q-SIG, which is standardized especially for implementation in digital telecommunication networks of integrated services (ISDN), emphasizing the possibility of its further application in the Private Telecommunications Network of Integrated Services of the Serbian Armed Forces (PISN of SAF), i.e. in the Private Automatic Telephone Network of the Serbian Armed Forces (PATN of SAF). Methods: An analysis of the existing standards was performed: ECMA355 and ECMA-336 and a synthesis of the possibilities of their application in the PATN of SAF. Results: The procedure for the application of Q-SIG is processed in a situation when the peripheral parts of the PISN of SAF, which operate on the principle of transmission and circuit switching by TDM (Time Division Multiplexing), are connected via a central Core network with the IP (Internet Protocol), which operates on the principle of packet transmission and switching with the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). A method of the application of the tunneling of encapsulated Q-SIG messages through the IP network, defined by ECMA-355 Standard, has been developed. The necessary functions for mapping the transmission of tunneled signaling messages Q-SIG and mapping voice (and other audio) information to media streams during VoIP (Voice over IP) communication through that network, which are defined by ECMA-336 Standard, are described. Conclusion: The application of ECMA-355 and ECMA-336 Standards is a new solution in the PATN of SAF with the use of the IP network to connect the IP PINX using the Q-SIG tunneling procedures and mapping functions for their transmission and transmission of audio signals. This then opens up a whole range of new possibilities that, with the growth of the Core network and their application, will rapidly contribute to the creation of a broad Telecommunication information system backbone for the implementation of real-time multimedia communications and the transition to Unified Communications (UC).

Abstract:The FOMTA (Fundamentals of Modern Telemedicine in Africa) project aims to promote the development of indigenous regional networks between R&D centres and universities of the Developing Countries (DCs) and their European counterparts. While FOMTA prepares the way for the use of broadband technology in Africa, it will also associate the DCs with the generation of knowledge, innovative and appropriate technologies needed to solve some of the specific problems, in order to achieve a sustainable economic development. Designed to eliminate the time-delaying lack of infrastructure, FOMTA will embark on the simulation of the Integrated Service Digital Network infrastructure. FOMTA will adopt measures to increase the awareness and stimulate the participation of the DCs in the telemedicine and health care telematics projects through demonstrations, pilot projects, Workshops, training and exchange activities. This will demonstrate the feasibility of telemedicine services in the DCs, including trial of services in real-life circumstances, and will provide training possibilities for researchers in the use of methods and tools for advanced communication technologies and telematics. Undoubtedly, telediagnosis, teleconsultation and other areas of telemedicine would thrive in Africa both as remote testing grounds and fields of practical applications.

<div><p><em>The article presents the dynamics of the main factors for the development of modern television, the transition from traditional technologies of television broadcasting to the latest technologies. The process of developing digital television and broadband has been technically determined to address the challenge of integrating new technologies into traditional TV content. Ways of expanding the possibilities of interaction between the viewer and the television producer in the context of overcoming the crisis of traditional technologies are analyzed. It is determined that integration, development of mobile communications and Internet technologies are a hallmark of the modern world media space and have a significant influence on the formation of public opinion. The analysis of actual media researches concerning problems of the theory of mass communication is carried out. The phenomenon of «social television», which combines watching TV with simultaneous communication in social networks, is considered. The author draws attention to the disclosure of the determining factors of media communication, the study of the process of feedback from viewers on television. It is stated that the development of modern technologies, namely digital broadcasting and introduction of broadband Internet access to create a multimedia platform that combines Internet communication services and television content, contributes to improving the mechanism of interaction between the TV and the viewer. The theory of the conceptualization of journalism based on identity construction is examined: journalists understand their audience and, as members of that audience, connect with their communities. An analysis of integrated journalistic activity is conducted, which consists of three stages: gathering, editing and disseminating information. It is determined that the influence of the Internet allows the consumer to play his or her role at each stage, thus helping the journalist determine the degree of relevance of the story to himself and to the potential audience. The common features of modern telecontent were singled out and a comparative analysis of the trend of development of interactive TV programs of the USA, UK and Ukraine was made.</em></p></div><p><strong><em>Key words:</em></strong><em> public opinion, two-vector communication, feedback, communication methods, television audience, country telephony.</em></p>

From the 1994 CAIS Conference: The Information Industry in Transition McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. May 25 - 27, 1994.Broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) based on the asynchronous transmission mode (ATM) is becoming reality to provide high speed, multi bit rate multimedia communications. Multimedia communication network has to support voice, video and data traffics that have different traffic characteristics, delay sensitive or loss sensitive features have to be accounted for designing high speed multimedia information networks. In this paper, we formulate the network design problem by considering the multimedia communication requirements. A high speed multimedia information network design alogrithm is developed using a stochastic optimization method to find good solutions which meet the Quality of Service (QoS) requirement of each traffic class with minimum cost.

Advances in technology have brought down the cost of deployment for fibre-based communications systems. The extension of fibre-based systems directly into businesses and residences will have a major impact on the development of the integrated service digital network (isdn), ushering in what is commonly referred to as broadband isdn (bisdn). bisdn can support a wide variety of services over high-bandwidth digital interfaces ranging from very low bit-rate telementry through full-motion highdefinition video. Bellcore has been investigating two types of switching techniques for use in the bisdn : space division circuit switching and high-speed packet switching. Interest in the design of high-speed packet switches is now receiving greater emphasis because of the selection of asynchronous transfer mode (atm) as the predominant switching and multiplexing technique for bisdn. Both types of switching fabrics can be dimensioned to operate efficiently over the proposed sonet transmission system. This paper focuses on the atm hardware for a second generation prototype of a local access bisdn that is being constructed to more fully understand the implications and trade-offs involved in the design of bisdn systems.

Nowadays, There are various technology used in day-to-day life; such as Human Computer Interaction, Communication Engineering, various types of architectures of computer system for easy convenience of living life style of human being .However, there are various network utilized for the transmission of signal containing various data like audio, video, data in text format etc.Network utilized for different Purposed based on its application. There are various Network are being utilized such as LAN(local area network),MAN(metro area network),WAN(wide area network),Backbone Network, Public Switch Telephone Network(PSTN), Integrated service Digital Network (ISDN),Broadband Integrated Service Digital Network(BISDN).Depending upon the bandwidth and usage of application by human being ,we are going to utilized this network technologies for transmission of signal to send message in various format. The Purpose of this various network is to use for transmission and receiving message. With the help of this network technology we are going to discuss technology like “Radio Frequency Identification” for tracking, detecting the objects and its working and application..

Connecting I’ve moved house on the weekend, closer to the centre of an Australian capital city. I had recently signed up for broadband, with a major Australian Internet company (my first contact, cf. Turner). Now I am the proud owner of a larger modem than I have ever owned: a white cable modem. I gaze out into our new street: two thick black cables cosseted in silver wire. I am relieved. My new home is located in one of those streets, double-cabled by Telstra and Optus in the data-rush of the mid-1990s. Otherwise, I’d be moth-balling the cable modem, and the thrill of my data percolating down coaxial cable. And it would be off to the computer supermarket to buy an ASDL modem, then to pick a provider, to squeeze some twenty-first century connectivity out of old copper (the phone network our grandparents and great-grandparents built). If I still lived in the country, or the outskirts of the city, or anywhere else more than four kilometres from the phone exchange, and somewhere that cable pay TV will never reach, it would be a dish for me — satellite. Our digital lives are premised upon infrastructure, the networks through which we shape what we do, fashion the meanings of our customs and practices, and exchange signs with others. Infrastructure is not simply the material or the technical (Lamberton), but it is the dense, fibrous knotting together of social visions, cultural resources, individual desires, and connections. No more can one easily discern between ‘society’ and ‘technology’, ‘carriage’ and ‘content’, ‘base’ and ‘superstructure’, or ‘infrastructure’ and ‘applications’ (or ‘services’ or ‘content’). To understand telecommunications in action, or the vectors of fibre, we need to consider the long and heterogeneous list of links among different human and non-human actors — the long networks, to take Bruno Latour’s evocative concept, that confect our broadband networks (Latour). The co-ordinates of our infrastructure still build on a century-long history of telecommunications networks, on the nineteenth-century centrality of telegraphy preceding this, and on the histories of the public and private so inscribed. Yet we are in the midst of a long, slow dismantling of the posts-telegraph-telephone (PTT) model of the monopoly carrier for each nation that dominated the twentieth century, with its deep colonial foundations. Instead our New World Information and Communication Order is not the decolonising UNESCO vision of the late 1970s and early 1980s (MacBride, Maitland). Rather it is the neoliberal, free trade, market access model, its symbol the 1984 US judicial decision to require the break-up of AT&T and the UK legislation in the same year that underpinned the Thatcherite twin move to privatize British Telecom and introduce telecommunications competition. Between 1984 and 1999, 110 telecommunications companies were privatized, and the ‘acquisition of privatized PTOs [public telecommunications operators] by European and American operators does follow colonial lines’ (Winseck 396; see also Mody, Bauer & Straubhaar). The competitive market has now been uneasily installed as the paradigm for convergent communications networks, not least with the World Trade Organisation’s 1994 General Agreement on Trade in Services and Annex on Telecommunications. As the citizen is recast as consumer and customer (Goggin, ‘Citizens and Beyond’), we rethink our cultural and political axioms as well as the axes that orient our understandings in this area. Information might travel close to the speed of light, and we might fantasise about optical fibre to the home (or pillow), but our terrain, our band where the struggle lies today, is narrower than we wish. Begging for broadband, it seems, is a long way from warchalking for WiFi. Policy Circuits The dreary everyday business of getting connected plugs the individual netizen into a tangled mess of policy circuits, as much as tricky network negotiations. Broadband in mid-2003 in Australia is a curious chimera, welded together from a patchwork of technologies, old and newer communications industries, emerging economies and patterns of use. Broadband conjures up grander visions, however, of communication and cultural cornucopia. Broadband is high-speed, high-bandwidth, ‘always-on’, networked communications. People can send and receive video, engage in multimedia exchanges of all sorts, make the most of online education, realise the vision of home-based work and trading, have access to telemedicine, and entertainment. Broadband really entered the lexicon with the mass takeup of the Internet in the early to mid-1990s, and with the debates about something called the ‘information superhighway’. The rise of the Internet, the deregulation of telecommunications, and the involuted convergence of communications and media technologies saw broadband positioned at the centre of policy debates nearly a decade ago. In 1993-1994, Australia had its Broadband Services Expert Group (BSEG), established by the then Labor government. The BSEG was charged with inquiring into ‘issues relating to the delivery of broadband services to homes, schools and businesses’. Stung by criticisms of elite composition (a narrow membership, with only one woman among its twelve members, and no consumer or citizen group representation), the BSEG was prompted into wider public discussion and consultation (Goggin & Newell). The then Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics (BTCE), since transmogrified into the Communications Research Unit of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA), conducted its large-scale Communications Futures Project (BTCE and Luck). The BSEG Final report posed the question starkly: As a society we have choices to make. If we ignore the opportunities we run the risk of being left behind as other countries introduce new services and make themselves more competitive: we will become consumers of other countries’ content, culture and technologies rather than our own. Or we could adopt new technologies at any cost…This report puts forward a different approach, one based on developing a new, user-oriented strategy for communications. The emphasis will be on communication among people... (BSEG v) The BSEG proposed a ‘National Strategy for New Communications Networks’ based on three aspects: education and community access, industry development, and the role of government (BSEG x). Ironically, while the nation, or at least its policy elites, pondered the weighty question of broadband, Australia’s two largest telcos were doing it. The commercial decision of Telstra/Foxtel and Optus Vision, and their various television partners, was to nail their colours (black) to the mast, or rather telegraph pole, and to lay cable in the major capital cities. In fact, they duplicated the infrastructure in cities such as Sydney and Melbourne, then deciding it would not be profitable to cable up even regional centres, let alone small country towns or settlements. As Terry Flew and Christina Spurgeon observe: This wasteful duplication contrasted with many other parts of the country that would never have access to this infrastructure, or to the social and economic benefits that it was perceived to deliver. (Flew & Spurgeon 72) The implications of this decision for Australia’s telecommunications and television were profound, but there was little, if any, public input into this. Then Minister Michael Lee was very proud of his anti-siphoning list of programs, such as national sporting events, that would remain on free-to-air television rather than screen on pay, but was unwilling, or unable, to develop policy on broadband and pay TV cable infrastructure (on the ironies of Australia’s television history, see Given’s masterly account). During this period also, it may be remembered, Australia’s Internet was being passed into private hands, with the tendering out of AARNET (see Spurgeon for discussion). No such national strategy on broadband really emerged in the intervening years, nor has the market provided integrated, accessible broadband services. In 1997, landmark telecommunications legislation was enacted that provided a comprehensive framework for competition in telecommunications, as well as consolidating and extending consumer protection, universal service, customer service standards, and other reforms (CLC). Carrier and reseller competition had commenced in 1991, and the 1997 legislation gave it further impetus. Effective competition is now well established in long distance telephone markets, and in mobiles. Rivalrous competition exists in the market for local-call services, though viable alternatives to Telstra’s dominance are still few (Fels). Broadband too is an area where there is symbolic rivalry rather than effective competition. This is most visible in advertised ADSL offerings in large cities, yet most of the infrastructure for these services is comprised by Telstra’s copper, fixed-line network. Facilities-based duopoly competition exists principally where Telstra/Foxtel and Optus cable networks have been laid, though there are quite a number of ventures underway by regional telcos, power companies, and, most substantial perhaps, the ACT government’s TransACT broadband network. Policymakers and industry have been greatly concerned about what they see as slow takeup of broadband, compared to other countries, and by barriers to broadband competition and access to ‘bottleneck’ facilities (such as Telstra or Optus’s networks) by potential competitors. The government has alternated between trying to talk up broadband benefits and rates of take up and recognising the real difficulties Australia faces as a large country with a relative small and dispersed population. In March 2003, Minister Alston directed the ACCC to implement new monitoring and reporting arrangements on competition in the broadband industry. A key site for discussion of these matters has been the competition policy institution, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and its various inquiries, reports, and considerations (consult ACCC’s telecommunications homepage at http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm). Another key site has been the Productivity Commission (http://www.pc.gov.au), while a third is the National Office on the Information Economy (NOIE - http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/access/access/broadband1.htm). Others have questioned whether even the most perfectly competitive market in broadband will actually provide access to citizens and consumers. A great deal of work on this issue has been undertaken by DCITA, NOIE, the regulators, and industry bodies, not to mention consumer and public interest groups. Since 1997, there have been a number of governmental inquiries undertaken or in progress concerning the takeup of broadband and networked new media (for example, a House of Representatives Wireless Broadband Inquiry), as well as important inquiries into the still most strategically important of Australia’s companies in this area, Telstra. Much of this effort on an ersatz broadband policy has been piecemeal and fragmented. There are fundamental difficulties with the large size of the Australian continent and its harsh terrain, the small size of the Australian market, the number of providers, and the dominant position effectively still held by Telstra, as well as Singtel Optus (Optus’s previous overseas investors included Cable & Wireless and Bell South), and the larger telecommunications and Internet companies (such as Ozemail). Many consumers living in metropolitan Australia still face real difficulties in realising the slogan ‘bandwidth for all’, but the situation in parts of rural Australia is far worse. Satellite ‘broadband’ solutions are available, through Telstra Countrywide or other providers, but these offer limited two-way interactivity. Data can be received at reasonable speeds (though at far lower data rates than how ‘broadband’ used to be defined), but can only be sent at far slower rates (Goggin, Rural Communities Online). The cultural implications of these digital constraints may well be considerable. Computer gamers, for instance, are frustrated by slow return paths. In this light, the final report of the January 2003 Broadband Advisory Group (BAG) is very timely. The BAG report opens with a broadband rhapsody: Broadband communications technologies can deliver substantial economic and social benefits to Australia…As well as producing productivity gains in traditional and new industries, advanced connectivity can enrich community life, particularly in rural and regional areas. It provides the basis for integration of remote communities into national economic, cultural and social life. (BAG 1, 7) Its prescriptions include: Australia will be a world leader in the availability and effective use of broadband...and to capture the economic and social benefits of broadband connectivity...Broadband should be available to all Australians at fair and reasonable prices…Market arrangements should be pro-competitive and encourage investment...The Government should adopt a National Broadband Strategy (BAG 1) And, like its predecessor nine years earlier, the BAG report does make reference to a national broadband strategy aiming to maximise “choice in work and recreation activities available to all Australians independent of location, background, age or interests” (17). However, the idea of a national broadband strategy is not something the BAG really comes to grips with. The final report is keen on encouraging broadband adoption, but not explicit on how barriers to broadband can be addressed. Perhaps this is not surprising given that the membership of the BAG, dominated by representatives of large corporations and senior bureaucrats was even less representative than its BSEG predecessor. Some months after the BAG report, the Federal government did declare a broadband strategy. It did so, intriguingly enough, under the rubric of its response to the Regional Telecommunications Inquiry report (Estens), the second inquiry responsible for reassuring citizens nervous about the full-privatisation of Telstra (the first inquiry being Besley). The government’s grand $142.8 million National Broadband Strategy focusses on the ‘broadband needs of regional Australians, in partnership with all levels of government’ (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’). Among other things, the government claims that the Strategy will result in “improved outcomes in terms of services and prices for regional broadband access; [and] the development of national broadband infrastructure assets.” (Alston, ‘National Broadband Strategy’) At the same time, the government announced an overall response to the Estens Inquiry, with specific safeguards for Telstra’s role in regional communications — a preliminary to the full Telstra sale (Alston, ‘Future Proofing’). Less publicised was the government’s further initiative in indigenous telecommunications, complementing its Telecommunications Action Plan for Remote Indigenous Communities (DCITA). Indigenous people, it can be argued, were never really contemplated as citizens with the ken of the universal service policy taken to underpin the twentieth-century government monopoly PTT project. In Australia during the deregulatory and re-regulatory 1990s, there was a great reluctance on the part of Labor and Coalition Federal governments, Telstra and other industry participants, even to research issues of access to and use of telecommunications by indigenous communicators. Telstra, and to a lesser extent Optus (who had purchased AUSSAT as part of their licence arrangements), shrouded the issue of indigenous communications in mystery that policymakers were very reluctant to uncover, let alone systematically address. Then regulator, the Australian Telecommunications Authority (AUSTEL), had raised grave concerns about indigenous telecommunications access in its 1991 Rural Communications inquiry. However, there was no government consideration of, nor research upon, these issues until Alston commissioned a study in 2001 — the basis for the TAPRIC strategy (DCITA). The elision of indigenous telecommunications from mainstream industry and government policy is all the more puzzling, if one considers the extraordinarily varied and significant experiments by indigenous Australians in telecommunications and Internet (not least in the early work of the Tanami community, made famous in media and cultural studies by the writings of anthropologist Eric Michaels). While the government’s mid-2003 moves on a ‘National Broadband Strategy’ attend to some details of the broadband predicament, they fall well short of an integrated framework that grasps the shortcomings of the neoliberal communications model. The funding offered is a token amount. The view from the seat of government is a glance from the rear-view mirror: taking a snapshot of rural communications in the years 2000-2002 and projecting this tableau into a safety-net ‘future proofing’ for the inevitable turning away of a fully-privately-owned Telstra from its previously universal, ‘carrier of last resort’ responsibilities. In this aetiolated, residualist policy gaze, citizens remain constructed as consumers in a very narrow sense in this incremental, quietist version of state securing of market arrangements. What is missing is any more expansive notion of citizens, their varied needs, expectations, uses, and cultural imaginings of ‘always on’ broadband networks. Hybrid Networks “Most people on earth will eventually have access to networks that are all switched, interactive, and broadband”, wrote Frances Cairncross in 1998. ‘Eventually’ is a very appropriate word to describe the parlous state of broadband technology implementation. Broadband is in a slow state of evolution and invention. The story of broadband so far underscores the predicament for Australian access to bandwidth, when we lack any comprehensive, integrated, effective, and fair policy in communications and information technology. We have only begun to experiment with broadband technologies and understand their evolving uses, cultural forms, and the sense in which they rework us as subjects. Our communications networks are not superhighways, to invoke an enduring artefact from an older technology. Nor any longer are they a single ‘public’ switched telecommunications network, like those presided over by the post-telegraph-telephone monopolies of old. Like roads themselves, or the nascent postal system of the sixteenth century, broadband is a patchwork quilt. The ‘fibre’ of our communications networks is hybrid. To be sure, powerful corporations dominate, like the Tassis or Taxis who served as postmasters to the Habsburg emperors (Briggs & Burke 25). Activating broadband today provides a perspective on the path dependency of technology history, and how we can open up new threads of a communications fabric. Our options for transforming our multitudinous networked lives emerge as much from everyday tactics and strategies as they do from grander schemes and unifying policies. We may care to reflect on the waning potential for nation-building technology, in the wake of globalisation. We no longer gather our imagined community around a Community Telephone Plan as it was called in 1960 (Barr, Moyal, and PMG). Yet we do require national and international strategies to get and stay connected (Barr), ideas and funding that concretely address the wider dimensions of access and use. We do need to debate the respective roles of Telstra, the state, community initiatives, and industry competition in fair telecommunications futures. Networks have global reach and require global and national integration. Here vision, co-ordination, and resources are urgently required for our commonweal and moral fibre. To feel the width of the band we desire, we need to plug into and activate the policy circuits. Thanks to Grayson Cooke, Patrick Lichty, Ned Rossiter, John Pace, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Works Cited Alston, Richard. ‘ “Future Proofing” Regional Communications.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115485,00.php> —. ‘A National Broadband Strategy.’ Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, Canberra, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115486,00.php>. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Broadband Services Report March 2003. Canberra: ACCC, 2003. 17 July 2003 <http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm>. —. Emerging Market Structures in the Communications Sector. 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Geneva: World Trade Organisation. 17 July 2003 <http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/4prote_e.htm>. Links http://www.accc.gov.au/pubs/publications/utilities/telecommunications/Emerg_mar_struc.doc http://www.accc.gov.au/speeches/2003/Fels_ATUG_6March03.doc http://www.accc.gov.au/telco/fs-telecom.htm http://www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/cita/Wbt/report.htm http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115485,00.html http://www.dcita.gov.au/Article/0,,0_1-2_3-4_115486,00.html http://www.noie.gov.au/projects/access/access/broadband1.htm http://www.noie.gov.au/publications/NOIE/BAG/report/index.htm http://www.pc.gov.au http://www.pc.gov.au/inquiry/telecommunications/finalreport/ http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/final_report.html http://www.telinquiry.gov.au/rti-report.html http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/12-tel_e.htm http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/serv_e/4prote_e.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Goggin, Gerard. "Broadband" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>. APA Style Goggin, G. (2003, Aug 26). Broadband. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/02-featurebroadband.php>

The convergence of suburban homes and digital media and communications technologies is set to undergo a major shift as next-generation broadband infrastructures are installed. Embodied in the Australian Government’s National Broadband Network (NBN) and the delivery of fibre-optic cable to the front door of every suburban home, is an anticipated future of digital living that will transform the landscape and experience of suburban life. Drawing from our research, and from industry, policy and media documents, we map some scenarios of the NBN rollout in its early stages to show that this imaginary of seamless broadband in the suburbs and the transformation of digital homes it anticipates is challenged by local cultural and material geographies, which we describe as a politics of spectrum. The universal implementation of policy across Australia faces a considerable challenge in dealing with Australia’s physical environment. Geography has always had a major impact on communications technologies and services in Australia, and a major impetus of building a national broadband network has been to overcome the “tyranny of distance” experienced by people in many remote, regional and suburban areas. In 2009 the minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE), Stephen Conroy, announced that with the Government’s NBN policy “every person and business in Australia, no-matter where they are located, will have access to affordable, fast broadband at their fingertips” (Conroy). This ambition to digitally connect and include imagines the NBN as the solution to the current patchwork of connectivity and Internet speeds experienced across the country (ACCAN). Overcoming geographic difference and providing fast, universal and equitable digital access is to be realised through an open access broadband network built by the newly established NBN Co. Limited, jointly owned by the Government and the private sector at a cost estimated at $43 billion over eight years. In the main this network will depend upon fibre-optics reaching over 90% of the population, and achieving download speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s. The remaining population, mostly living in rural and remote areas, will receive wireless and satellite connections providing speeds of 12 Mbit/s (Conroy). Differential implementation in relation to comparisons of urban and remote populations is thus already embedded in the policy, yet distance is not the only characteristic of Australia’s material geographies that will shape the physical implementation of the NBN and create a varied spectrum of the experience of broadband. Instead, in this article we examine the uneven experience of broadband we may see occurring within suburban regions; places in which enhanced and collective participation in the digital economy relies upon the provision of faster transmission speeds and the delivery of fibre “the last mile” to each and every premise. The crucial platform for delivering broadband to the ’burbs is the digital home. The notion of the connected or smart or digital home has been around in different guises for a number of decades (e.g. Edwards et al.), and received wide press coverage in the 1990s (e.g. Howard). It has since been concretised in the wake of the NBN as telecommunications companies struggle to envision a viable “next step” in broadband consumption. Novel to the NBN imaginary of the digital home is a shift from thinking about the digital home in terms of consumer electronics and interoperable or automatic devices, based on shared standards or home networking, to addressing the home as a platform embedded within the economy. The digital home is imagined as an integral part of a network of digital living with seamless transitions between home, office, supermarket, school, and hospital. In the imaginary of the NBN, the digital home becomes a vital connection in the growing digital economy. Communications Patchwork, NBN Roll-Out and Infrastructure Despite this imagined future of seamless connectivity and universal integration of suburban life with the digital economy, there has been an uneven take-up of fibre connections. We argue that this suggests that the particularities of place and the materialities of geography are relevant for understanding the differential uptake of the NBN across the test sites. Furthermore, we maintain that these issues provide a useful model for understanding the ongoing process and challenges that the rollout of the NBN will face in providing even access to the imagined future of the digital home to all Australians. As of June 2011 an average of 70 per cent of homes in the five first release NBN sites have agreed to have the fibre cables installed (Grubb). However, there is a dramatic variation between these sites: in Armidale, NSW, and Willunga, SA, the percentage of properties consenting to fibre connections on their house is between 80-90 per cent; whereas in Brunswick, Victoria, and Midway Point, Tasmania, the take-up rate is closer to 50 per cent (Grubb). We suggest that these variations are created by a differential geography of connectivity that will continue to grow in significance as the NBN is rolled out to more locations around Australia. These can be seen to emerge as a consequence of localised conditions relating to, for example, installation policy, a focus on cost, and installation logistics. Another significant factor, unable to be addressed within the scope of this paper, is the integration of the NBN with each household’s domestic network of hardware devices, internal connections, software, and of course skill and interest. Installation Policy The opt-in policy of the NBN Co requires that owners of properties agree to become connected—as opposed to being automatically connected unless they opt-out. This makes getting connected a far simpler task for owner-occupiers over renters, because the latter group were required to triangulate with their landlords in order to get connected. This was considered to be a factor that impacted on the relatively low uptake of the NBN in Brunswick and Midway Point, and is reflected in media reports (Grubb) and our research: There was a bit of a problem with Midway Point, because I think it is about fifty percent of the houses here are rentals, and you needed signatures from the owners for the box to be put onto the building (anon. “Broadband in the Home” project). …a lot of people rent here, so unless their landlord filled it in they wouldn’t know (anon. “Broadband in the Home” project). The issue is exacerbated by the concentration of rental properties in particular suburbs and complicated rental arrangements mediated through agents, which prevent effective communication between the occupiers and owners of a property. In order to increase take-up in Tasmania, former State Premier, David Bartlett, successfully introduced legislation to the Tasmanian state legislature in late 2010 to make the NBN opt-out rather than opt-in. This reversed the onus of responsibility and meant that in Tasmania all houses and businesses would be automatically connected unless otherwise requested, and in order to effect this simple policy change, the government had to change trespass laws. However, other state legislatures are hesitant to follow the opt-out model (Grubb). Differentials in owner-occupied and rental properties within urban centres, combined with opt-in policies, are likely to see a continuation of the connectivity patchwork that that has thus far characterised Australian communications experience. A Focus on Cost Despite a great deal of public debate about the NBN, there is relatively little discussion of its proposed benefits. The fibre-to-the-home structure of the NBN is also subject to fierce partisan political debate between Australia’s major political parties, particularly around the form and cost of its implementation. As a consequence of this preoccupation with cost, many Australian consumers cannot see a “value proposition” in connecting, and are not convinced of the benefits of the NBN (Brown). The NBN is often reduced to an increased minimum download rate, and to increased ISP fees associated with high speeds, rather than a broader discussion of how the infrastructure can impact on commerce, education, entertainment, healthcare, and work (Barr). Moreover, this lack of balance in the discussion of costs and benefits extends in some instances to outright misunderstandings about the difference between infrastructure and service provision: …my neighbour across the road did not understand what that letter meant, and she would have to have been one of dozens if not hundreds in the exactly the same situation, who thought they were signing up for a broadband plan rather than just access to the infrastructure (anon. “Broadband in the Home” project) Lastly, the advent of the NBN in the first release areas does not override the costs of existing contracts for broadband delivered over the current copper network. Australians are often required to sign long-term contracts that prevent them from switching immediately to the new HSB infrastructure. Installation Logistics Local variations in fibre installation were evident prior to the rollout of the NBN, when the increased provision of HSB was already being used as a marketing device for greenfield (newly developed) estates in suburban Australia. In the wake of the NBN rollouts, some housing developers have begun to lay “NBN-ready” optic fibre in greenfield estates. While this is a positive development for those who a purchasing a newly-developed property, those that invest in brownfield “re-developments,” may have to pay over twice the amount for the installation of the NBN (Neales). These varying local conditions of installation are reflected in the contractual arrangements for installing the fibre, the installers’ policies for installation, and the processes of installation (Darling): They’re gonna have to do 4000 houses a day … and it was a solid six months to get about 800 houses hooked up here. So, logistically I just can’t see it happening. (anon. “Broadband in the Home” project) Finally, for those who do not take-up the free initial installation offer, for whatever reason, there will be costs to have contractors return and connect the fibre (Grubb; Neales). Spectrum Politics, Fibre in the Neighbourhood The promise that the NBN will provide fast, universal and equitable digital access realised through a fibre-optic network is challenged by the experience of first release sites such as Midway Point. As evident above, and due to a number of factors, there is a likelihood in supposedly NBN-connected places of varied connectivity in which service will range from dial-up to DSL and ADSL to fibre and wireless, all within a single location. The varied connectivity in the early NBN rollout stages suggests that the patchwork of Internet connections commonly experienced in Australian suburbs will continue rather than disappear. This varied patchwork can be understood as a politics of spectrum. Rod Tucker (13-14) emphasises that the crucial element of spectrum is its bandwidth, or information carrying capacity. In light of this the politics of spectrum reframes the key issue of access to participation in the digital economy to examine stakes of the varying quality of connection (particularly download speeds), through the available medium (wireless, copper, coaxial cable, optical fibre), connection (modem, antenna, gateway) and service type (DSL, WiFi, Satellite, FTTP). This technical emphasis follows in the wake of debates about digital inclusion (e.g., Warschauer) to re-introduce the importance of connection quality—embedded in older “digital divide” discourse—into approaches that look beyond technical infrastructure to the social conditions of their use. This is a shift that takes account of the various and intertwined socio-technical factors influencing the quality of access and use. This spectrum politics also has important implications for the Universal Service Obligation (USO). Telstra (the former Telecom) continues to have the responsibility to provide every premise in Australia with a standard telephone service, that is at least a single copper line—or equivalent service—connection. However, the creation of the NBN Co. relieves Telstra of this obligation in the areas which have coverage from the fibre network. This agreement means that Telstra will gradually shut down its ageing copper network, following the pattern of the NBN rollout and transfer customers to the newly developed broadband fibre network (Hepworth and Wilson). Consequently, every individual phone service in those areas will be required to move onto the NBN to maintain the USO. This means that premises not connected to the NBN because the owners of the property opted out—by default or by choice—are faced with an uncertain future vis-à-vis the meaning and provision of the USO because they will not have access to either copper or fibre networks. At this extreme of spectrum politics, the current policy setting may result in households that have no possibility of a broadband connection. This potential problem can be resolved by a retro-rollout, in which NBN fibre connection is installed at some point in the future to every premises regardless of whether they originally agreed or not. Currently, however, the cost of a retrospective connection is expected to be borne by the consumer: “those who decline to allow NBN Co on to their property will need to pay up to $300 to connect to the NBN at a later date” (Grubb) Smaller, often brownfield development estates also face particular difficulties in the current long-term switch of responsibilities from Telstra to the NBN Co. This is because Telstra is reluctant to install new copper networks knowing that they will soon become obsolete. Instead, “in housing estates of fewer than 100 houses, Telstra is often providing residents with wireless phones that are unable to connect to the Internet” (Thompson). Thus a limbo is created, where new residents will not have access to either copper or fibre fixed line connections. Rather, they will have to use whatever wireless Internet is available in the area. Particularly concerning is that the period of the rollout is projected to last for eight years. As a result: “Thousands of Australians—many of them in regional areas—can expect years of worse, rather than better, Internet services as the National Broadband Network rolls out across the country” (Thompson). And, given different take-up rates and costs of retro-fitting, this situation could continue for many people and for many years after the initial rollout is completed. Implications of Spectrum Politics for the Digital Home What does this uncertain and patchwork future of connectivity imply for digital living and the next-generation broadband suburb? In contrast to the imagined post-NBN geography of the seamless digital home, local material and cultural factors will still create varied levels of service. This predicament challenges the ideals of organisations such as the Digital Living Network, an industry body comprised of corporate members, “based on principles of open standards and home networking interoperability [which] will unleash a rich digital media environment of interconnected devices that enable us all to experience our favorite content and services wherever and whenever we want” (Vohringer). Such a vision of convergence takes a domestic approach to the “Internet of things” by imagining a user-friendly network of personal computing, consumer electronics, mobile technologies, utilities, and other domestic technologies. The NBN anticipates a digital home that is integrated into the digital economy as a node of production and consumption. But this future is challenged by the patchwork of connectivity. Bruno Latour famously remarked that even the most extensive and powerful networks are local at every point. Although he was speaking of actor-networks, not broadband networks, analysis of the Australian experience of high-speed broadband would do well to look beyond its national characteristics to include its local characteristics, and the constellations between them. It is at the local level, importantly, at the level of the household and suburb, that the NBN will be experienced in daily life. As we have argued here, we have reason to expect that this experience will be as disparate as the network is distributed, and we have reason to believe that local cultural and material factors such as installation policies, discussions around costs and benefits, the household’s own internal digital infrastructure, and installation logistics at the level of the house and the neighbourhood, will continue to shape a patchworked geography of media and communications experiences for digital homes. References Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN). National Broadband Network: A Guide for Consumers. Internet Society of Australia (ISOC-AU) and ACCAN, 2011. Barr, Trevor. “A Broadband Services Typology.” The Australian Economic Review 43.2 (2010): 187-193. Brown, Damien. “NBN Now 10 Times Faster.” The Mercury 13 Aug. 2010. ‹http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/08/13/165435_todays-news.html›. Conroy, Stephen (Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy). “New National Broadband Network”. Canberra: Australian Government, 7 April 2009. ‹http://www.minister.dbcde.gov.au/media/media_releases/2009/022›. Darling, Peter. “Building the National Broadband Network.” Telecommunications Journal of Australia 60.3 (2010): 42.1-12. Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE). “Impacts of Teleworking under the NBN.” Report prepared by Access Economics. Canberra, 2010. Edwards, Keith, Rebecca Grinter, Ratul Mahajan, and David Wetherall. “Advancing the State of Home Networking.” Communications of the ACM 54.6 (2010): 62-71. Grubb, Ben. “Connect to NBN Now or Pay Up to $300 for Phone Line.” The Sydney Morning Herald 15 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/connect-to-nbn-now-or-pay-up-to-300-for-phone-line-20101015-16ms3.html›. Hepworth, Annabel, and Lauren Wilson. “Customers May Be Forced on to NBN to Keep Phones.” The Australian 12 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/customers-may-be-forced-on-to-nbn-to-keep-phones/story-fn59niix-1225937394605›. Howard, Sandy. “How Your Home Will Operate.” Business Review Weekly 25 April 1994: 100. Intel Corporation. “Intel and the Digital Home.” ‹http://www.intel.com/standards/case/case_dh.htm›. Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Neales, Sue. “Bartlett Looks at ‘Opt-out’ NBN.” The Mercury 28 July 2010. ‹http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/07/28/161721_tasmania-news.html›. Spigel, Lynn. “Media Homes: Then and Now.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 4.4 (2001): 385–411. Thompson, Geoff. “Thousands to Be Stuck in NBN ‘Limbo’.” ABC Online 26 April 2011. ‹http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/04/26/3200127.htm›. Tietze, S., and G. Musson. “Recasting the Home—Work Relationship: A Case of Mutual Adjustment?” Organization Studies 26.9 (2005): 1331–1352. Trulove, James Grayson (ed.). The Smart House. New York: HDI, 2003. Tucker, Rodney S. “Broadband Facts, Fiction and Urban Myths.” Telecommunications Journal of Australia 60.3 (2010): 43.1 to 43.15. Vohringer, Cesar. CTO of Philips Consumer Electronics (from June 2003 DLNA press release) cited on the Intel Corporation website. ‹http://www.intel.com/standards/case/case_dh.htm›. Warschauer, Mark. 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Introduction Australia’s mobile communications industry has been slower to embrace the convergence of digital communication technology compared to other areas of the Asia-Pacific region, in particular Japan. However, the introduction of new mobile networks and spread of broadband (albeit still limited in some areas) has given Australians opportunities to experience the new technosocial communications. As a result mobile communication resources have become embedded within a sociocultural infrastructure that is at once mobile, personalised and consumerist. This paper examines how the iGeneration (or ‘Internet Generation’, those born in the first half of the 1980s and who were the first to grow up in a networked and communications media driven society) of young Australians have taken up and embraced the mobile technologies as part of their everyday sociability. This journal issue is concerned to understand the significance of the convergence of mobile media. In this paper ‘mobile’ is taken to refer to the range of digital media that are owned and used by the iGeneration. These can include mobile phones, laptops, computers alongside an array of other digital social software and Web 2.0 resources such as email, Social Networking Systems (SNS), e.g. Facebook, that enable individuals to situate themselves and communicate across their social networks. The discussion that follows will touch on all of these mobile communication resources. It is argued that these should be seen as more than technical tools, as they offer a constant ‘tether’ to personalised and intimate connections (Ito et al, 2005). This in itself is significant because the emphasis is on a digitally mobile and connected sociability rather than any single device or piece of software. It will be concluded that this connected sociability means that for the iGeneration there is a seamless movement across what has been previously depicted as an off/online and disembodied dichotomy. Researching the iGeneration The paper draws on the data from 40 in-depth and open-ended interviews with undergraduate students who were in the last term of their first year at University in Australia in 2006. The conventions of anonymity have been followed to ensure that no individual may be identified. All interviews were digitally recorded (with permission) and detailed analysis undertaken utilising AtlasTi. The analysis involved identifying themes and issues as they emerged from reading and re-reading of the data. This group was chosen as they had established non-university social networks and new connections amongst university peers. The focus on what constitutes one of the more privileged sections of young people in terms of education, if not material resources, is appropriate in a study that seeks to explore those who are likely to be able to take advantage of innovative communications technology. Extracts from the interview data for this paper, are not intended to be representative, but rather are used for illustrative purposes. Mobile Life The diffusion of communications media has become ubiquitous amongst the iGeneration who are socially, temporally and spatially mobile and likely to immerse themselves in their social connections. This is a generation that has been said to “inhabit a different world” (Muller), where seemingly unregulated flows of information and methods of staying in touch with others ‘situate’ social lives as part of mobile sociability. Part of this more mobile sociability is the crossover between global and localised connections. Indeed, globalisation theorists have emphasised how the world is characterised by the flows of such information. Urry has paid particular attention to the forms of mobility that take place in a society characterised by the exchange and sharing of information and communication practices. This paper has a narrower focus and is concerned with what might be thought of as ‘local’ communicative practices between people situated in the same city and at the same, but dispersed, institutions. Mobile communications technology takes on an increasingly ‘invisible’ sociotechnological power that underlies the structure and shapes the experience of everyday sociability and relationships (Graham). Identified as “Digital Natives” by Prensky these individuals ‘thrive’ on their constant connectivity to one another. The following quote reflects the sentiments of many of the students interviewed: I would never be without my phone, or at least having some way of being in touch with my friends. People tend to have ties everywhere now and I find that I am always in touch at the click of a button anytime. (Jon) Key to social interaction for the iGeneration is to be constantly ‘switched on’ and available to others. Significantly, the mediated aspects of mobile technology means that social connections are valued for their ‘liveness’, whereby interactions are expected to take place in ‘real time’. In this way the iGeneration have become both the producers and consumers of ‘live’ content where personal engagements are ‘active’. This ensures that individuals are (and are seen to be) socially and digitally engaged. The new social practices that form part of an ‘on-the-go’ and ‘ever-current’ lifestyle means that to be ‘in touch’ has taken on a new symbolic and social form. All 40 of the students interviewed mentioned that they could not ‘imagine’ being detached from their social networks, or without some form of communication device on their person. The relationship between previously defined on and offline lives, or ‘real’ and ‘virtual’ situations are not separate entities in this context. Instead they are inextricably linked together as the individual is continually socially connected. Individuals are part of a constant present-ness and engagement to what is experienced as a lived or ‘worldspace’, rather than static ‘real’/’virtual’ world duality (Steinberg cited by White). As a result members of the iGeneration have to maintain two active and dynamic social presences, one that is ‘real’ world and the other that is virtual. They are always ‘situated’ in both their embodied and disembodied digital lives, and yet this is a duality that many do not consciously recognise as they move ‘seamlessly’ across different venues for sociability. In order to remain ‘up-to-date’ communication strategies are employed, as one student explained: Things are changing so fast, like you go away for just one day and you are just so out of the loop, things change continually and it’s nice to be part of that. It’s hard if you miss a message because then you are behind and don’t know what’s going on… you have to continue to make the effort if you want to stay in touch. (Kim) In Goffman’s classic analysis of face-to-face interaction he revealed the complexity of social communication and the nuanced use of ‘props’ and ‘backstage work’. In a similar fashion the mediated and real time interaction amongst the iGeneration is full of symbolic meanings and rituals. Ironically in what is often thought of as a disembodied sociability, where time and place cease to matter, it is the immediacy or live presence that is valued. Thus social life rotates around the emergence of a set of continually updated communications between individuals. Social relationships are ‘reworked’ as mobile communications introduces a new layer of social connectiveness. The process of communicating with someone is not just about what is expressed, but includes a set of subjective meanings as to the ‘whom’ an individual is and value of a relationship. Successful communication and development of relations through technology require the engagement of the self with shared social conventions and representations. Mobile technology has enabled a whole generation to mobilise relationships and connections whilst ‘on the move’ in a way that strengthen social bonds and facilitates a sense of social connectedness (Wei and Lo). Getting to Know Each Other For members of the iGeneration traditional forms of social meetings, and indeed settings, have become modified to take into account constant social connectivity. Students employ technologies to provide new ways of ‘getting-to-know’ others and to develop relationships. In particular, SNS is used to find out about potential new friends by drawing on the profiles and connections that are displayed on resources such as Facebook. Profiles involve the creation of a virtual ‘identity’ that represents an individual and may include digital photographs, music, a detailed self-description, lists of interests and of other ‘friends’ etc. Sites such as Facebook are popular because (at the time the research was undertaken) they require an email address from an academic institution in order to join. Consequently, users trusted the information displayed on these sites and rarely questioned whether the descriptions that they read were accurate (Jones and Soltren). Not only would it be seen as breaking communicative norms to, for example fabricate an identity on Facebook, it would also be a fabrication that would be difficult to maintain across the various media that are in use. Indeed it would be ultimately pointless in terms of a sociability that moves across media and between the virtual and non-virtual domains. Such sites are geared to the student population and it is often taken-for-granted that amongst students that they will have a Facebook profile. Reflecting this university clubs and societies distribute notices of events and so forth through Facebook. Individual profiles may also display mobile phone numbers and other points of contact so that the online descriptions of the self are linked to other forms of connection. As this Melbourne student explains, these resources provide new means of ‘getting to know’ others. The way in is different now if you are getting to know someone, before maybe you went out a few times and got to know their circle of friends, but now you can check out their MySpace profile, or send them a message on Facebook BEFORE you meet up. Just by messaging each other you know that there’s no awkwardness or danger of gaps in conversation before you get together. (Tom) In effect the individual is digitally represented in a range of digital spaces so that a stranger can imagine or construct a sense of the ‘real’ person without ‘knowing’ or engaging with them. Such imaginings represent an important means of being on familiar terms with others and the ‘social value’ or individuals ‘place’ within a social network (Gotved). In the early stages of becoming acquainted with someone the status of the individual was related to the how frequently they were contacted and the form of interaction that took place. As noted earlier Goffman’s (1978 [1959]) work is useful as social ceremonies and rules for interaction can be detected although these are often taken-for-granted unless people are prompted to talk about how they communicate with others. They are perhaps best exemplified by the following descriptions from students talking about how they ‘got-to-know’ one another at the beginning of the university term: When you are getting to know someone it’s interesting to see if they’ll message you or call, then your like ‘oh he’s a caller’ and can go from there. (Emma) If I don’t know the person well I like to text, I am not good on the phone and so it creates a way to say ‘hi’ without the danger of awkward gaps. Then you find yourself messaging back and forth and can meet up later… (Katie) You have to play to their agenda otherwise you never hook up. (Stu) Instant messaging like on MSN or texts or whatever totally helps with getting to know someone. Before you meet up you can find out whether you’ll get on or not and whether it’s worth you while meeting up. Kind of like a filtering process. (Dan) This mediated process may involve text messages, emails and mobile calls before individuals meet offline. Members of the iGeneration therefore use an integrated set of devices and software resources to initiate and maintain friendship networks. In effect the often-rich descriptions created in SNS reflect a visualisation of what Bourdieu has described as ‘habitus’. This notion of habitus, that can basically be seen as set of acquired dispositions is appropriate, as “when habitus encounters a social world of which it is the product, it is like a “fish in water” ... it takes the world about itself for granted” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 127). This neatly describes how the iGeneration incorporates mobile communications technology into their everyday lives. An Etiquette for Mobility The ‘rules’, attitudes and expectations, that come into play as part of these new mobile communication practices continue to remain tied to a recognised and preconceived social ordering. Indeed, one of the most important aspects of this kind of mobile communication is the adherence to a set of social rules through which individuals continually control the process of interaction itself. This includes for example, the pace of communication, when to text, to make a voice call, or to email, and so forth. Galloway has argued that there is a “decidedly playful” aspect to mobile interaction. However, a range of communicative strategies underwrites this ‘play’ as periods of non-contactability have to be ‘justified’ or explained. If such episodes are not explained these can become problematic, generate misunderstandings or cause anxieties within networks and emergent relationships. Indeed, the “simple fact of carrying a mobile phone generates in the carrier the expectation of being immediately available” (Licoppe and Heurtin 100). For this reason a sense of disappointment, or cause for concern, may be experienced if an individual receives for example no text messages for a period of time. Amongst those students who were in regular contact with one other a set of what can be thought of as ‘communicative regimes’ is negotiated. These arise out of social practices for connectivity that are part of virtual and face-to-face meetings. Such negotiations may be largely implicit but occur out of a shared sense of ‘knowing’ the other. Actions or non-actions such as not answering a voice call or responding to a message straight away can be seen as a social distancing. For example, a student talked about how he always immediately returned a text message to his housemate because “it was expected” and to delay a response without an explanation would not be seen as an appropriate response to a “close mate” (Riley). Consequently communication regimes are developed around relationships and may be layered in terms of status within a peer group. For the iGeneration such practices reflect what in pervious times would have been thought of as etiquette. It is interesting to note that at the time of writing this paper there were 11 global groups with some 2,870 members on Facebook dedicated to what is described as ‘Facebook etiquette’. Conclusion A purpose of this paper is to suggest that recent changes in the provision of information and communications services in Australia have created new opportunities for an iGeneration to incorporate the technologies within their everyday lives. There are similarities here with the practices found amongst young people in Japan, South Korea and other counties that have some of the most advanced publicly available communications infrastructures (Ito et al). It is worth noting that 3rd Generation mobile phones, and video technologies are less common in Australia, hence future convergence remains open to speculation and dependent upon improved network infrastructures and marketing. The emphasis in Australia is on the seamless use of different mobile communications technologies and the embedding of these within broader social practices. The convenience and ‘pocketability’ of communications devices has become one of the most important innovations for an iGeneration that desires communication, information and entertainment accessible in the palm of their hand, a first step “towards a digital paradise” (Standage). However, care has to be taken to differentiate between media and marketing hype and actual social practices. Commentaries and research in the early days of the Internet tended to focus on the possibilities it offered to escape the fleshy body through the screen into new identities, genders and bodily forms (Turkle; Haraway). While there are resources such as Second Life that provide a means to escape form the embodied self the main concern of the iGeneration is to promote sociability across the digital and real worlds. One reinforces and reflects the other so that the virtual self is always anchored in the embodied self. It is the convergence of the self through such representations that whilst not exactly embodied in a physical sense refer to a ‘real’ physicality and presence. This suggest that in terms of social practices for the iGeneration the virtual/place dichotomy is unhelpful and as Daniel Miller and Don Slater note “we need to treat Internet media as continuous with and embedded in other social spaces” (5). The convergence of mobile communicative resources highlighted in this paper and their embodiment into social practices suggests that users may have little more to gain in terms of sociability from, for example, streaming video on mobile phones. The emotive experience of being ‘in touch’ with one another remains a fundamental amongst the iGeneration who draw upon a range of mobile media and social software to form and sustain interactions. Such connections are conducted through a more or less nuanced set of communicative regimes that move across what for them is a seamless landscape of mediated and off line resources and relationships. References Bourdieu, Pierre, and L. Wacquant. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978 [1959]. Gotved, S. “Time and Space in Cyber Social Reality.” New Media and Society 8.3 (2006): 467-486. Graham, S. “Beyond the ‘Dazzling Light’: From Dreams of Transcendence to the ‘Remediation’.” New Media Society 6 (2004): 16-25. Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York: Routledge, 1991. Ito, Mizuko, Daisuke Okabe, and Misa Matsuda. Personal, Portable Pedestrian. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005. Harvey Jones, H., and J.H. Soltren. “Facebook: Threats to Privacy.” MIT, Dec. 2005. 6 Feb. 2007 http://www.swiss.ai.mit.edu/6.805/student-papers/fall05-papers/ facebook.pdf>. Licoppe, Christian, and J.P. Heurtin. “Managing One’s Availability to Telephone Communication through Mobile Phones.” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 5 (201): 99-108. Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Muller, D. “Y Bother? This Generation Inhabits a Different World.” Sydney Morning Herald 3 Oct. 2006. Prensky, M. “The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native.” Marcprensky.com 2004. 2 Jan. 2007 http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/default.asp>. Standage, T. “Your Television Is Ringing.” The Economist: A Special Report on the Future of Telecoms. 14-20 Oct. 2006. Turkle, S. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. Urry, John. “Mobile Sociology.” British Journal of Sociology 51.1 (2000): 185-203. White, M. “Television and Internet Differences by Design.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12.3 (2006): 341-355. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hardey, Mariann. "Going Live: Converging Mobile Technology and the Sociability of the iGeneration." M/C Journal 10.1 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/09-hardey.php>. APA Style Hardey, M. (Mar. 2007) "Going Live: Converging Mobile Technology and the Sociability of the iGeneration," M/C Journal, 10(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0703/09-hardey.php>.

At first, no doubt, only the reproduction and transmission of works of art will be affected. It will be possible to send anywhere or to re-create anywhere a system of sensations, or more precisely a system of stimuli, provoked by some object or event in any given place. Works of art will acquire a kind of ubiquity. We shall only have to summon them and there they will be…They will not merely exist in themselves but will exist wherever someone with a certain apparatus happens to be. (Paul Valéry, ‘The Conquest of Ubiquity’, 225-6) Paul Valéry made these remarks in 1934, as the first drive-in movie theater opened in New Jersey, as Muzak was born, as the Associated Press started its international wirephoto service, and as a company called Imperial & International Communications renamed itself Cable & Wireless. Regular TV broadcasting would begin in England two years later, and in the U.S. in 1939, the same year John Atanasoff and Clifford Berry completed the prototype of the first digital computer. (Caslon Analytics) Valéry’s prognostications may of course be read alongside the thinking of Walter Benjamin, who quotes this passage in his famous essay on ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. Both stress that it is not simply the forms taken by art works that are changing, but their very conditions of possibility, or put another way (Benjamin’s), that they are henceforth designed with their reproducibility in mind. It is therefore neither uniqueness, nor specificity, but the potential for ‘ubiquity’, that yields the value of the work made for the new media. Just as water, gas and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.(226) Two things have always struck me about Valéry’s analysis. The first is his characterization – for want of a better word, metaphysical – of the new cultural produce. It is not simply a movement from the clunky physicality of the artisanal object to that of the commodity; rather, it is a commutation, a transmogrification, a liquidation of the cultural object, whose value and form henceforth arise according to its new fluidity. The cultural ‘fluid’ – what is given (data) to our ‘sense organs’ – behaves more like energy, or money, than the older art object. These properties suggest a whole new political economy of the culture industries. Just as we are accustomed, if not enslaved, to the various forms of energy that pour into our homes, we shall find it perfectly natural to receive the ultrarapid variations or oscillations that our sense organs gather in and integrate to form all we know. I do not know whether a philosopher has ever dreamed of a company engaged in the home delivery of Sensory Reality So began what we might call our Broadband Dreaming. Secondly, Valéry cannot but invoke the public utility company, a dominant corporate form in his day, but which to us is an endangered species, having almost liquidated itself over the course of the last few decades’ ecstatic neoliberalism. According to the Shorter OED, the “utility” provides something “able to satisfy human needs or wants”; it is a service (such as electricity or water) considered essential to the community; and it describes the provider of such a service or supply, usually ‘a nationalized or private monopoly subject to public regulation’. And this is precisely why I return to Valéry in opening a volume on ‘fibre’. For it is the privatization of communications infrastructure, hastening the closure of this zone of ‘public’ interest and community ‘needs’ – and this is as much about the downgrading of expectations as of actual services – that underlies the current political economy of networks and networked culture, and which prompts many of the articles collected here. What’s more, Valéry is especially alert to the peculiar purity of demand that the utility assumes, and our impatience for art’s sensory data “when not only our mind desires it, but our soul and whole being craves and as it were anticipates it”. Perhaps this well-nigh existential impatience is a necessary condition of networking – will we ever be satisfied with the bandwidth we have? As Gerard Goggin writes in the feature article: As the citizen is recast as consumer and customer, we rethink our cultural and political axioms as well as the axes that orient our understandings in this area. Information might travel close to the speed of light, and we might fantasise about optical fibre to the home (or pillow), but our terrain, our band where the struggle lies today, is narrower than we wish. That which we have ‘on tap’ has a way of engendering in us a reliance and an appetite somewhat out of keeping with actual need. Where conventional economic analysis might therefore struggle to explain our current obsession with fibre, histories of addiction, of affect and of symbolic exchange might succeed. The Fibreculture Flavour When we started the Fibreculture list in early 2001, national communications policy was a central concern, as was the question of how to make the best of it through critique and alternative networking practices, against the many challenges presented by the global and local zeitgeist of privatization, and by the post-dotcom deflation of the telecoms sector. Ravenous former monopolies, in rebound mode, were punished for their over-extensions into markets they knew little about, as the blue skies clouded over. Against this backdrop, it seemed most urgent to support, build upon, and learn from the experiences of a panoply of alternative media networks – of virtual communities getting real, and real communities going virtual – in order to learn the lessons of the dotcom debacle. Buzzwords were: D.I.Y. and tactical media, openness, sustainability, and collaborative and distributed models. But this collaboration between Fibreculture and M/C is not just content-sharing by two networks with overlapping interests, although this sort of temporary network chiasm demonstrates an untapped flexibility that ICTs retain in spite of the calcification of their institutions and their economic devaluation post-dotcom. Rather, at the heart of this experiment was an alternative peer-review process, a much-needed intervention into the orthodoxy (too long unrenovated) of blind peer-review. It took the form of a supplementary round of ‘collaborative text filtering’. Traditionally, peer-review is closed (‘blind’), centralized, and tends to be somewhat arbitrary; our alternative is distributed, open and more heuristic. From the list’s subscribers, small cells of four or five readers were formed; submissions were posted to the list, assigned to a cell, and readers were asked to post their critical responses within two weeks. Some of the ensuing dialogue was fascinating, all of it engaged and generous. The Fibreculture flavour thus consists of a wider discussion and debate inflecting the author’s final submission. ‘Review’ here was oriented towards an opening, rather than a closure, of the text, giving rise to a sharing of resources, references and informed opinions. These exchanges remain accessible via the list archives (look for subject lines ‘MCFIBRE’ and ‘Re: MCFIBRE’) at: <http://lists.myspinach.org/archives/fibreculture/2003-June/subject.html> <http://lists.myspinach.org/archives/fibreculture/2003-May/subject.html> What’s lost is anonymity and the discursive or disciplinary specialization of reviewers – both are key components of the older model, both with their downside. The question must be asked: If interdisciplinarity means anything beyond the proliferation of competing discourses, what are its implications for the practices and economies of academic publishing, and for the ‘knowledge economy’ generally? Of course, the spread of topics does mirror Fibreculture’s interests. Half of the authors assembled here are regular contributors to the list. They include its co-founder, Geert Lovink, who manages to report and speculate (at once!) on the much-paraded relationship between art and science; and Gerard Goggin, whose informative feature article takes up many of the concerns raised above, with respect to broadband infrastructure (and policy) in particular. Emy Tseng and Kyle Eischen take the notion of infrastructure more technically in considering how it might inform a progressive techno-geography. Fibreculture explores the politics of networks and ICTs, but also their cultures. The experiential (and ‘affective’) dimension of networked culture was also a prevalent theme of responses to the Call For Papers, including artist and architect Petra Gemeinboeck’s theoretical explanation of her installation Maya – Veil of Illusion. Fibre is where the economic meets the social, where the public meets the private, and intrudes upon it. Grayson Cooke responds in kind (and with humour) to the intrusive excesses of Spam. For Adrian Mackenzie, both social and technical practices “are integrated in our politics. When politics integrates human affairs and technical things, collective affects concerning infrastructure arise… Infrastructures are integral to how cultural forms of life render and inhabit their worlds.” But some aspects of sociality migrate to the networks more easily than others, as Jon Marshall discovers in his analysis of gendered and gendering behaviour online. For all their complexity, the interweavings of affect in the networks are anything but random. As we find in Andrew Murphie’s anthropological musing (after José Gil) on the place of ritual in the technosphere: Even at its apparently most disorganized … (in ritual ecstasy for example), ritual magic is in reality extremely organised (although an organisation of forces and translations rather than one of stable states). As Gil writes, even the 'gestures, words, or cries of the possessed are coded'. Indeed, the codes involved are precisely those of possession, but of a possession by networks rather than of them… Also of a theoretical bent is Andrew Goffey’s fascinating synopsis of the relationship – potentially very revealing – between immunology and theories of networked communication and organization. A welcome reminder of the necessity, and the speculative pleasures, of pressing on with cross-disciplinary investigation, even when it seems ‘interdisciplinarity’ has devolved from a type of work to a mere ‘framework’ for funding agendas and institutional window-dressing. As with all Fibreculture projects, no all-inclusive vision of anything is offered here. What we present instead is another installment of networked multiplicity, the unpredictable mixture of codes, idioms and critical thought on which list cultures seem to thrive. With thanks to the team at M/C, to the contributors and reviewers (especially Mel Gregg, Ned Rossiter and Esther Milne), and to all who contribute to the Fibreculture community. http://www.fibreculture.org Works Cited Paul Valéry, ‘The Conquest of Ubiquity’, in Aesthetics, trans. Ralph Manheim, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964. Caslon Analytics, ‘Media and Communications Timeline’ 1926-50 <http://www.caslon.com.au/timeline5.htm> accessed 18/08/03 Links http://lists.myspinach.org/archives/fibreculture/2003-June/subject.html http://lists.myspinach.org/archives/fibreculture/2003-May/subject.html http://www.caslon.com.au/timeline5.htm http://www.fibreculture.org/ http://www.fibreculture.org/index.html http://www.fibreculture.org/mcfibre.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Teh, David. "Fibre " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/01-editorial.html >. APA Style Teh, D. (2003, Aug 26). Fibre . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/01-editorial.html >